PEOPLE OF ME
.CE THOM
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The
People of Mexico
Who They Are and How They Live
BY
WALLACE THOMPSON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Copyright, 1921. by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
ft L
ibrary
To
My Father
ALTON HOWARD THOMPSON
Who in the folklore that he gave me in
my childhood taught me that science
could be as joyous as romance.
CONTENTS
PART I
WHO THEY ARE
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE xi
I. THE MEXICAN TYPE 3
Physical and mental characteristics Clash of cul-
tures Racial phases of Mexican history Mexico
now a mixed-breed land The menace of the tide of
Indianism.
II. RACE ORIGINS 14
Absence of any race strain save Indian and Spanish
Indian contribution largely of vital force Anti-
white manifestations Racial history of Aztecs
Indian type virtually unchanged Spanish contribu-
tion cultural Failure of racial amalgamation as a
solution.
III. THE MELTING POT 35
Racial correspondences in Mexican history Rank
of three race types Mestizo race or mongrel? Re-
version to primitive types Political domination of
mestizos Disintegration of mestizo control.
IV. MEXICO'S POPULATION 56
Faults of early censuses Populations throughout
history Rate of increase Emigration and Immigra-
tion Distribution and density Rural and urban.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
V. VITALITY 86
Birth and death rates Infant mortality Death
rates by age groups Causes of deaths Health
Climate Vices Defectives
VI. CASTES AND CLASSES 110
Racial origins of castes Creation of upper and
middle classes Description of present Mexican
classes Rank of foreigners.
PART II
HOW THEY LIVE
I. CLIMATE 131
Poverty of Mexico in agriculture Climate of three
sorts Strain of climate on population Rainfall
inadequate Irrigation Low corn production Men-
ace of famine.
II. THE MEXICAN COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT . 152
Feudalism and Indian Communism Ideas of
property Ranches and haciendas Indian villages
and Spanish cities Government and public order
Organization of rule Functions of states and towns
Communications Police .
III. RELIGION 170
Christian domination Statistics of Catholics and
Protestants Types of native Catholics Spanish
missions Church in politics Civil vs. religious
marriage Protestanism .
IV. EDUCATION 195
Illiteracy School statistics Educational budgets
Controversies over educational systems Moral
Education Education for life.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
V. THE FAMILY 210
Patriarchal organization Domestic relations Di-
vorce Marriage statistics Size of families Position
of women Children.
VI. MEXICAN HOUSES 235
Town plan Types of houses Materials Rooms
and furnishings Statistics of housing Overcrowding
Modern housing.
VII. MEXICO'S FOODS 257
Unity of national diet Corn and beans National
dishes Meat and vegetables Drinks Food dis-
tribution Nutritive value of Mexican diet Under-
nourishment.
_^MMM*9M*-- >
VIII. CLOTHING 286
National costumes Dress of Aztecs The Mexican
hat Zerape and reboso Cosmetics and adornment.
IX. CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION 301
Mexican laundries Peon attitude toward cleanli-
ness Baths Vermin Sanitation and water supply
American sanitation in Vera Cruz Cemeteries
Care of the sick.
X. THE CONDITIONS OF LABOR
Relation of Indians to land Spanish land laws-
Peonage, origins and history Labor efficiency
Hours of labor Classification of labor Labor of
children Labor of women Labor organizations
Labor legislation.
XI. INCOME AND THE COST OF LIVING 348
National improvidence Lack of close relationship
between income and social conditions Sources of
income History of wages Credit system Personal
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
budget Food costs Shelter and clothing Pawn-
shops and usury.
XII. VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM 371
Gambling, drinking, and sexual overindulgence the
national vices Prohibition Political crime Crime
against property Classification of crimes against
persons Statistics Pauperism and beggary
Institutions.
XIII. CONCLUSION 399
INDEX , 411
PREFACE
THIS book offers itself as an Anatomy of Mexico.
It deals with one of the grievously sick nations
of the world, in the diagnosis of whose ills our
greatest lack has not been Heaven save the mark!
for minute descriptions of her pains and aches,
nor yet for elaborate explanations of her afflictions
and suggested panaceas. Our deficiency has been
rather in understanding of the patient, how she is
made and how she has been living and thinking, and
in honest appraisal of her antecedents.
The information vital to such understanding has
been almost inaccessible. Much was scattered
through many books, from government statistics
to records of travel, but even there surprisingly
little of it has existed in easily assimilated form.
Writing and talking of Mexico as I have done for
nearly twenty years, 1 have come to feel that there
is no greater single need of those who would under-
stand the Mexican situation of yesterday and to-
day, and to-morrow as well, than a work that strives
seriously to set down and interpret the fundamentals
of the national anatomy. It is that need which
this book seeks to fill.
Its materials are from many sources; their ar-
xi
PREFACE
rangement, digestion, and interpretation are almost
entirely mine. Of the two parts, the first, save for
its statistical tables, is largely original, the second
a compilation and interpretation of available data.
The first part, in its frank discussion of the race
question, will perhaps be challenged, but there I
have said nothing that Mexicans themselves do not
whisper. Nor have I approached this very vital
subject with anything but the friendliest apprecia-
tion of those always simpatico and understanding
gentlemen, the Mexican mestizos, who have, many
of them, sought so sincerely to solve their country's
problems. The historical data in this part I have
taken largely from Bancroft, always authoritative
and always sound, much of the material on race
from Bandelier; the more recent studies I have con-
sidered as supplementary, for many of them are
still controversial, and, moreover, this question of
race and its manifestations is one of the fields to
which future research has yet to contribute much.
The statistical material in the first section, as in the
second, is necessarily from Mexican sources, whose
reliability is always questionable, although, where
comparisons were not anticipated by the Mexican
editors of the official reports (as in my vitality
tables) much significant matter has been discover-
able. The rearrangement of the data, which had
always to be made, puts a large amount of statistics
for the first time in usable form.
The second part of the book, dealing with living
conditions, has made use of source material which
could be reached. To this end the invaluable files
xii
PREFACE
of the Doheny Research Foundation, covering
practically everything printed on Mexico that is
available in the United States, were used freely;
to them were added statistical and other data
gathered personally, my own notes being the basis
for most of the facts and observations in such chap-
ters as Foods, Housing, Labor, etc.
The list of those to whom I owe gratitude for
tangible aid must of necessity, in a work of this
sort, be very long, and includes a host of personal
friends whose contribution could not be appraised.
Of those who have actually helped toward the mak-
ing of the manuscript, I would name Miss Ida A.
Tourtellot, my associate in the original work of the
Doheny Research Foundation, a valued colleague
and a sympathetic critic, and with her the many
other members of the Foundation who were truly
my confreres, Prof. Ellsworth Huntington, to whom
I owe much of the material on climate, Mr. Madi-
son Grant for important suggestions on the gen-
eral subject of race, Dr. Norman Bridge, for his
invaluable criticism and inspiration, and Mr.
Edward L. Doheny, for his faith in the sincerity
of my study and his genuine devotion to the best
interests of Mexico.
WALLACE THOMPSON.
NEW YORK, November 1, 1920.
PART I
WHO THEY ABE
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
THE MEXICAN TYPE
WHAT is a Mexican? What is his racial, his
cultural background? Whence did he come?
What did he bring with him from beyond the glow
of his recorded history? What type has he truly
been through the strenuous periods since he emerged
from the melting pot of the three-hundred-year-
long Spanish regime? What is he to-day and what
is he to be?
These are questions which even the most factual
students of Mexican history are coming to ask
themselves. They are questions of the impersonal
observer of international affairs, and of the patriotic
American or European who grasps dimly that this
anomalous people is having a disproportionate in-
fluence upon the social and industrial trends of the
world. They are questions which Mexicans them-
selves ask, with a growing frankness into which the
dangerous words "race" and " atavism" and
"white civilization" enter significantly. They are
questions that cannot be answered categorically,
for the light of the past is filtered through glasses
3
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of prejudice and caution, coloring the most ob-
vious facts and distorting the most impersonal
standards.
The 15,000,000 Mexicans include 6,000,000 pure-
blooded Indians of fifty tribal strains, and until the
exile of the upper classes under Carranza approx-
imately 1,000,000 pure whites of Spanish lineage
also called themselves Mexicans; between the two
extremes are 8,000,000 mestizos (literally mixed
bloods) to whose creation the two primary races
have for four centuries contributed contrasting
elements. It is the resultant hybrid whose numbers
make him the typical Mexican of to-day.
The body of the Indian, small, firm, and sturdy,
has been softened by the narrow-hipped litheness
of the Spaniard to a combination, in this mestizo
Mexican, surprisingly lacking in Indian endurance
and Spanish virility. The glistening copper skin
of the Indian has been paled by the Spaniard's
olive glow to varying shades of chocolate brown.
The long skull and oval face of the white have,
however, affected the rounded contour of the Indian
type but little, so that the mestizo is a "round-
head," his cheek bones are high, though less prom-
inent than in the aborigines, while his nostrils are
wide and lips rather thicks The eyes, uniformly
dark, tend to the Indian form, with a greater curve
in the lower lid than is normal in the European, and
the upper lid much straighter. The hair is black
and straight, and coarse and bristly almost in di-
rect proportion to the preponderance of Indian
blood. There is relatively little body hair, and the
4
THE MEXICAN TYPE
beard is thin and sparse, also an almost infallible^
index of the proportion of Indian strain.
Intellectually and psychologically, the Mexican
mestizo is more of a hybrid than he is physically.
His body type has varied characteristics, although
perhaps tending disproportionately to the Indian,
but in his brain there seethes the continual conflict
of intellectual and psychological predispositions
which go back to cultures which in the history of
humanity are thousands of years apart. In his
mind the blind, unchanging grasp of tradition and
superstition which mark the Indian combine with
the brilliant logic of the Spaniard to create a person,
unstable and at the same time inexorable, bound
by racial prejudices which he does not understand
and yet which he justifies with an Occidental logic
that confuses both himself and the observer.
Brave and often devoted, cruel and blindly selfish,
proud and childishly sensitive; admiring material
and spiritual achievement extravagantly, yet al-
most incapable alone of the concentration and
sacrifice which create these achievements; senti-
mental and poetical, yet almost untouched by great
passions and desires; the Mexican is the victim of
his mixed racial and cultural heritage, the plaything
of primal forces which tend ever to neutralize one
another into a personalityoften unworthy alike of his
rich Spanish intensity and of his Indian simplicity.
Though he conceives his revolutions, his social re-
forms, and his material progress in high-sounding
terms of altruism, the forces with which he has torn
his country to tatters and even those with which,
5
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
from time to time, he has bound up her wounds, have
been selfish ambitions and narrow personal desires
which partook neither of the white man's militant
altruism nor of the red man's love of glory.
Whoever reads Mexican history with an under-
standing mind must realize that since Cortez came
in 1521 to this day Mexico has known but two
periods of progress, material or spiritual one the
long, slow evolution under Spanish tutelage, and
one that golden age when the mestizo dictator,
Diaz, emerging from sixty years of personality-
ridden revolutions, called back from exile to the
task of service the white aristocrats who alone
remained as Mexicans from that picturesque horde
of priests and teachers, soldiers and traders, who
brought the paternal civilization of the white man
to the building of New Spain. The mestizo may
indeed have evolved the idea of a nation, but the
Diaz regime, as its finest flowering, harnessed the
forces that yet remained of white understanding
and sacrifice to the making of that nation. What
we have seen for the past ten years may be called
the disintegration of the mestizo idea of nation-
alism into its component parts. What the Mexi-
cans call "personalism" in politics is but the
remnant in the mixed stock of the self-assured
superiority of the white, and the antiforeign laws
and the bloody outrages upon the whites are but
the Indian fear and hatred of white domination.
One of the basic facts which must be recognized
and accepted before one can go on to a true under-
standing of the people of Mexico is that what is.
THE MEXICAN TYPE
going on in Mexico to-day and what has been going
on there through all of her revolutions since 1810
is basically the uprising of the dark races against
the white, a movement too mighty in its scope and
too patent a peril to be glossed over by anyone
who would speak truthfully of conditions in Mexico
to-day. Indeed, one of the ablest of Mexican pub-
licists has himself written that "at the bottom of
all the troubles of Mexico . . . is the prehistoric
Indian civilization trying to destroy the European
civilization; which to-day it has very nearly accom-
plished." 1
The Spaniards brought to Mexico ideals and am-
bitions far different from those which the English
colonists carried to New England. Centuries of
warfare with Moslems and Jews had fired the
Spaniards to religious zeal, and they imposed upon
the Mexicans the double yoke of religion and labor,
while the English Puritans and Cavaliers were
exterminating their Indians and making little
effort to convert them. The Indian stocks which
the English and the Spaniards met were themselves
very different, and to the Spaniards fell a people
long ruled by despotic chieftains, long held in
religious bondage to cruel gods, more ready to
change masters than to oppose a racial enemy.
The conversion of the Indians to the Christian
faith, the reaching out of the Spanish arms and
the Cross to distant missions which became centers
of a sort of European civilization and the final
1 T. Esquivel Obregon, in Hispanic American Historical Review;
May, 1919, p. 170.
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
welding of a strangely conglomerate population
into a colony which finally became the Mexican
nation, is one of the great romances of history.
Far flung over an area many tunes that conquered
by the English whites in America before their
revolution, the Spanish crown, combining both
Church and state, destroyed tribal and theocratic
governments, uprooted and virtually wiped out the
native culture and civilization, and forced upon the
Indian population the standards, the culture, the
religion, and the language of Castile.
Three objects inspired the Spanish conquerors,
both priests and soldiers: physical domination,
racial amalgamation, and intellectual control. The
white man's arrogance and science quickly achieved
the physical domination of the natives. The
racial amalgamation rapidly created what was,
after the Mexican revolution of 1823, to come to
consider itself a new race the mestizo a blending
of the peoples, which, in the effort on the part of
the mixed blood to set himself up as the inheritor of
the white man's superiority, keeps the racial results
of the Spanish conquest forever upon the surface of
Mexican affairs.
In intellectual control the Spaniards achieved an
apparently far-reaching success from the very
beginning. Fanatical missionaries destroyed the
cultural as well as the religious foundations of
Indian civilization, and during the Spanish regime
there was but one government and one Church.
For those three centuries the Spanish government
and the Church sought to wean the Indians rapidly
8
THE MEXICAN TYPE
away from their savagery into the glaring light of
the European civilization of their time.
The Indian was a ward of Church and state, and,
as much for his care as by the power of wealth,
there was raised up an aristocracy of white men
and of white women devoted, as far as their under-
standing went, to the welfare of their people,
masters who helped to bring out of the indigenous
stock such strength and virtues as their European
eyes could find.
During those three hundred years practically all
of the civilized Mexico which we know to this day
was built. At the expulsion of the Spaniards in
1823 almost the last of the churches had been
finished, almost the last of the essential Mexican
codes of justice had been hammered out, almost the
last plan of Indian education had been conceived
and had been partially executed.
Out of this full day of progress Mexico passed
into independence and into a night of bloody wars
in which the Indians, snatched from the security
and lethargy of serfdom, were gathered into armies
and thrown against one another in battle lines.
Independence but found them new misfortunes; it
wrecked their homes and devastated their fields,
and for fifty years white against mestizo and mestizo
against white wielded Indian armies like clubs in
fratricidal war. Most of the accumulated energy
and wealth inherited from Spanish times was
destroyed, and out of her final exhaustion, guided
by Porfirio Diaz, an inspired rebel who became a
successful revolutionist and ultimately a great
9
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
statesman, Mexico emerged into her years of
peace.
Previous to Diaz the mestizo revolutionists had
demonstrated throughout their succeeding up-
heavals that the freedom which they demanded
and which they promised to the Indians was in
essence a freedom to loot and despoil their country,
a freedom to use society for their own ends, features
typical of the revolutions of 1810 to 1876, just as
they are typical of the revolutions since 1910.
Diaz from the beginning displayed a new tolerance
and wisdom which quickly reconciled all social
forces to his government. He brought back the
old Creole 1 aristocracy because he recognized Mex-
ico's vital need of the stabilizing influence of the
social power which they represented. From these
white aristocrats, representing ordered society, as
the white aristocrats of Mexico who are now in
exile represent all that remains in the world to-day
of Mexican social power, Diaz forged the tools of
his great regime. These were the tools of the
white man's code, the tools which built Mexico's
greatness as a colony of Spain, tools whose intelli-
gence and devotion made her greatness under Diaz.
The Mexican problem has, in the words of her
own statesmen, time and again been announced as
a social question and a social question alone. Diaz
has been criticized and anathematized because to
the solution he brought only political peace and
economic progress, leaving, as his detractors say,
1 The word " Creole" is used in Mexico to-day to designate any
Mexican of pure white ancestry.
10
THE MEXICAN TYPE
the great social problem utterly untouched
socially. Yet as one looks on the Mexican situa-
tion to-day, realizing that on these myriad social
problems Mexican mestizos have brought to bear
political solutions borrowed from our Anglo-Saxon
constitutions, borrowed from Teutonic Marxian
socialism, borrowed even from Russian Bolshevism,
one finds oneself swinging back to a simple appre-
ciation of the material bases of human progress,
the material bases that gave the Indian in Mexico
under the viceroys and under Diaz a place to call
home, a tiny corn patch where he could raise his
food unmolested and a Church wherein, for all its
faults, his soul found surcease.
This was the white man's rule and this is the
rule which gave way in Mexico after the viceroys
to anarchy and misery and which gave way after
the dictatorship to anarchy and misery. Here is
the essence of the problem in that at least for such
a land as Mexico, where a vast mass of population
lives forever on the outer verge of poverty, the
beginnings of progress and the beginnings of civili-
zation must be concerned first with the filling of
the human stomach and the satisfaction of the
human craving for home and religion and happiness.
These things the mestizo revolutions of Mexico
have never given to anyone save their demagogues.
Yet to-day Mexico is a mestizo, a half-breed,
land. The characteristics of Indian and of Span-
iard are merged in her population and in her rulers.
But as we watch her progress downward through
revolution after revolution, and as we shall observe
U
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
her life in the pages which make up this book, we
find forced upon us the realization that in this
welter of conflicting cultures and psychologies the
predominating factor to-day is Indian, and that
sooner or later, unless the white world again takes
up the burden, Mexico must inevitably slip back
to the plane of pre-Spanish barbarism.
Mexico stands to-day at our doorstep dressed
in the rags of our civilization. In our pride we
believed that those rags would clothe her always,
and we have lent our prestige to our half brothers,
the mestizos, in the belief that they would see that
the clothing of our civilization on the Indian would
be kept in repair. We must recognize and admit
that to-day the half brother is a failure. He has
used the whip which we gave him for discipline
with the hand of a slave driver; he has stained the
sword of authority with the blood of his wards; he
has thrown back in our faces the mangled bodies
of our martyred missionaries of religion, of com-
merce, and of science. A hundred years ago his
Indian blood raised him against white rule, and to-
day his Indian blood has almost conquered his white
virtues. He is about to pass under the sway, first
mentally and morally, and ultimately physically and
culturally, of the Indian. The path behind him is
clear and broad; we can look back on it, lined with
ruins and with crosses. Ahead through the jungle
a new road is to be carved. It may go in many
ways, and the choice comes forcibly to us, more
forcibly every day, with the realization that we,
the white, we alone must choose. The mestizo,
12
THE MEXICAN TYPE
the true Mexican, is helpless, torn and driven by his
conflicting heritages, and yet always and hopelessly
with the white in him overawed and made despicable
by the Indian strain which pushes up and up and
up even as his skin darkens under the tropic sun.
F
II
RACE ORIGINS
'OR four hundred years Mexico has lived in
racial isolation. During the three colonial cen-
turies no white men excepting Spaniards were al-
lowed to enter, and through the hundred years of
independence (save only for the last decade of the
Diaz rule) no other foreigners have attempted per-
manent residence in the country. When the first
revolution broke out in 1810 there were 60,000
foreign born; in 1825, after the expulsion of the
Spaniards, there were probably not over 1,000;
in 1895 there were 3,713; in 1900, 57,508; in 1910,
115,869; and in 1920 there are not over 5,000
foreigners in all Mexico.
This racial isolation is probably the most im-
portant single fact in Mexican history. It gave
her the long preponderance of Spanish culture;
from it has come the turbulent domination of the
mestizos, and that disintegration of the half-breed
stock toward Indianism which characterizes Mexico
to-day. Toward it we must look for the aristocracy
of indigenous white men who alone seem capable of
saving Mexico from herself.
From the beginning of Spanish rule in 1521, all
14
RACE ORIGINS
foreigners were excluded from the American col-
onies, primarily to insure political and religious
control, and secondarily to prevent a knowledge
of their wealth from reaching the ears of the hardy
French and English buccaneers. None but Span-
ish ships sailed to Vera Cruz, and heavy penalties
were exacted of the sea captains who carried
foreigners without license from the king. In all
colonial history not over half a dozen Englishmen
(old residents of Spain) visited Mexico as merchants,
and Baron von Humboldt, who traveled five years
in Spanish America under royal patronage, met but
one German resident and found that the natives
could not believe that there were white men who
did not speak Spanish.
The age of Diaz was a period of slow opening to
the outside world, but marked, as we have seen, by
hardly more than ten years of appreciable foreign
immigration. Even then the foreign population had
little interest in any form of racial amalgamation,
while the economic situation, both before Diaz and
since, has created an impregnable barrier against the
" energizing stream of white immigration from be-
yond the seas" which has been advocated from tune
to tune by foreigners and by Mexicans themselves.
Thus the barriers of Spanish political and religious
isolation and the political and economic walls of
the period of independence have combined to the
narrowing of the race problem of Mexico to two
elements the Indians and the Spaniards who came
during the colonial epoch. Of these the mass is
Indian, numbering at least 6,000,000 at the tune
2 15
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of the conquest, while the leaven is the blood of the
300,000 white men who emigrated from Spain
during the three centuries of colonial rule. At its
close, hi 1823, that rule had reduced the pure
Indian population to 2,500,000, and had created
at the same tune nearly 2,000,000 mestizos. The
60,000 peninsulares, or Spaniards born in Spain,
represented, however, a greater population of
foreign-born whites than was attained for a full
century afterward, while the number of Creoles or
pure white descendants of Spanish immigrants was
the same as the average which continued down
to the faU of Diaz about 1,000,000. The climate,
the early revolutions, and their economic destruc-
tion have combined to keep down all white increase,
a work which the Carranza revolution carried to
the point where not only all foreigners, but the
Creoles as well, were virtually in exile.
All this is remarkable and significant, but obvi-
ous, indeed. The very increase of foreigners from
1895 to 1910, and their almost complete exodus
since the latter year, tend to confirm, in figures, the
absence of any real infusion of new white bloods.
The 1910 census recorded only 120,000 foreign-
born residents of the republic, or eight-tenths of 1
per cent, which, excluding the 115,000 who retained
nationality in other countries, leaves but 5,000 Mex-
ican citizens born abroad, or three one-hundredths
of 1 per cent. 1
ir The proportion of foreign born in the United States in 1910 was
14.7 per cent, the great majority of whom were actual or potential
citizens.
16
RACE ORIGINS
We trace the race origins of Mexico, therefore, back
through only the two clearly defined lines, Indian
and Spanish. In the beginning, we must accept
the fact that within both contributions there are
interesting and sometimes significant variations.
There are nearly fifty Indian tribes whose differences
have brought interesting material to the hands of
anthropologists. The work of the scientists, how-
ever, has been largely with language groups, leaving
them at a decided disadvantage in Mexico, where,
in spite of the many Indian tribes, Spanish is over-
whelmingly the national language. In 1910, 13,-
143,372, or 87 per cent of the population, claimed
it as their native tongue, and the census classifica-
tion of forty-seven Indian language groups, and
250 dialects, at the same time estimated each tribe
as at least three times the population that uses the
Indian tongue. An increasing number of modern
anthropologists hold that language is of secondary
importance in racial classifications, and it is for this
reason, as well as because of the overwhelming use
of Spanish, that it is touched on lightly here.
Certainly the use of Spanish to-day bears out
Madison Grant's dictum that "the language that
a man speaks may be nothing more than evidence
that at some time in the past his race has been in
contact, either as conqueror or as conquered, with
the original possessors of such language." 1 So,
while the Indian linguistic families of Mexico are
relatively pure, they do not mark the boundaries
1 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, p. 56.
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of the races that speak them, nor do they indicate
that the Indians of to-day are different from those
whose language was displaced in ages now forgotten.
The Indian types that belong to the soil of Mexico
have probably been unchanged through the suc-
cessive conquests of other Indian races, and it
seems likely that they will remain, still unchanged,
through the passing of the Spaniards and their
descendants of white and mixed blood. The disap-
pearance or persistence of their language means
little. Spanish will doubtless remain forever the
language of Mexico, even should she slip back to
recognized barbarism.
For the purposes of our study, it is the whole
vast field of Indian history that calls us, rather than
the individual tribal contribution. If aught can
be gained in such a work as that attempted here,
it is because we shall have succeeded in finding and
emphasizing the norm rather than the confusion of
details. In the justifiable instinct of the ordinary
observer for this simplification, many false con-
ceptions of pre-Spanish Mexican history have
crept into common thought. We have become
accustomed to see in this long period only a series
of conquests in which each older race has been
driven out and annihilated by newer conquerors,
and its history as a succession of great migrations
from the distant north, each wiping out whole
peoples and setting up new and greater civilizations
composed entirely of new races.
Nothing could be farther from the actual truth.
In reality there are but four main strains in Indian
18
RACE ORIGINS
Mexico, each with a long history. First are the
primitive Indians of the mainland, still almost
without culture, such as the Otomis; second the
"wild" tribes of northern Mexico, such as the
Yaquis, who are related to the Apaches of the
United States and who apparently never had con-
tact with the sedentary tribes to the south; the
third represented by the wonderful Mayas of
Yucatan; and fourth the great Nahua family
which included the Aztecs, Toltecs, and Chichi-
mecs, the group whose history covers all the
civilized Indian period in the Valley of Mexico.
In a past so remote that even its written language
is undecipherable, Yucatan, Tabasco, Chiapas, and
Central America were populated by the Maya race,
a people of definite culture and with characteristics
which have inspired many theories that they
crossed the seas from Asia or Africa or had their
origins in a mythical Atlantis. The ruins of the
Maya cities and the tropical pampas which were
their cornfields are scattered from the peninsula
of Yucatan to the Isthmus of Panama. Ruled but
never conquered by later civilizations, their race
strain definitely persisted, so that even to-day the
natives of Yucatan have facial characteristics,
color, and bodily traits which link them to races,
dark, to be sure, but suggesting a yet more ancient,
lighter strain from Mediterranean Berbers or
mythical Chinese.
The Nahua peoples whom the Spaniards found
also come of ancient stock. Our conception of
their history is still warped by the tales of the
19
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Spanish soldiers and priests, chronicles written by
men who reached their conclusions through the
hazes of partially understood languages and of their
own religious conventions. Not only did sixteenth-
century Christianity destroy the priceless records
of the conquered peoples, but it injected into the
native traditions correspondences to support the
theological dogma that the entire human race was
descended from a single pair of beings who lived in
a Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia. The Spaniards,
among other things, interpreted the Aztec tradi-
tions of a northern origin to mean that the tribes
which inhabited the Valley of Mexico had come in
successive waves from the far northwest, down
through California, Arizona, and Chihuahua, one
of the chief reasons for this theory doubtless being
the greater likelihood that the New World and
Asia were united in the north than that there had
been a connection through the broad Pacific (which
the Spaniards early explored). The Indian legends
did indeed tell of migrations from the north, but
most of the landmarks of these lordly journeys
have been identified with spots within a radius of a
few hundred miles of the City of Mexico, or else
with the great Nahua center far to the south.
Moreover, archaeology has never been quite able
to reconcile itself to a connection of the Aztecs, who
lived in a semi-civilized state, with those untamed
savages who peopled what is now the United States
and northern Mexico.
About 1000 B.C., Nahua wanderers from a far
country, perhaps Florida, apparently did land
20
RACE ORIGINS
at "Panuco" on the Gulf of Mexico, and, traveling
slowly southward along the coastal plain, ultimately
reached the rich fields of Tabasco and Chiapas.
There they built a Nahua civilization which became
predominant between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C. That
traditional migration and the probability that,
nearly 1,000 years later, Nahua tribes traveled
from the Tabasco-Chiapas center as far northward
as Zacatecas or Durango and from there descended
into the Valley of Mexico as Toltecs, Chichimecs,
and Aztecs, are the only grounds which scientific
research can find for the tradition of a northern
origin.
The cradle of all Indian civilization in Mexico
seems to have been this same region of Tabasco
and Chiapas. Palenque, with its widely scattered
outposts of temple and village ruins, indicates a
culture of relatively high rank which flourished
about 1000 B.C. The Maya monuments in Yuca-
tan are contemporaneous or older, and the apparent
link between Mayas and Nahuas is explained by the
theory that the Nahuas, after their wanderings from
Panuco, and after building their civilization in
Chiapas (about 200 B.C.) from there sent colonists
into Yucatan (between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100),
where, without destroying the more ancient Maya
culture, they added their own and intermingled
with the native race strains.
Tabasco and Chiapas became, indeed, only a
starting point for expeditions, and in the sixth or
seventh century of our era Nahua families began
the wanderings northward which ultimately brought
21
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
them to the Valley of Mexico. On their original
journey south from Panuco it seems that the
Nahuas followed the eastern mountain slopes and
coastland, but when the migrations back northward
began a new route was chosen, apparently crossing
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and going up the west
coast. These migrations found their way to regions
only a few days' journey to the north of Anahuac
(as the Valley of Mexico was called hi Indian
tradition), and from there descended in the suc-
cessive waves which we know as Toltec, Chichimec,
and Aztec. By the time the Spaniards came this
single people had stamped the entire culture of the
Mexico which Cortez found, and were triumphant
from the Gulf coast to the Valley of Mexico and
beyond, either under Aztec rule or in the more
ancient tribes which were descendants of the
families the Nahuas left as they wandered south-
ward from Panuco, between 1000 and 500 B.C.
When the Aztecs first reached the Valley of
Mexico they had become, as Bancroft expresses it,
" first the pests of Anahuac and later its tyrants."
Their history, their culture, and their government,
as found and described by the Spaniards, have been
the subject of much writing and much controversy.
The greatness of their power and the advanced
state of their culture are undeniable, and one of the
most interesting features is that their state was
founded and grew to full flowering during the cen-
times when Europe was plunged in the dark
gloom of the Middle Ages. But their racial con-
tribution, in which we are most interested here.
22
RACE ORIGINS
was not of a character to reassure us in contem-
plating the Indian mass of Mexico then or to-day.
The records and traditions of all the Nahua
peoples, both in the Tabasco-Chiapas country and
in the Mexican plateau, all indicate that their
domination was political and cultural rather than
racial. The tales of the events of that time deal
with demigods, with priests, and with kings, but
we find ourselves continually realizing that the
common peoples of the Toltecs, the Chichimecs,
and the Aztecs were probably indigenous tribes
into which the Nahua blood was injected, just as
the Spanish blood was injected centuries later.
Each of the Nahua peoples, in its invasion of the
Valley of Mexico, came apparently in a small group,
and seldom as conquerors. Only the Chichimecs,
who, according to tradition, came from the north
(probably Zacatecas) to the number of more than
3,000,000 men and women, besides children (doubt-
less an absurd exaggeration), seem to have brought
an entire tribal organization with them. The
Toltecs, who preceded them, had come as a small
expedition, it being recorded that the entire party
lived in a single great house which they built at
Tula. The Aztecs were so insignificant on their
arrival (about A.D. 1325) that they were forced to
live in a swamp, so that they came to be called,
probably at the instance of some prehistoric
jester, crane people, or waders.
When the Toltecs came to the Valley of Mexico,
probably about A.D. 500, they found already built
the great pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teoti-
23
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
huacan near where Mexico City now stands, the
work of a yet older, though perhaps also Nahua,
people. The Toltecs adopted the religion of the
priests at that sacred spot, and thus in another
way insured a race amalgamation. Kings and
queens were obtained from neighboring tribes, and
one of the early diplomatic crises of Mexico was
averted when the Toltec nations invited a Chichi-
mec king to rule over them, about A.D. 850.
Race purity, therefore, was never an ideal in
Mexico, and it seems inevitable for us to believe
that in all these mixtures there was a tendency,
which remains to this day, to reach back in race
type to the original or autocthonous peoples who
had lived in the territory from the earliest period.
The physical similarities in color and physique of
the so-called Aztec Indians of the Valley of Mexico
to the Otomis seems proof of this. The Otomi is
probably one of the oldest as well as the least ad-
vanced of all the Mexican Indians, and tradition
has it that certain groups of Otomis came down
from the hills in Toltec times and adopted Nahua
culture. This may well indicate that these primi-
tive peoples were the chief basis of the peasant
class of the Toltec and succeeding conquerors, for
the Aztec Indian whom one now finds in Mexico
gives as little indication of the great civilization of
which he is theoretically the survival as does the
modern Greek of the civilization of Pericles.
To Mexican racial history, the Indian's chief
contribution has been one of vital force. Maya,
Nahua, and Spanish cultures have swept over him,
24
RACE ORIGINS
used him as a stepping stone to a power they have
held for varying periods, yet each has in the end
fallen back, to be lost in tradition or in history,
while the mass of the Indian, Yaqui and Otomi,
Maya and Zapotec, and all gradations between,
has gone on. His stolidity, his fatalism, his great
physical endurance and resistance to the Mexican
climate, are characteristics which undoubtedly
belonged to him in the ages before the Spaniards
came as truly as they mark him to-day. Repro-
ducing with astonishing rapidity, he survived suc-
ceeding wars and ages of slavery, breeding out con-
querors of his own race through thousands of his
brief generations, while in Spanish and republican
times he has been slowly recovering from the
greatest of his enslavements.
In the early years of the conquest, the Indians
died off rapidly. There were great epidemics,
there was slavery, there was a colossal misunder-
standing of the Indians and their needs by the
Spanish officials, and the upsetting of the customs
of thousands of years worked sad havoc. The
entire native culture was destroyed, their aristoc-
racy literally wiped out, their very preponderance
in numbers almost given over to the half-Spanish
mestizos.
After the first two hundred years of colonial rule,
however, thanks to the Spanish crown and the
Church, the Indians began rapidly recovering their
numbers and vital force, a recovery which has con-
tinued with little interruption ever since. By its
very nature, the white race is more of a savior of
25
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the lower native types than of itself, and it may
well be that it is because he has been nurtured in
the bosom of white civilization that the Indian
has gained strength and learned power such as he
never knew before, till he is to-day surging up as a
menace to that very civilization.
The tendency of the Mexican government system
has been, since the time of the viceroys, consistently
to eliminate any definite race consciousness in the
Indian. Almost from the beginning his natural
feeling that he was the original Mexican has been
encouraged by his rulers, but mingled with that
encouragement has been an emphasis on the differ-
ence, and on the inferiority of the native to the
white from beyond the seas.
At times throughout Mexican history, hatred of
the white man for this self-assumed superiority as
much as for his oppressions, has sprung into flame.
Such a period is that in which Mexico is living to-
day. The antiforeignism expressed in the ha-
rangues of the leaders and in the Constitution of
1917 is basically Indian and basically antiwhite.
The Zapata phase of the revolutions of the last ten
years was frankly and completely Indian, Zapata's
object being, as he stated, to drive out the whites
and mestizos and possess the rich state of More-
los for the Indians who were its indigenous in-
habitants.
This is no new phase of the Mexican problem,
for history records that the revolution of 1830 had
for its ideal the extermination of the whites, the
expelling of the mestizos, and the setting up of a
26
RACE ORIGINS
semitheocratic empire modeled on that of Monte-
zuma. In 1872 one of the decisive battles of
Mexican history was fought against the Indian
chief Lozada and 18,000 men to save the city of
Guadalajara and the whites from extermination.
From time to time Indian leaders, essentially Indian
in attitude as well as race, have arisen like Lozada
and Zapata, and it is probable that one of the factors
which has so far saved Mexico from Indian domina-
tion was the destruction of the Indian aristocracy
and natural Indian leadership. What must we
say, however, of the mestizo leadership which is to-
day giving those Indian hordes voice and considera-
tion and which seems to be tending toward an
increasing strength and race consciousness of the
Indian strain both in the Indians and in the mestizos
who now possess the land?
The white race (and we have seen that this is
virtually all Spanish) has given to Mexico its
language and its predominant culture. Racially,
its chief contribution has been its part in the for-
mation of the half-caste mestizo, and in the main-
tenance of that remnant of white aristocracy which,
from time to time, has saved Mexico from utter
self-destruction.
The white ethnic contribution came primarily
from the conquerors, a group of three hundred ad-
venturers recruited in Cuba, but all pure-blooded
Spaniards. The records indicate that they came
largely from northern Spain and that many of them
were light-skinned and blue-eyed, as the Aztecs
welcomed them at first as the returning fair gods
27
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
whom legend had promised them. There is no
doubt that Cortez's doughty soldiers mixed freely
with the native women and early began the infusion
of white blood. Their numbers were small, how-
ever, and only figuratively can we trace to them the
introduction of the Spanish strain. They were fol-
lowed by adventurers of many types, and through-
out the sixteenth century came thousands of young
men of poor families as well as younger sons of
aristocrats, to seek their fortunes. There came also
the governing class and the soldiers. Many of these
early adventurers, and, in fact, of the immigrants
during the earlier colonial period, came from
northern Spain, the Basques and Asturians being
most numerous. 1 They did not come to settle or
to develop an unoccupied land, but to be supported
by the labor of the Indians, and by that labor to
wrest from the soil such riches of gold and silver as
it might hold. As the country opened up, how-
ever, the "men of the sword and cape" gave way
to mechanics, tradesmen, and farmers, who pros-
pered and increased as years went on. This
natural evolution from adventurers and explorers
to substantial developers of the new colony also
brought in the criminal class, who went to Mexico
and the other Spanish colonies in America under
royal pardons or commutations of death sentences
to definite terms of residence in America. Exemp-
tion from taxation, feudal lordships to founders of
colonies, and titles of nobility also served to swell
1 The source material on this point has not been located. The
authority is Ratzel, Aus Mexico, Breslau, 1878, p. 317.
28
RACE ORIGINS
the colonial host to the 300,000 recorded emigrants
to Mexico.
Racial amalgamation had early become the royal
and ecclesiastical solution of the problem of domina-
tion. Beginning with the conquerors and extend-
ing on through the entire period of Spanish rule,
race crossings went on with increasing momentum.
What had in the first place been merely a mis-
cegenation of soldiers and native women, became,
under the rule of king and Church, a settled policy.
Under Charles V the legal marriage of Spaniards
and Indian women was encouraged, for the early
colonists did not take their women with them. In
addition to the king's desire to infuse Spanish blood
into Mexico, doubtless with the idea of ultimately
making the population white, the Church especially
encouraged the race-crossing, in order to hasten the
true Christianization of the people. Not alone
was the marriage of Spanish men and Indian women
encouraged, but when later the Spanish women
began to go to the colonies, their marriage with
Indian aristocrats was sanctioned by the king and
urged by the Church. Thus, the Indian strain
was brought into the white race, and the amalgama-
tion went on with tremendous impetus, a process so
complete and rapid that a descendant of Monte-
zuma finally became a viceroy of Mexico. Indeed,
to this day when an Indian family rises in the social
scale it almost invariably crosses by marriage with
whiter mestizos, and finally with the Creoles. For
instance, Benito Juarez, the only true Indian presi-
dent of Mexico, married a woman of the upper
29
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
class. Her mother was an Italian, and their de-
scendants married as follows: his son, a French-
woman; his five daughters, three Spaniards, a
Mexican, and a Cuban; all of Juarez's grand-
children married whites.
The fact that the Spanish immigrants united
racially with the natives instead of driving them out
and possessing their land as the Anglo-Saxon colo-
nists in the northern part of the continent did, was
due to the nature of both Indians and Spaniards.
The Indians of Mexico were a sedentary, semi-
civilized type, ready and willing to change masters
and to continue the labor to which they had been
inured for centuries, while the Indians of the north
were wild, untamed savages, hopeless as a con-
tributing element to any civilization. The Puri-
tans, moreover, had no desire to spread their faith
among the Indians, and the colonists were them-
selves workers who found a climate similar to that
in which they had been born, while the Spaniards
in the south were imbued with a spirit of religious
conquest, and were neither desirous nor able to
perform manual labor in the unsuitable tropical
climate of Mexico. The result of the situation of
the Indians and the Spaniards in Mexico inevitably
produced an aristocracy, and an aristocratic system,
just as the methods of colonization of the Puritans
produced a pure democracy.
These ideas of aristocracy have persisted in
Mexico to this day, and one of the disturbing factors
at the present tune is that even in the great class of
mestizos no true democracy has ever been possible,
30
RACE ORIGINS
although, had it been possible in this class, democ-
racy might well have been the political salvation
as well as the political battle cry of Mexico. But
the mestizo, inheriting his sense of aristocracy from
his white father, despising the Indian and the work
which to him was the destiny of the Indian alone,
attempted to preserve the idea of aristocracy which
was founded on white superiority in race, educa-
tion, and culture. This was complicated in the
caste organization by the fact that in the mingling
of the Spaniard and the Indian the first offspring
already had a lighter skin and often predominating
European features, and in the first or second genera-
tion many of the purely physical features of the
Indian tended to disappear. The mestizo came to
consider himself as one of the privileged classes,
although the Europeans and the Creoles always
looked down upon him, just as he looked down on
the pure-blooded Indian.
The usual metaphor in the discussion of the fusion
of races and the evolution of a national type is
that of the melting pot, There is a melting pot of
Mexico, but it reminds one of the caldrons where the
mixture slowly divides itself into varying levels in
which each element tends rather to agglomerate
with its own kind than to the creation of a fused
alloy. The racial product of Mexico has always
partaken of one of the two cultures, Indian and
Spanish. Seldom, even to the eye of the casual
observer, and never to him who studies it deeply,
does Mexico manifest racially or culturally any
type of man or thought distinct from those two
3 31
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
from which the mixture sprang. Those who see
in Mexico a land of progress and vast possibilities
find the culture and the ideals of Spain dominating
a people emerging under the benign sun of modern
civilization and progress; those who are less san-
guine see the underlying inert yet dominant mass
of Indian pulling European culture and blood down
into dark abysses. The hope of Mexico has always
been the adaptation of the white man's culture to
the Indian's needs; the despair of Mexico has
always been the crucifixion of the white man's
culture upon the cross of Indian barbarism.
For that Indian type seems to have maintained
itself always at its lowest level. The ancient race
which built the pyramids of Teotihuacan, the
Toltec culture which flourished at Tula, the Chichi-
mecs who carried on the torch, and the Aztecs who
created a civilization which astonished even the
Spaniards, were all lost in the end in a sea of uncul-
tured humanity.
What appalls us to-day as the underlying, de-
pressing, almost hopeless Indian apathy of modern
Mexico is the same unruffled sea in which the
civilizations of Indian antiquity have, in succession,
plunged to annihilation and obscurity. The his-
tory of Mexico is the history of rising civilizations
and of their ultimate and complete disappearance.
These disappearances we persist in attributing to
racial disintegrations (due to climate or what not)
which weakened the entire people so that they fell
an easy victim to the warlike strength of the
invaders, which was manifested, we are sure, in
32
RACE ORIGINS
great massacres. Yet the fact remains that from
the tenth century of our era, when the Chichimecs
came down from the north to overwhelm the Tol-
tecs and found their outlying cities and villages
and at last their great capital at Tula deserted and
falling into ruins, to the year of grace 1920 when
a bloodless revolution overturned the Carranza
rule, the warlike attributes of the Mexican people
have been expended in banditry, in raids, and in
rows between minor leaders, and the great events
of Mexican history have been achieved almost
without bloodshed and, what is more significant,
without any destruction of the masses of the
people. In other words, Mexican history seems
to have been a record of succeeding dominations
following one another, not because of the strength
of new armies, but because of the weakness of the
older leaders.
Always has remained that great, dark sea of
the unthinking Indian. Upon its shores have
been built the civilizations of succeeding cultures.
Against civilization's walls have always beaten the
slow, disintegrating waters of its apathy, until those
walls have crumbled to the sands upon which they
were built. The civilizations which have suc-
ceeded have been those which hierarchies and dynas-
ties from beyond its borders have erected through
long ages. Can we say, then, that this Indian
sea, eternal, apparently unchanging, has to-day
been transmuted at last by the infusion of a few
thousand white men into its turgid waters, or by a
civilization of white men built upon its shores?
33
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Europe has taught us many lessons in the past
five years, and perhaps the greatest of these lessons
is that the white man's civilization is no more per-
fect and no more eternal than the civilizations
which have preceded it down the long corridors of
our history. With foundation stones hewn by
Assyrians and Greeks, Egyptians and Romans, we
built a structure which crumbled under the blows
of our own family quarrels, a destruction that
laid bare to our eyes the sands, forever shifting,
forever urging upward, of a deep, dull race heritage
from neolithic barbarians, sands in which we are
to-day seeking new foundations for a new world.
Can we then dream that our white man's civiliza-
tion can have marked an alien people, such as the
Indians of Mexico, so deeply that it shall not follow
the flight into the dim chambers of Indian tradition
of civilizations which their own people built upon
their "bwn native culture?
Must we not rather seek some other means than
racial amalgamation, some more direct and definite
system of white domination, founded deeply in
white superiority and the white world's vital need
of control of Mexico and her resources in the
coming struggle for the shores of the Pacific? We
pass now to a brief study of the greatest experiment
the world has ever known in the fusing of two
widely separated races the making and the un-
making of the mestizo "race" of Mexico. In its
story there is much to illuminate us; in its failure
there is appalling warning and significant suggestion.
Ill
THE MELTING POT
EVERY phase of Mexican history and every
Mexican problem has its race correspondence.
Even so economic a matter as the land question
resolves itself in the end into the difference be-
tween European and Indian ideas of property.
The failure of the internal financial systems seems
directly traceable to the difference in -race concep-
tions of what wealth is. The very police power of
government is warped and twisted by these same
divergences, and the struggle between aristocracy
and demagogy harks back directly to the confusing
similarities and differences of Spanish hidalgo and
Indian cacique. Every revolution has had its
race determinants. The struggle between Church
and state in the bloody "Wars of Reform" was
in essence a conflict of whites and mestizos, and
throughout all Mexican history the momentous
changes of public mind and of systems of govern-
ment, and revolutions great and small, can all be
traced, through one line or many, back to basic
race determinants. Through long history this
struggle has gone grimly on. Mexico's wars have
passed by other names, her revolutions have voiced
35
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
high-sounding battle cries which have deceived
even herself, but, underneath, the struggle has
been one of race and the cultures and institutions
of race.
The preceding chapter set down something of the
origins and contributions of the two primary race
strains in Mexico, Indian and Spanish. Our way
now leads us to the field where those two meet,
mingle, and resolve themselves again the racial
realm of the mestizo, the mixed blood, the half
breed.
Some illumination at the outset can be gained
from a comparison of Mexican official estimates of
the percentages of the various strains in the popu-
lation, with the actual figures which those per-
centages would represent:
YEAR
PERCENTAGES
APPROXIMATE NUMBERS
White
Mestizo
Indian
While
Mestizo
Indian
1519 1 ..
100
6,000,000
1803...
17
36
47
i, 060,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
1810. . .
18
22
60
1,080,000
1,320,000
3,600,000
1844 2 ..
40
60
3,000,000
4,500,000
1876...
18
46
36
1,721,000
4,370,000
3,420,000
1884...
10
55
35
1,050,000
5,775,000
3,675,000
1905...
15
50
35
2,100,000
7,000,000
4,900,000
1910...
19
43
38
2,850,000
6,450,000
5,700,000
1 Cortez estimated the Indian population at 30,000,000, a
figure which is here arbitrarily reduced. See p. 56. There was
no racial census previous to Humboldt in 1803.
2 The racial estimates of 1844 did not separate whites and
mestizos.
The statistics of Mexico are notoriously inac-
curate, and although this table is doubtless far
36
THE MELTING POT
from the actuality, it indicates two things, first a
desire, from time to tune through Mexican history,
to emphasize one or another strain at the expense
of the remaining two, and, second, the undoubtedly
steady growth in numerical preponderance of the
mestizo. A truer conception of the race situation
will be obtained if we eliminate most of the table
and compare Humboldt's figures of 1803 (undoubt-
edly far more accurate than any subsequently
compiled by the purely Mexican censuses) with
what seems by the tests of education and social
class, a fair revision of the 1910 figures to a less
lordly preponderance of white blood. The signifi-
cant figures then read:
YEAR
PERCENTAGES
APPROXIMATE NUMBERS
White
Mestizo
Indim
White
Mestizo
Indian
2,500,000
6,000,000
1803 . . .
1910...
17
8
36
52
47
40
1,060,000
1,150,000
2,000,000
8,000,000
These estimates of the racial situation in 1910
are founded on the obvious facts that the whites
have for over one hundred years been deprived of the
support of continued immigration such as they en-
joyed during the Spanish rule, have been reduced
by exile and massacre during the early and recent
revolutions, and have also steadily lost in numbers
under the unfriendly Mexican climate. The ar-
bitrarily reduced figures for whites are brought
nearer harmony with the Mexican census, more-
over, by the addition of 1,000,000 of mestizos of
white culture and light skins, who, though " white,"
37
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
nevertheless cannot rightly be included among the
pure bloods. 1
Seeking out the social values possessed by each
of the three race elements, we find them officially
tabulated as follows:
IMPORTANCE IN
POPULATION
ECONOMIC
RESOURCES
SOCIOLOGICAL
IMPORTANCE
SELECTIVE
ANIMAL FORCE
Mestizos
Natives
Creoles
Creoles
Mestizos
Natives
Mestizos
Natives
Creoles
Natives
Mestizos
Creoles
This table was published in the Boletin de Agri-
cultura, in 1911, at which time the Creoles were
overwhelming in economic resources, and when, of
course, the mestizos were preponderant in numbers.
The placing of the mestizos first in " sociological
importance " is more significant of the mental atti-
tude of the compilers of the table than of the
unvarnished facts. The culture and institutions of
Mexico are white or they are Indian; the mestizo
has nothing of his own to contribute, and either
emphasizes the white as he did under Porfirio Diaz
or rides in a wild orgy of Indianism as he is doing
to-day. Moreover, observation (there are no statis-
tics) and comment of many students leads to the
conviction that the lighter mestizos are of little
importance in industrial production and except as
a small bourgeois " middle class" have little separate
economic influence. The Indian, either as a pure
blood or as a dark mestizo, is the predominating
factor in agriculture and industry. The pure-
gee page 200.
THE MELTING POT
blooded Indian is the basis of the rural population,
and the mestizos, particularly those of the Indian
type, are the industrial workers of the cities and
mines.
Not only is the pure white unfit for manual labor,
but the mixed blood, almost in direct ratio to the
predominance of the white strain, is physically
weaker and physically less resistant to climatic
conditions than his more Indian brother. This
seems further demonstrated by the fact that the
white man, including the American farmers who
in small colonies distributed themselves in various
sections of Mexico toward the end of the Diaz
regime, has never been a continuous worker in the
fields, and practically all foreign colonization
schemes have fallen down before the competition
of the cheaper peon labor.
Of more significance in the social classifications
above, however, is the placing of the Indian as the
primary factor in " selective animal force."
For many generations, the Indians increased in
numbers very slowly, while the mestizos rapidly
became the overwhelming element in the popula-
tion; but, on the other hand, in numbers and pro-
portion the pure whites have fallen far below the
average increase in the total population of Mexico,
barely holding their own even in numbers. More-
over, the Indians since 1810 have increased almost
as rapidly as the mestizos. With his short genera-
tions and his adaptability to the Mexican climate,
the Indian contribution to the mestizo is overwhelm-
ingly one of vital force. This official classification.
39
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
brings us definitely to the question which we must
now face, the question of the racial place of the
mestizo.
For what is this mestizo? Is he race or mongrel?
Is he a half-breed, with all the half-breed's un-
certainties, temptations, and confusions, or is he,
as the mestizo propagandists insist, the precursor
of a new race? There are two phases of the ques-
tion, first the actual blood mixture and its tenden-
cies, and second the historical background, with its
very great significances.
Primarily in the matter of blood mixture is the
fact that the mestizo is reproducing from within
his own group. Less than half a million, and
probably not more than 300,000, white men have
contributed to Mexico's race type in the 400 years
of her history, and although the first whites crossed
freely with the Indians, the number of these primary
crossings has been rapidly decreasing, so that the
numbers and proportion of what we may call new
mestizos has become less with each generation.
To-day it is safe to estimate that not 1 per cent of
the living mestizos is the result of first crossings of
whites and Indians. This "new race" has then
been perpetuating itself, and demonstrating a
remarkable vitality under the conditions of life in
Mexico, a vitality greater than that of the white
and at least equal to the Indian's. This is taken
by the advocates of the new race as proof of the
permanence of the mestizo mixture. But the
rapid reproduction of the human hybrid may be
accepted, and as already pointed out, the vital
40
THE MELTING POT
force of the mestizo is also directly traceable to the
Indian strain.
The reproduction of the mestizos within their
own group, however, brings them definitely under
the aegis of the laws of inheritance of type tenden-
cies. This would lead us to expect them to show
signs of division into the primal race types, and
indeed there are signs that the once-blended mes-
tizos are now dividing into light and dark groups.
There are as yet very few statistics or records of
human race inheritances even in definite families
in any portion of the world, and in Mexico there
are none. We cannot actually prove, therefore,
that the Mendelian law of reversion into primal
types is in action among the mestizos, but observa-
tion and the statements of the Mexicans themselves
certainly indicate that it is at work in the mixed
breed of Mexico as relentlessly as in the guinea pig
of the laboratory.
It was of record during the Spanish regime that
where negroes and Spaniards crossed there was
likely to be the reversion to type which was called
the salto atras (jump back) to the negro that is,
the same phenomenon which appears from time to
time in families of almost white octoroons in the
United States. The Spaniards noted also that, while
the Indian strain persisted only through the second
crossing with the pure white, negro traits lasted
to the third crossing that is, to the octoroon
and a Chinese crossing was visible even into the
seventh generation. The mestizos take it as proof
of a race blending that the sudden reversion or
41
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
salto atras to the lower race type was never re-
corded from the crossings of Indian and Spaniard,
but this may well have been due to the difficulties
of observation of any but the upper classes, and
also to the frequent darkness of the Spanish skin
and the absence of blue eyes. There has been
practically no recorded observation on this point
in the period following the Spanish rule, the period
when the increasing proportion of mestizo inter-
breedings and the lessening number of new mestizos
would have made the records of great value.
The Spaniard is seldom a true blond, and the
blond would almost alone attract common atten-
tion in any reversion of the mixed blood to the
types of his ancestors. Where whites of north
European ancestry have crossed with Indians,
there are often surprising and ludicrous reversions
to type. In mining camps such as Pachuca and
Zacatecas, where Cornish miners were brought over
early in the last century to install pumps in ancient
workings, one sees again and again Mexicans (now
in the third or fourth generation from a white
ancestor) who live as the lowest peons, and who
have no knowledge of British ancestry, and yet
whose skin is fair, whose eyes are blue, and whose
hair and beard are light. In the state of Chiapas
there is a well-known example in the family of Mac-
Gregors. Several brothers of the name came to
the country about 1840 and married with mestizos
and Indians. In the legitimate line there are
today many score of MacGregors, bearing the
Scotch surname, and of these the preponderant
42
THE MELTING POT
type is almost completely Indian, yet in these
Indian families (or dark mestizos, as they are
called) there occur at intervals tall, blond Scotch
types who speak no word of English and live as
the mestizos of their community. This isolated ex-
ample would suggest that the mestizo, in his inbreed-
ing, is following Mendelian law, which, in these later
generations, would manifest this exact phenomenon,
the breaking up of the mixed-color peoples into their
original racial types, with an ever-increasing num-
ber of pure types of the darker or lower, and there-
fore more deeply rooted, native strain.
In many families of upper-class mestizos one
often finds a single member with either a far lighter
or a far darker skin than his brothers and sisters,
and the same phenomenon is also found 1 in families
of servants where similar observation is possible.
As a rule, however, when we go into the lower classes
the overwhelming number of illegitimate births,
and the fact that the children of one low-class
woman may each have had a different father, not
only complicates observation, but it also furnishes
a convenient explanation of the appearance of
darker and lighter types on the old theory of
mixing races as one mixes paints.
A fertile field, and a field of vast importance,
awaits the ethnologist in the study of the mestizo,
for the racial history of Mexico seems to be sup-
ported by other experiences of higher race domina-
tion versus lower race persistence. 1 The new con-
1 Cf . Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (1916), and
Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color (1920).
43
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
ception of anthropology of which Mr. Grant is the
sponsor faces resolutely the fact of this racial
resistance of a well-acclimated population to any
and almost all incursions of foreign blood.
In Mexico the mixture of red and white races
was more complete and in greater numbers than
in any other of the Spanish colonies, and the ap-
parent reversion in race type and in culture to the
Indian would seem to confirm the tendency toward
the ultimate leveling of the mixed population to the
lower, more deeply rooted indigenous race. When
anthropologists finally come to devote themselves
to a thorough study of this most interesting and
apparently complete mixture of two races in num-
bers that are overwhelming, we may look not only
for important illumination on the subject of Mende-
lian tendencies in the human race, but also for facts
which may well be so significant as to determine the
course of future policies toward Mexico, both in
education and in politics.
Inevitably, our study of the interaction of the
races leads us to a racial interpretation of Mexican
history. Recent tendencies, fitting themselves to
the events of the past, divide the story of Mexico
into three distinct, if overlapping, periods: the
era of white domination, the upsurgence of the
mestizo, and the rising sea of the Indian. The
background is, of course, Indian. The white domi-
nation followed, and continued through the colonial
regime and into the revolutionary period preceding
Diaz, when the mestizo element came in forcefully,
but without quite destroying the hold of the white
44
THE MELTING POT
culture, which flowered again during the Diaz
peace. The mestizo advance was only interrupted,
however, and its upsurgence finally overthrew the
white rule of Diaz, continuing until the fall and
death of Carranza, when the Indian again took
control, a control increasing with the momentum
of primal race tendencies in the lowering type of
mestizos who have had charge of the government.
The first of these historical phases, the physical
and intellectual domination of the white, began with
the conquest in 1521. It extended uninterruptedly
until 1823, when the Spaniards were finally ex-
pelled, to be followed some years later by most of
the Creole aristocracy. The period of complete
white domination was revived after the second
election of Porfirio Diaz to the presidency, in 1884,
when he recalled the Creoles to aid him in the
problems of government. Actual white domina-
tion then continued into the middle of the Madero
regime in 1912, when the mestizo again assumed
command, politically and culturally.
The Spanish conquerors saw, not only political
control, but racial domination, and vaguely ex-
pected Mexico to become some sort of white man's
country with a red population ever lessening with
the spread of Christianity and the dilution of
the native blood. The Spanish population ap-
proximately trebled itself in pure bloods hi three
centuries; in addition it multiplied itself almost
seven times in the mestizo community. The
astonishing rapidity of the mixture of the white
with the Indian gave a false appearance of white
45
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
racial domination, an appearance which lasted
continuously until the whites were driven out
during the revolutions of the nineteenth century.
The white political and intellectual control of
Mexico did not pass immediately with the success
of the revolution, for the idea of white superiority
was deeply embedded in the Indian and mestizo
mind. The conquest was a conquest of white
men, which Cortez had accomplished through his
control of his Indian allies, and the Spaniards main-
tained their intellectual hold upon the mass through
the colonial period and even after the revolution was
actually accomplished. The revolution of 1810
was a rising of the Indians, and 80,000 of the aborig-
ines marched on Mexico City, but it was not until
the white Creoles took hold upon of the rebellion that
it achieved its triumph in 1823. It was then only
through the training which the whites gave the
mestizos that the latter finally became sufficiently
cohesive to take the revolution into their own
hands, and, with the revolution, the government
and control of the Indian population.
In spite of the exile of the whites and the horrors
of the long wars previous to Diaz, the spirit of
Mexico did not then eliminate white ideals with any
of the definiteness which has marked their elimina-
tion since 1912. Porfirio Diaz postponed the final
upheaval of the mestizos and saved one generation
of his country for a glorious history by recalling
the whites to assist him and to mark his administra-
tion for the admiration and praise of the world.
As we see it now, the rule of Diaz was a harking
46
THE MELTING POT
back to the fundamental strength of white political
science and government, differing from the best
phases of Spanish colonial control only in the
presence of the mestizo dictator in place of the
Spanish viceroy, and the broader, more modern
vision which welcomed white foreigners of every
nationality.
Mexico under Diaz continued a land with a
white cultural background and with race conven-
tions which should tend, as the Spaniards had
hoped, and as the Mexicans of that day fondly
deluded themselves into believing, to create a
Mexican type as true and as constructive as the
American of to-day. That dream of the Spaniards
that their race might form a white nation in the
Western World is to-day but a memory and a dream
of the sentimentalist. In the course of the political
struggles of the last decade the mestizos have
driven out practically all of the white foreigners,
and the overwhelming majority of their own white
peoples, until to-day there are fewer white men
within the confines of the Republic of Mexico than
there have been at any time since the first ship-
loads of Spanish colonists landed at Vera Cruz.
Mexico has ceased, for the moment at least, to be
a white man's country, and the struggle which is
going on to-day, with its intense personalisms and
its utter disregard for cultural and international
obligations, is developing with each new revolution
into more and more of the age-old battle of the
dark races against the white.
The second phase of Mexican racial history is
4 47
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
this upsurgence of the mestizo, reaching back, of
course, into the Spanish regime, but coming into the
open in 1823, achieving its object under Madero,
and lasting until the fall of Carranza and his murder
by an Indian revolutionary " general' 7 in 1920. At
this latter date the untamed forces of Indianism
which the mestizos loosed and loosed anew in each
of their revolutions, combined at last with the
growing realization that the mestizo was not a
white man to overthrow the last pretense of mixed
white political control in the country.
The political power of the mestizos dates from
the revolution when, raised by the Creoles out of the
degradation of " caste" to positions of power, they,
by new uprisings, took matters into their own
hands. This political control began the elimination
of the whites, who would normally have been driven
out in the middle of the last century as they were
in other Latin-American countries. Diaz, as we
have seen, brought a revival of white government,
but under him the mestizos gained new political
education and came into a new race consciousness
(distinct from the anti-Spanish consciousness of the
middle of the last century). From this race con-
sciousness came, under the white rule of 1884 to
1910, the proud assertions of the creation of the
"new Latin- American race," which finally resulted
hi the overthrow of the white aristocratic rule of
Diaz.
The revolution of 1910 was the upheaval of mes-
tizo intellectuals who had awakened and harnessed
the always slumbering Indian discontent to the
48
THE MELTING POT
destruction of the white civilization. In the ten
years which have followed, the mestizo has shown
the Indian that the white man was at least not
invincible, but the Indian has also learned through
mestizo ineptitudes, mestizo oppressions, and finally
through mestizo weaknesses, that the white blood
in his half-breed brother lacks even the stability
and reliability which characterized the " oppres-
sors" of colonial days or Diaz regime. Slowly it
began, but to-day the tide is coming with a rush
which we shall feel more forcibly as tune goes on
unless the white man again takes control.
This brings us to the third phase of the creation
of the Mexican national type, the resurgence of the
Indian. It has been in slow process through all
Mexican history, for the Indian has been used time
and again as the weapon of all the warring factions
of Mexican revolutions, and it was inevitable that
he should in the end realize his own strength.
President Victoriano Huerta gave voice to the
basic tenets of the Indian resurgence in 1914 in
these words: "The Mexican situation can never be
settled by placing the Indian of the soil in a subor-
dinate position to people of other and more pro-
gressive races." 1 The final deathblow to the
mestizo domination and perhaps to all white or
near-white control in Mexico from within herself,
was given by the Carranza constitution of 19l7,
wherein the fair words of the white man's democ-
racy and the white man's socialism were bent to
1 Message of Charge-d' 'affaires Nelson O'Shaughnessy, to United
States State Department, February 22, 1914.
49
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the expression of Indian antiforeignism, commun-
ism, and license to loot and kill.
In the Spanish conquest of Mexico the Indians
who fought beside Cortez were his army and not
mere allies, a control of brains and generalship and
not a surrender of control by the brain to the brute
force of the mass. The revolution of 1810, origi-
nally an Indian uprising, was a failure until the Cre-
oles took command. Soon, however, the whites
had come to be almost the tools of the insurgent
mass, and to that mass the scepter of control soon
passed. It was the mestizos who grasped it and
held it until Diaz came. But in the end Diaz,
then Madero, then Huerta, were driven out by
Indian armies led by mestizo rebels and bandits.
Carranza followed in the same procession, but
with his passing there uprose through the mestizo
leadership a stronger tide of Indianism than had
yet been manifested upon the surface of Mexican
affairs. This tide is rising in two waves. One
wave is spiritual, in the conflicting nature of the
mestizo, whose white pride and arrogance are all
that are left of his European heritage, while the
red man's cruelty and unthinking grasp of imme-
diate advantage are becoming more and more the
outstanding characteristics of Mexican leaders.
The other is the actual physical and political con-
trol which the Indian element is exercising, a
change which has been going on so rapidly that a
world still clinging to the idea of slow adaptations
has as yet taken no cognizance of it.
In the preceding chapter we discussed the con-
,50
THE MELTING POT
tribution of the red man and the white to Mexico's
racial melting pot. But what of the contribution
of the melting-pot, the mestizo? Our first instinct
is to say that such a question is unfair, and yet it is
not unfair because the mestizo himself demands
that that contribution be considered. He states
that the idea of nationality in Mexico sprang from
the mestizo and from the mestizo alone. He
holds that the mestizo has given to Mexico such
understanding as she has so far manifested of her
peculiar racial and social problems. He insists
that the mestizo gave Mexico independence, and
that the mestizo's contribution to the solution of
political and social problems in Latin-America is
definitely as great as the contribution of the mixed
races of the United States.
The mestizo has indeed made Mexican history,
but he has made it as an expression of his own
warring tendencies. The mestizo is the product of
Indian and Spaniard, and as such has within his
soul the factors of both seeking always a level be-
tween the two. So eminent a Mexican authority
as Vicente Rivas Palacio has written in his monu-
mental volume of Mexico a Traves de los Siglos:
The mestizos had become audacious, intriguing, and turbu-
lent. They saw in the future a division among the Spaniards,
and a hope for their rise.
Francisco Bulnes, fascinating, humorous, epigram-
matic, yet always sound, writes:
The mestizo has inherited some of the qualities and faults
of the Spaniards of the early days. He is vain and brave, but
51
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
he is not superstitious, nor is he deceitful in swearing allegiance
to his king, his ladies, his God, as the Spaniard did. The
mestizo is polygamous, unfaithful to all the ladies, to his gods
and his kings. He is skeptical, disinterested as the Indian, but
he has one great virtue, he envies no one. He loves the rights
of man without knowing what justice is; he loves his country
and has the true sentiment toward a great nation; he is faith-
ful as an Arab when it has to do with a promise to fight, and
is as informal as an astrologist when he promises to pay his
debts. In matters of money he neither collects, loans, nor
pays; he hates usury, soap, the external and internal use of
water, combs, economy, and the gachupines (his name for the
Spaniards)." 1
His cultural chaos, which is sociological more
than educational, has been described by F. Garcia
Calderon, a Peruvian diplomat, as "an inferior
Latinity, verbal abundance, inflated rhetoric, ora-
torical exaggeration. . . . The half caste loves grace,
verbal elegance, quibbles even, and artistic form.
... In religion he is skeptical and indifferent, and in
politics he disputes in the Byzantine manner. No
one could discover in him a trace of his Spanish
forefather, stoical and adventurous. " 2
Thus the half-caste is condemned out of the
mouths of his own people, and yet he, and the rest-
less, destructive character which distinguishes him,
are the product of the racial and historical elements
of his country. In the colonial regime he was
despised by his Spanish father and in turn looked
down upon his Indian mother and his Indian half-
1 Francisco Bulnes, El Porvenir de las Naciones Hispano-Ameri-
canas, p. 30.
2 F. Garcia Calder6n, Latin America, Its Rise and Progress,
pp. 351-352.
52
THE MELTING POT
brothers. Envious of the luxury of the Spaniards,
physically unfit for the labor which he despised,
literally a member of a caste of pariahs under the
colonial system, he found the only fields of activity
which were open to him to be the flattering of the
Spaniards of wealth and of power, and the stirring
up of the Indians into followings which gave him
what may be described as a nuisance value. The
earlier wars of the revolution were fought chiefly
by mestizo chieftains, first with Creole leaders, and
later with men of their own class who rose rapidly
as opportunity came, and, by flattering and aiding
their Creole countrymen, attained positions from
which they later issued the edicts of abandonment
against those same Creoles.
Since his rise as a governing power in Mexico,
the mestizo has absolutely destroyed all color
distinctions, so that in Mexico we have the apothe-
osis of the ideal expressed in terms of idealism of
the early Spanish missionaries, who insisted that
the mestizo was as good a Catholic, and therefore
as good a Spaniard, as the colonists from the home-
land. To-day there is absolutely no color line in
Mexico, a fact which has had and continues to have
a tremendous force in the social conditions which
we are observing. This breaking down of the
color line in so complete and absolute a fashion has
characterized the Mexican people with a homo-
geneity which, though the observers are unaware
of the reason, has given Mexico a place in the
curiosity and observation of the world enjoyed by
no other Latin- American country. In this, at least,
53
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the mestizo must be given credit for what has been
called the idea of nationalism in Mexico.
The attitude of the mestizo toward the Indian
and toward the white has been the determining
factor in Mexican history. Toward the white he
had been vengeful and jealous, and the destruction
of race lines was his body blow in the battle with
his fairer-skinned adversary. Toward the Indian
he has, as we have seen, assumed the superiority
of the white and combined it with the craft of the
redskin. This has developed what has been called
"caciquism" (the craft of the cacique, or petty
chieftain, or, in the last analysis, demagogy).
Culturally this is in Mexico a reversion to Indian
methods, for the Indian social organization was in
idea that of feudal barons, and in practice that
of petty demagogues, leading through successive
greater chiefs to the heads of their empires. This
caciquism is the manifestation into which the half-
breedism of the past century has been so rapidly
evolving since the fall of Diaz, a manifestation
complete in the ranks of the lower bandits who
furnish the regiments of revolutionary armies and
progressing steadily upward to those predatory
generals whose record has blackened Mexican his-
tory with deeds of Indian horror and destruction,
and who to-day are parceling out the country,
like robber barons, among themselves.
In ten years, under the mestizo leadership of this
type, Mexico has wiped out practically all the gain
of the generation of white civilization fathered by
Porfirio Diaz, The Indian strain in the mestizo.
54
THE MELTING POT
as well as the Indian strain in the composition of
the population, is inexorably rising to the surface.
Fifty years of civil strife previous to Diaz, although
it was under mestizo leadership, failed to rock to
its foundations the Spanish culture which had been
implanted under the colonial regime, yet in a single
decade following the Diaz surcease we have seen
the slow-built fabric of that revived civilization
torn to shreds, the very flesh upon which it hung
rotted and wasted away through its own indulgence
in its own vices. The observer of Mexican affairs
begins in his innocence with a faith in the mestizo
and a hope for a race which he vaguely finds like
his own, but he ends at last as he must end in the
face of all the facts and of the grim Indian skeleton
that confronts him, with a realization that here is
a problem of uplift and education and not of mere
political democracy. He must inevitably find in
it a problem in which for yet a little while the
white men of Mexico itself must carry on their
burden, to the saving of this white man's land for
its own people as well as for the white world.
IV
MEXICO'S POPULATION
MEXICO, with her 766,929 square miles of
area, 1 one-third that of the United States,
and twenty times that of the state of Pennsylvania,
had in 1910 a population of 15,150,369, one-sixth
that of continental United States, and only twice
that of Pennsylvania. The growth of this popula-
tion and its geographic, civic, and industrial dis-
tribution have definite importance and bearing
upon the life of the country.
Mexico's fifteen millions have been attained
through a growth perhaps slower and more painful
than that of any other of the new nations of the
world. The earliest official census, that of 1793,
near the close of the colonial regime, recorded
5,200,000 people in the country, and it has taken
120 years for that number to treble itself, an aston-
ishingly slow rate of growth for a land of so vast an
unoccupied habitable area. The reports of Cortez
carried to the king of Spain the information that
there were 30,000,000 people in Mexico at the time
of the conquest, a figure obviously impossible, and
justly discounted to about 6,000,000.
i Anuario Estadistico (1903).
56
MEXICO'S POPULATION
The methods of the early census takers do not
inspire confidence in the reliability of their figures,
though Cortez produced checks and counterchecks
against them. He asserted, for instance, that there
were 620,000 families in the Valley of Mexico at
the tune of the conquest, with an average of six
persons per family, giving the population of the
Valley of Mexico at 3,720,000 in an area as rich
as any in Mexico, which supported slightly over
700,000 in 1910. But Cortez did not stop there;
he went on to assert that there were 655 towns in
the general vicinity of the Valley of Mexico, con-
taining 900,000 families or 5,400,000 persons, a
total of 9,120,000 residents of Mexico, Texcoco,
Toluca, and Puebla. Against this -he checks the
confirmatory record of the Church, showing that,
between 1524 and 1540, 6,000,000 Indians were
baptized in the Valley of Mexico alone. These
figures form the basis of the estimate of 30,000,000,
and native historians have generally accepted them
without revision.
To the support of Cortez they bring other con-
firmatory " evidence," such as the statement of the
Spanish Captain Montando, who recorded that 800
chieftains and 1,000,000 people greeted his party of
explorers at Itzintzuntzan when he took possession
of what is now the state of Michoacan. They also
cite the colonial records that the smallpox epidemic
of 1540 killed 1,000,000 Indians (Father Toribio
said "half the Indians"), that the war with the
Spaniards took 250,000, that the matlazhuatl
(measles or typhus) epidemic of 1545 took 100,000
57
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
(Humboldt says 800,000), and that of 1576, 2,000,-
000, a total of 3,350,000 deaths among the Indians
in thirty-six years. They also bring to bear the
Aztec records and system of government, showing
that there were in Anahuac thirty princes, each
having 100,000 persons under him, or 6,000,000,
and that the nobility numbered 120,000, checking
the previous total of 9, 120,000^
Even if these figures were true in general, the
glib acceptance of 30,000,000 as the Indian popula-
tion at the time of the conquest is hardly justified,
for, as priests and explorers later discovered, the
population outside the Valley of Mexico in Indian
times was exceedingly small. Yet in each of the
records which so satisfy the Mexican statistician
there is always a glaring point of error; one can
hardly imagine that each Aztec Indian was satis-
fied with one baptism, as baptisms seemed to be
one of the things which pleased the white men, nor
can we convince ourselves that the records of deaths
in the epidemics are even approximately correct.
It hardly seems likely that Captain Montando had
an opportunity even to see 1,000,000 natives in the
rolling hills of Michoacan, nor that there was not at
least a doubling of count when the vassals of the
thirty princes and the retainers of the 3,000 minor
chieftains were listed.
That there were great populations in Mexico
previous to the conquest must, however, be ad-
mitted, although they were certainly not contem-
1 General Carlos Pacheco, Mcmoria as Secretary of Fomento,
1877-82, Mexico, 1885.
58
MEXICO'S POPULATION
poraneous; even in the well-cultivated central
portion of the country, archaeologists are continu-
ally making new discoveries of ruins which indicate
vast areas populated by forgotten peoples. The
cornfields which surround the ruins of Zempoala,
the great Indian town near Vera Cruz which greeted
Cortez when he landed, are to this day marked for
miles by tiny hillocks which were the foundations
of temples and of houses; and about Teotihuacan,
the pre-Toltec shrine where the two pyramids of
the Sun and Moon still stand, are indications of
uncounted villages. The awe-inspiring ruins at
Palenque and in Yucatan prove beyond any doubt
the presence, long before the conquest, of a popu-
lation which must have numbered hundreds of
thousands. Over against this must be ranged the
climatic situation of Mexico, and the living and
sanitary conditions which in centuries gone by must
have had the same depressing effect upon the
longevity of the people that it has to-day. Alcohol
has been blamed for many of the evils of the
Mexican Indians since the Spaniards came, as have
the white man's diseases, which have decimated
them from time to time, but even then it seems
hardly likely that the early Indians who apparently
had practically no sanitary laws, and who were in
a state of almost continual war, were without those
natural checks to the growth of population which
are omnipresent in the lives of primitive peoples.
With all this, however, there is little ground for
doubt that the Indian population at the time of the
conquest was far greater than any numbers that it
59
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
attained for many generations after. The Span-
iards did not set about the extermination of the
red men as did other colonists of the Western World,
but the drastic change of conditions, the enervating
slavery, oppressions, and abuses, and the conquerors'
lack of understanding of native conditions, com-
bined with natural causes to work havoc with the
native population. Even accepting the conserva-
tive estimate of 6,000,000 Indian inhabitants at the
time of the conquest, we are faced with the fact
that the first genuine census in Mexico, that of
1793 by the Conde de Revillagigedo, showed but
5,200,000 inhabitants, less than half of them
Indians. This was confirmed by the careful figures
of Baron von Humboldt, 1 who estimated that in
1808 there were 5,837,100 inhabitants of New Spain.
Taking both Cortez's estimate and our correc-
tion, for 1521, and for want of statistics or estimates
between, noting the next census as that of 1793,
we have the following list of all official records of
population in Mexico:
1521 30,000,000 (Hernando Cortes)
1521 6,000,000 (Estimated)
1793 5,200,000 (Conde de Revillagigedo)
1808 5,837,100
1810 6,122,354
1824 6,500,000
Baron von Humboldt)
Navarro y Noriega)
Poinsett)
1 Humboldt, in discussing Mexico in 1803, did not estimate
the population at the time of the conquest. In placing the
Indians in 1803 at 2,500,000 he remarked, significantly, "We
have difficulty in believing that nearly two millions and a half
of aborigines could survive such lengthened calamities" (as were
incident to early colonial rule) . Alexander von Humboldt, Political
Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. i, p. 139.
60
MEXICO'S POPULATION
1830.. . 7,996,000 (Burkardt)
1838 7,044,140 (Conde de la Cortina)
1856 7,859,564 (Lerdo de Tejada)
1861 8,174,000 (Garcia Cubas)
1869 8,743,000 (Garcia Cubas)
1871 9,176,082 (Garcia Cubas)
1871 9,097,056 (Dept, of Government)
1872 9,141,661 (Garcia Cubas)
1872 8,836,411 (Manuel Payno)
1872 8,655,553 (Congress)
1873 9,209,765 (J. M. Perez Hernandez)
1874 9,343,479 (Garcia Cubas)
1874 8,743,614 (Rivera Cambas)
1878 9,686,777 (Dept. of Government)
1878 9,384,193 (Dept. of Government)
1880 10,001,884 (Emiliano Busto)
1886 10,791,685 (Von Glamer)
1888 11,490,830 (Bureau of Statistics)
1889 11,395,712 (Garcia Cubas)
1890 11,632,924 (Antonio Penafiel)
1892 11,614,913 (Dept. of Fomento)
1895 12,619,949 (Dept. of Fomento)
1900 13,604,923 (Dept. of Fomento)
1910 15,150,369 (Dept. of Fomentc)
Even the censuses under President Diaz were far
from accurate, for the system was faulty in that the
Federal government never actually handled the
census itself, its instructions going from Mexico
City to the governors of the states, thence to the
chiefs of the districts, and so on down to the heads
of villages, and the figures returned by the same
way, with many " corrections" en route. The
census of 1910 was probably the most reliable in
its totals, but even then the carelessness of the
officials, and the difficulties of convincing the
Indians that the enumeration was not connected
with possible new taxation or military service,
brought in elements of error which were complicated
by the crudeness of the estimates which were made
61
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
in an attempt to balance the shortage. No census
nor adequate estimate of population increases has
been made since the Diaz census of 1910, and al-
though the rate of increase was fairly established
at 15 per cent every ten years, it is probably not
safe to estimate that Mexico had in 1920 increased
her legitimate 2,250,000 since 1910, as the con-
tinual revolutions, the increasing emigration, and
the undoubtedly great loss of life, owing to the revo-
lutionary living conditions, has cut down the legit-
imate increase which was recorded under the peace-
ful regime of Diaz; present conditions might even
show a distinct decrease.
There are, however, certain interesting and ex-
tremely important comparisons to be found in
Mexican census statistics. For instance, in 1800
the populations of the United States and Mexico
were practically equal, approximately 5,300,000.
In 1910 the population of Mexico was 15,000,000,
and that of continental United States 92,000,000.
Taking the conservative estimate of 6,000,000
inhabitants of Mexico at the time of the conquest,
the record then shows that Mexico had grown from
6,000,000 to 15,000,000 in approximately 400 years,
and the United States had grown from practically
nothing to 92,000,000 in 300 years. In the last
ten years previous to the census of 1910 the United
States had gained 21 per cent and Mexico but
15 per cent.
The rates of increase in Mexico's population have
been extremely erratic. Eliminating the period of
colonial government when the Indian population of
62
MEXICO'S POPULATION
Mexico first decreased and then recovered rapidly,
we find that from 1792 to 1895 the annual increase
figures out to about 1.1 per cent, or 11 per cent per
decade. Making allowances for all the errors of
omission and for the bloodiest revolutionary peri-
ods, we can place the normal rate of increase over
this first hundred years at about 12 per cent per
decade. This, however, compares but feebly with
the significant increase marked between 1890 and
1910 when the population grew about 30.5 per cent,
or over 15 per cent per decade. There is a yet
more startling contrast from 1838 to 1878, the forty
bloody years preceding the Diaz regime, when the
increase in population was only 33 per cent, or 8.25
per cent per decade. These were the figures avail-
able to Bancroft, 1 when he stated that "the period
of the independence war is generally regarded as
stationary, but after this the increase is reckoned
at about eight per mille" (8 per cent per decade).
In 1803 Humboldt stated that Mexico should
double her population every nineteen years "if the
order of nature were not inverted from time to
time from some extraordinary cause," and esti-
mated, in 1803, that it was actually doubling every
thirty-six to forty years. 2 The census of 1910
showed that Mexico, far from realizing this pre-
/H. H. Bancroft, History of Mexico, San Francisco, 1888, vol.
vi, page 600. In a footnote, Bancroft quotes Journadet, who as-
sumed an "average increase of ten per mille, with a possible addition
of two per mille under a peaceful government," figures which the
longer period and fuller record since 1888 indicate to be closer to
the actual conditions.
2 Op. cit. book ii, pp. 108-109.
5 63
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
diction, was increasing at a rate that would double
her population every eighty years.
While Diaz's good government undoubtedly im-
proved on previous conditions, it was not able to
revolutionize the important population factors of
immigration and emigration. We cannot forget
that there has been virtually no immigration since
the tune of the Spaniards, a condition which the
Diaz peace, with all its prosperity and with all its
influx of foreigners of the non-producing classes, did
not truly remedy. On the other hand, there has
always been a distinct Mexican emigration.
In his famous political handbook, 1 Francisco I.
Madero, later President of Mexico, stated, "Of
all America, Mexico is the only country whose
natives emigrate." From the very beginning of her
history, Mexico has been a center of emigration.
The Philippines were settled and developed by
Spaniards and mestizos from Mexico, and for 250
years the convoys of galleons bringing the riches of
the Orient kept up a communication between
Manila and Acapulco on Mexico's west coast. In
later years there was a current of emigration to
Florida and to Louisiana, chiefly, however, of
Mexican Creoles. California was originally popu-
lated, so far as its white and mestizo peoples went,
from Mexico. During the Spanish era, and even
into the period of independence, Yucatan and
other sections on the Gulf coast were centers for
what was practically a slave traffic which carried
1 Francisco I. Madero, La Sucesidn Presidential en 1910, p. 189.
64
MEXICO'S POPULATION
the Indians to Cuba and other islands of the Spanish
main.
For the past twenty-five years there has been a
steadily growing current of emigration of Mexico's
best laboring classes to the United States, consti-
tuting not only a population loss, but one of the
most serious drains upon the national labor effi-
ciency. In the mass of the immigrant labor of the
United States, the influx of Mexicans is a small
factor, but to Mexico the loss has been increasingly
serious, growing almost to a peril during the revolu-
tions of 1910-15, and increasingly through the
depressing years of Carranza's supposed peace.
No figures of value have been compiled by Mexico,
and those of the United States government natu-
rally show only the immigrants who enter through
the regular ports, while probably the majority slip
across the Rio Grande without legal formalities.
No complete records of immigration movement
along the Mexican border were kept until 1908, so
that the only indications we have of Mexican immi-
gration previous to that date are the census reports
of Mexican-born residents at ten-year intervals.
These go back to 1850 and show a continuous aver-
age of about 0.1 per cent of the whole population
of the United States. For the past forty years
these figures 1 are as follows:
1880
1890
1900
1910
Mexican-born residents of U. S.
Percentage of total population.
Percentage of foreign born of U. S.
68,399
0.14
1.0
77,853
0.12
0.8
103,393
0.14
1.0
221,915
0.2
1.6
1 U. S. Census for 1910, vol. i, p. 784.
65
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Since 1908, when complete records were begun,
the figures of the permanent class of immigrants
that is, those Mexicans who, on crossing the border
at ports of entry, declare their intention of remain-
ing in the United States show variations almost
identical with political upheavals and periods of
economic stringency in Mexico. These records 1
are as follows, the figures being for fiscal years
ending June 30th, the last item being for the last
six months of 1919, or one-half the fiscal year:
1908.. 5,682 1913.. 10,954 1918.. 17,602
1909 . . 15,591 1914 .. 13,089 1919 . . 28,844
1910 . . 17,760 1915 . . 10,993 six months of 1919 . . 22,857
1911 .. 18,784 1916 . . 17,198 (at rate of 45,000 per year)
1912.. 22,001 1917.. 16,438
Balancing these figures are deductions to be made
by reason of the departure for Mexico of permanent
emigrants from the United States that is, those
Mexicans who return to Mexico to resume their
residence there, though these permanent emigrants
may not all have been classified as permanent immi-
grants on their arrival. The latest figures on this
point are as follows: in the year ending June 30,
1918, the number of immigrant Mexicans admitted
through ports of entry was 17,602, while in the
same year 25,084 returned to Mexico, a net loss in
the United States figures of this class of 7,482.
(This was a period when Carranza's promises of
peace in Mexico were most encouraging.) In the
year ending June 30, 1919, however, while the
number admitted was 28,844, the departures were
1 Data furnished by U. S. Bureau of Immigration,
MEXICO'S POPULATION
17,793, leaving a net gain of 11,051 to the United
States population. These figures are significant
enough, but those for the last six months of 1919
are yet more startling. In this period the perma-
nent immigration from Mexico was 22,857, while the
permanent emigration was only 4,603, leaving a net
gain of 18,254, or at the rate of 36,308 per year,
over three times the rate of permanent gain to the
United States and loss to Mexico in the year end-
ing June 30, 1919.
These official figures, briefed as they are, barely
suggest the actual emigration from Mexico to the
United States. For the entire length of the inter-
national line there is hardly a stretch of territory
ten miles long where a man who knows the border
and the patrol systems cannot cross and recross
afoot or by boat without interference. Estimates
from the border are to the effect that in the first
six months of 1920 fully 100,000 Mexicans crossed
the border " informally," and during that period,
a tune of apprehension, of revolution and economic
depression in Mexico, the news from border points
spoke frequently of the amazing increase in the
number of Mexicans arriving in the United States.
Estimates in this matter of Mexican emigration,
like so much that deals with Mexico, must always
be far superior to statistics, and so long ago as 1908,
Victor S. Clark, 1 in his important monograph on
Mexican Labor in the United States estimated that
the annual immigration of Mexican labor was
1 Victor S. Clark, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 71, Sep-
tember, 1908, p. 466.
G7
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
probably 60,000 and " certainly not over 100,000."
Doctor Clark's figures can well be taken as authori-
tative, and if so, we can hardly doubt the con-
servatism of the estimate 1 of a rate of 100,000 in
the first six months of 1920.
This emigration bears upon Mexico's population
and social problems tremendously, because these
emigrants to the United States represent the highest
types in each of their classes. The cause for this
movement is, of course, at its base political, because
the economic disruption of Mexico finds its own
source in the political upheavals. President Ma-
dero little knew, when he called attention to the
emigration under President Diaz, that the revolu-
tion which he inaugurated would more than treble
his country's loss after ten years. 2
The evil of emigration has long been recognized
in Mexico, and caustic reports from consular offi-
cers, debates in Congress, and papers by govern-
ment officials have marked its discussion. The
Mexican consuls in the United States sent consider-
able information on the condition of the emigrants
during 1919, and there was even agitation for the
Mexican government to close the border to emigrant
laborers. There was undoubtedly much misery
among the emigrants, and many were deceived by
contractors and others, a condition recognized by
the United States immigration and consular officials,
1 New York Times, June 20, 1920.
2 The labor conditions in the United States and the opening of
fields other than that of unskilled railway labor to the Mexican
immigrants of course have had an effect which there is no intention
to ignore.
68
MEXICO'S POPULATION
who did much to avoid such difficulties by limita-
tion of passports, etc. However, the influence of
the Mexicans, who, after residence in the United
States, return to Mexico, is recognized as ultimately
good, and a secretary of Fomento under Huerta
officially stated that it was of advantage to the
Mexican workman to live in the United States;
Mexico should let him go, but should offer real
inducements, in land, houses, or opportunities, to
get the improved workman to return to Mexico. 1
To balance the continually growing emigration,
there is practically no immigration whatever into
Mexico. Not only is this true during the present
period, but it has been a static condition ever since
the independence cut off the influx of white men
from the Spanish peninsula. The population of
foreigners in Mexico has, during the independence,
been made up almost entirely of temporary resi-
dents. Beyond this is the additional fact that even
these temporary residents were executives and
business men, and the increase of laboring popula-
tion has been practically nil. Most of the 60,000
Spaniards in Mexico at the time of the separation
from Spain were driven out, and not until after
1900 was this number of 60,000 foreign white men
exceeded. The 1895 census reported only 3,713
foreigners in the Republic, but this grew until in
1900 there were 57,508, and in 1910, 115,869. The
following are the totals of the most important
foreign colonies at these three periods:
1 Boletin de la Dir. Oral, de Agricultura, November, 1913, pp.
1201 ff.
69
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Year
Americans
British
Spaniards
French
Germans
Chinese
Guatemalans
1895. . .
1900. . .
1910. . .
937
15,265
20,507
722
2,995
5,621
881
16,258
29,332
157
3,976
4,340
266
2,565
3,775
74
2,834
13,140
30
5,808
21,329
Of these the Spaniards also furnished the bulk
of the permanent foreign increment, and in 1910,
of the pitiful total of 658 naturalized citizens of the
Republic, 209 were Spaniards. Many Germans
have also made Mexico a permanent home, and
some of the Chinese have become Mexican citizens,
although this is generally conceived as a means
toward their possible emigration to the United
States as Mexicans instead of Orientals.
Mexico has not lived all these centuries, however,
without definite efforts at foreign colonization.
The history of these attempts is long, and as dis-
couraging as it is long. The success which the
Argentine has had in obtaining and acclimating
immigrants from South Europe has always tempted
Mexico, and during the time of President Diaz
there was a more or less continuous effort to stimu-
late similar immigration. In 1878 a plan was put
on foot which it was fondly estimated would bring
about 200,000 colonists to Mexico in the succeeding
fifteen years. A total of ninety-seven contracts
were made with various corporations and individ-
uals for the installation of immigrant colonies.
Practically all of these were Italian, although some
were Spanish and a number were American. About
11,000 Italian colonists in all were brought in, but
in 1890 only 5,000 remained, a figure which shrank
continuously, until under the attentions of the
70
MEXICO'S POPULATION
revolutionists after 1910 all the colonies were
abandoned. The Mormons who settled in northern
Chihuahua, with their center in the town of Casas
Grandes, began coming in 1882, and gave great
promise of progress and development of the section
in which they settled to the number of over 10,000.
In addition there were other American colonies
about the city of Tampico, and some on the Isthmus
of Tehuantepec. These, however, like the Mormon
and Italian colonies of longer standing, were com-
pletely wiped out by the outrages and economic
disturbances of the Madero-Carranza revolutions.
Spontaneous immigration into Mexico is and
probably always will be of the class of men who,
with pioneering and executive genius, develop the
latent resources of the country, but who are seldom
really permanent, seldom become Mexican citizens,
and never add to the numbers of the laboring, and
thus ultimately producing, class.
Moving on to the distribution of Mexico's popu-
lation within her own borders, we find, in 1910, that
over the entire country the population density is
about eighteen persons per square mile, including
both rural and urban, or about the same as the
state of Washington, contrasting with the average
density of the population of the United States,
which was 30.9 per square mile. There has been a
continual shifting of Mexico's population within
her own borders, and in the following table it may
be taken that the distribution and density in 1889
was about the normal for the republic after the
Artificial shifting caused by the revolutions had
71
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
settled down under the Diaz peace. The distribu-
tions of 1910 indicate the increasing development
of the country as the ultimate result of the Diaz
peace, and show the tendencies of the population
distribution under modern development. 1
STATES
AREA
IN SQ.
MILES
POPULATION
1889
1895
1910
Total
Per
Sq.
Mile
Total
Per
Sq.
Mile
Total
Per
Sq.
Mile
Frontier States
87.820
62,376
24.324
76,922
32,585
29,210
10,075
18,091
35,214
33,681
11,279
31,855
2,273
22,081
25,003
36,392
27,230
58,345
38,020
24,764
2,951
25,323
11,374
3,558
8,920
9,250
2,774
12,207
1,595
463
225,652
150,622
236,074
134,790
161,121
621,476
104,747
93,976
329,621
223,684
131,019
1,250,000
72,591
784,108
353,193
768,508
241,404
31,167
255,652
465,862
140,180
516,486
1,007,116
203,250
506,028
798,480
141,665
833,125
138,478
475,737
2.6
2.4
9.2
1.7
4.9
21.3
10.*
5.2
9.4
6.6
11.6
39.2
31.9
35.5
14.1
21.1
8.9
0.6
6.7
18.9
47.5
20.4
88.5
57.1
56.7
86.3
51.1
68.2
86.8
1,027.5
226,831
235,638
309,607
191,281
204,206
855,975
134,794
90,458
297,507
256,414
144,308
1,107,863
55,677
889,795
417,601
882,529
313,578
42,287
294,366
452,720
103,645
570,814
1,047,238
227,233
548,099
838,737
159,800
979,723
166,803
484,608
3.0
3.7
13.1
2.4
6.3
29.3
13.3
5.0
8.4
7.6
12.8
34.8
24.5
38.8
16.7
24.9
11.5
0.7
7.7
18.2
35.1
22.5
92.1
63.9
61.6
90.7
57.6
80.2
104.6
1,046.7
405,707
362,092
365,150
265,383
249,641
1,132,859
187,574
86,661
339,613
323,642
171,173
1,208,885
77,704
991,880
594,278
1,040,398
438,843
52,272
483,175
477,556
120,511
627,800
1,081,651
244,663
646,551
989,510
179,594
1,101,600
184,171
720,753
4.6
5.8
15.0
3.5
7.7
38.8
18.6
4.8
9.6
9.6
15.2
37.9
34.6
44.9
23.7
28.5
16.1
0.9
12.7
19.3
40.8
24.7
95.1
68.8
72.5
106.9
64.7
90.2
122.3
1,556.7
Coahuila
Sonora
Gulf States
Tamaulipas ... .
Tabasco
Yucatan
Pacific States
Tepic
Colima
Guerrero
Lower California. . .
Central States
Zacatecas
Aguas Calientes ....
San Luis Potosi ....
Queretaro
Mexico
Puebla
Tlaxcala
Federal District. . . .
1 Data for 1889 from Matias Romero, Geographical and Statistical
Notes on Mexico, for 1895 and 1910, calculated from census figures,
73
MEXICO'S POPULATION
In a general way these figures show that about
75 per cent of the population of Mexico live in the
central plateau, about 15 per cent in the semi-
tropical areas, and the remaining 10 per cent in the
hot country. The normal tendency of the popu-
lation is to gather densely in the sections where the
national foods and drink are produced that is, in
the Valley of Mexico, in Michoacan, Jalisco, etc.,
less densely about Saltillo, San Luis Potosi, and
Aguas Calientes, where the national foods, but not
pulque, are produced, and with less density in less-
favored zones, until the lightest population is in
the dry northern plateau and in the hot lands.
The rate of population increase in the various
sections of Mexico is illuminating, however. Re-
ferring to the table, we find that over the twenty-
year period, the population growth was approx-
imately 30.5 per cent, but in the frontier states the
net gain was 75 per cent, and in the Gulf states 52
per cent, and yet in these two sections as a whole
there is neither arable land nor sanitary living con-
ditions, their growth being due to the growth of
mining, industry, and industrial agriculture. The
Pacific states largely agricultural, but great pro-
ducers of labor fell below the average increase of
the nation, with only 28 per cent advance, while the
center, comprising the richest states, and the breed-
ing place of Mexico's population for centuries,
gained but 25 per cent, 5.5 per cent less than the
average growth of the nation as a whole.
The distribution of the rural population generally
harmonizes with the population density in the
73
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
various states, and the figures for the states may
be taken generally as indicative of the rural popu-
lation, for only 22 per cent of the people of Mexico
live in cities and towns of 4,000 people and over.
There is this element to be remembered, however,
that the Mexicans are essentially and by instinct
town dwellers of the most gregarious type. In the
cities they always live in closely built houses, and
in the country there are few isolated farms and
ranches, practically the entire population of the
country living in villages, the farm workers going
out each day to their fields and returning each
night to their homes. The rural population there-
fore is not sprinkled over the countryside, but
gathered into villages or haciendas. An hacienda
is recognized in Mexico as a kind of incorporated
town whose population may run well into the
thousands, the people almost all living in one great
feudal town about the hacienda buildings. The
result of this situation is that where, for instance,
the population is twelve per square mile, little vil-
lages or haciendas are found every two or three
miles along the trail, while where the density falls
to two per square mile, a village is found only every
ten or fifteen miles, with almost no isolated farms or
huts between.
This rural population is determined largely by
the availability and accessibility of the arable land,
which in its turn depends on rainfall and irrigation,
climate, 1 altitude and mountain contour.
In northern Mexico there are fewer than twelve
iSee also part ii, chap. i. "Climate."
74
MEXICO'S POPULATION
inhabitants per square mile, the rainfall being less
than twelve inches per year, which is insufficient
to water the crops. In this section, however, there
is grazing, and from time immemorial there has
been some irrigation, but in the genuine desert
portions, where the rainfall is less than ten inches
per year, the population falls to less than two per-
sons per square mile. This most sparsely settled
section of Mexico has about the same density as the
purely rural population of the desert and mountain
section of the United States, extending from Idaho
and Montana to New Mexico, while the remaining
portion of northern Mexico has about the same
rural density as Washington and California.
As a general rule an increase in the rainfall pro-
duces a corresponding increase in population, the
example being the Monterrey section, where the
rural population, due to a better rainfall than in
adjoining sections, rises to about twenty -five per
square mile. In the more densely populated cen-
tral plateau country of Mexico and on down the
slopes toward the Gulf the rainfall ranges from
eighteen to forty inches a year and falls with enough
regularity to guarantee fair crops. The rural
population here rises to over fifty per square mile,
which is about the same as the Middle Atlantic
states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania,
the most densely populated rural communities of
the United States. About Mexico City, Toluca,
Guadalajara, Puebla, and Morelia, the rural popu-
lation not counting the urban population of these
cities rises to 125 and 150 per square mile. This
75
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
is almost as heavy a rural population as surrounds
the larger American cities.
Going down into the tropics, the rainfall increases,
but soon begins to have a deterrent effect upon
population because, owing to the extremely heavy
precipitation, the conditions of agriculture are
made worse, as the heavy torrents carry away the
vegetable mold, making fertilization necessary, or
else the continued moisture causes a rank growth
of native vegetation which chokes out the culti-
vated crops. Indeed, the influence of the rainfall
on population is greatly ''modified by altitude, its
effect on the density of rural population being made
clear by a glance at the zone crossing the country
from Vera Cruz to Manzanillo. The well- watered
Gulf plains back of Vera Cruz are so near the sea
level that their temperature is very high, maintain-
ing a moist, warm jungle which makes the raising
of food crops difficult. The rural population here
varies from two to twelve persons per square mile.
On the slope toward the plateau the temperature
lowers and the rainfall, although heavy, is carried
off in mountain streams, so that there are fewer
swamps and jungles. The rural population in-
creases from twelve to twenty-five about Puebla
and Orizaba, until it reaches twenty-five to fifty
per square mile on the plateau. This plateau can
be taken as extending not only across the Valley
of Mexico, but through Jalisco and Michoacan,
where the density continues at from fifty to one
hundred and twenty-five in the vicinity of the cities.
On the west coast there is no coastal plain, but the
76
MEXICO'S POPULATION
mountain slopes and barren sands create a distribu-
tion of population almost identical with that of the
Gulf coast, from two to twelve per square mile.
This influence of the highlands on the Mexican
population is also manifested on the Oaxaca plateau,
which, while isolated from the center, has a popu-
lation of from twenty-five to fifty per square mile.
The Chiapas plateau, farther south, has a density
of about twenty-five per square mile, in contrast
with the jungle country immediately east of it in
Chiapas and Tabasco, and with the narrow desert
coast lands on the Pacific side, where the density is
two to ten per square mile.
The peninsula of Yucatan has some parallels to
the situation in other parts of Mexico, but also has
certain unique features. The low population den-
sity of Tabasco is carried eastward to the state of
Campeche, where the ancient industries of dyewood,
hardwood timber, and chicle gathering support a
population of twelve to twenty-five per square mile.
Campeche soon changes along the coast to the desert
section of Yucatan, where, however, the henequen
industry has created an unusually large rural popu-
lation. The number of people per square mile in
Yucatan varies from twelve to over twenty-five.
These apparently sparse densities of population
account, however, for 11,803,820 of rural popula-
tion (in villages under 4,000 people). The town
population (between 4,000 and 10,000) is 1,234,089;
the city dwellers (in towns over 10,000) number
2,171,386, the total "urban population" being
3,405,475, making the division, on the line of towns
77
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of 4,000 and over, 22.4 per cent urban and 77.6
per cent rural.
The following table showing the interesting dis-
tribution of these rural and urban dwellers by states
was compiled from the data of the 1910 census:
State
Number of Towns
Urban Population
Rural
Popula-
tion
4,000
to
10,000
10,000
to
25,000
Over
25,000
Towns
over
10,000
Towns
4,000 to
10,000
Total
Urban
Towns un-
der 4,000
Aguas Calientes.
Coahuila
Lower Calif
1
8
1
'i
1
2
45,198
82,751
4,806
39.605
5,536
38,899
42,955
94,379
49,095
16,746
95,234
73,870
27,551
23,019
76,043
97,068
11,390
49,004
122,356
5,536
25,148
87,617
617,900
305,208
49,095
55,725
158,163
162,947
40,327
101,547
138,958
205,002
44,452
138,886
48,820
12,327
50,871
266,520
27,661
23,310
90,478
75,598
45,319
31,900
254,490
90,552
72,342
81,507
239,736
46,636
52,556
451,226
102,853
676,443
545,183
590,796
831,347
828,933
139,261
263,603
901,440
896,598
200,211
9,109
548,914
216,563
175,247
198,770
942,335
157,110
63,351
315,229
407,577
258,323
139,273
878,369
249,061
405,214
Colima
'6
6
15
8
2
19
13
5
4
13
16
2
'3
3
8
*i
2
4
1
'2
1
1
'3
2
'i
i
'i
i
i
i
25,148
48,718
574,945
210,829
39,669
62,929
89,063
12,776
78,528
62,915
107,934
33,062
Fea. District. . .
Guanajuato... .
Hidalgo
Morelos
Nuevo Leon
Oaxaca
Puebla
Queretaro
Quint Roo . .
S. Luis Potosi. . .
Sonora
11
3
*3
20
5
1
4
2
3
18
6
8
1
2
1
2
3
'i
2
1
2
1
4
i
'i
'i
i
'2
i
i
84,498
26,911
12,327
28,631
159,104
'l6,775
64,494
47,760
34,846
16,778
142,258
62,447
25,900
54,388
18,909
22,246
117,416
27,061
6,535
25,984
27,838
10,473
15,122
112,232
28,105
46,442
Tabasco
Tamaulipas
Jalisco
Tlaxcala
Campeche m .
Cnihuahua .
Durango
Sinaloa
Vera Cruz
Yucatan
Zacatccas
TOTALS
207
46
23
2,171,386
1,234,089
3,405,475
11,803.820
The formation of Mexican cities and the conse-
quent distribution of urban population are due to
the natural causes affecting rural population, and
also to certain artificial factors. Of the latter, the
78
MEXICO'S POPULATION
insecurity of life during the early days and again
at the present tune have caused the people to
gather together for mutual protection, a factor to
which the genesis of the village life of the farmers
is also partially traceable. The building of the
railways, industrial development and mining are
the other artificial conditions which have caused
the accumulation of population in towns.
As a whole, the general agricultural nature of the
Mexican population has kept the number of cities
down to far below the usual proportion. Con-
sidering the number of people in Mexico as about
one-sixth those of the United States, it might be
expected that Mexico would have one-sixth as
many good-sized cities. In 1910 she had, however,
only sixty-nine cities of over 10,000, while the
United States had 601, a ratio of one to nine. In
the same year the United States had fifty cities of
over 100,000, while Mexico had only two, the cap-
ital and Guadalajara; the United States had eight
of over 500,000, and Mexico had none. The im-
portant cities of Mexico also evidence few of the
signs of bustle which characterize similar American
towns. This is emphasized by a comparison of
Mexican and American cities of the same popula-
tion. For instance, Mexico City, although it
ranks in population with Buffalo, Los Angeles, and
San Francisco, impresses the visitor as being far
smaller and much less progressive. There are not
half a dozen fine buildings that are not public
edifices, for there is so little co-operative industry
and business that the population does not require
6 79
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the office buildings, lofts, and working places that
an American city of similar size finds indispensable.
Guadalajara, the second city in Mexico, parallels
in size the city of San Antonio; Puebla is about the
size of Yonkers; Monterrey is like Akron, San Luis
Potosi is as large as El Paso; Merida has as many
people as Savannah; Leon compares with Chat-
tanooga; Vera Cruz with Charleston, South
Carolina; Aguas Calientes with Topeka; Morelia
with Lincoln, Nebraska. Yet not one of these
Mexican cities would impress the American visitor
as having even half the size or importance of its
American counterpart; in fact, the importance and
beauty of Mexican cities depend but little upon
their size or upon the amount of business done.
In distribution, the chief cities of Mexico are
grouped almost together in the south central
plateau part, with Mexico City in the middle of the
group. One comparison would take an egg-shaped
area whose larger end is at Guadalajara and San
Luis Potosi, and whose longer axis extends south-
eastward from between those cities to Oaxaca.
Such a grouping will have Mexico City at prac-
tically the center of the egg and will include more
than two-thirds of the cities and nearly two-thirds
of the population. Most of the other cities of im-
portance are located along arms radiating from the
center, out the railways northward to Chihuahua,
northeast to Monterrey and Tampico, and south-
east to Vera Cruz. The reasons for this centering
of the cities and population are altitude, water
supply, temperature, and fertility of the soil. In
80
MEXICO'S POPULATION
practically the entire egg-shaped area two or even
three crops can be harvested each year, and in
most of it there is either rain at the right time or
facilities for irrigation. Most of the cities in the
north have their reason for being in the mining
industry, or, owing to their location, are on the
ancient trade routes now covered by the railways.
The cities of Mexico can also be divided into a
number of isolated groups, more or less connected
in their economic or physical interdependence.
These isolated groups stand out clearly on the
Mexican map. They indicate an essentially pro-
vincial distribution, almost as significant and indeed
depending on much the same causes as the distribu-
tion of rural population, with the added determi-
nants of the railways and mines. Natural means of
communication have, however, had little part in
the location of Mexican cities, There are no good
natural harbors on the Gulf coast and few on the
Pacific, and, owing to difficulties of approach,
those that are available were largely neglected in
the upbuilding of Mexico. There are also few
navigable rivers, and such as there are are sur-
prisingly neglected. Save for Tampico, at the
mouth of the Panuco, and San Juan Bautista
(Villa Hermosa) on the Grijalva in Tabasco, no
important Mexican cities are located on navigable
streams, and one is continually surprised to find
practically none of the ancient ruins of pre-Hispanic
Mexico on the shores of rivers. The Maya ruins
are all well inland, approachable only through heavy
jungles, and the imposing remains of Palenque are
81
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
located, not near the Usunaacinta River, one of the
most majestic streams of North America, but a
good day's ride from the nearest landing place.
Apparently we must look to the new factors of
railways and industrial growth to account for
general population as well as rural and urban dis-
tribution. But these are not necessarily even the
chief causes, for throughout Mexican history there
have been definite currents of population, and in
similar directions to those of the Diaz period. The
radiating center has been for centuries the Valley
of Mexico in the great central plateau. Here was
the metropolis of Aztec and pre-Aztec civilizations,
and here was raised the colonial empire of New
Spain; here again to-day is the most thickly inhab-
ited portion of the republic. Aztec, Spanish, and
Mexican populations have radiated from this
center out into the wastes of the north in search of
gold, and down into the tropics in search of food.
Always the length of penetration of these radiating
lines has been proportionate to the length and
virility of the empire which sent them forth. The
Aztec flood had reached out and receded before the
Spaniards. The colonial regime pushed northward
to open the mining camps, and west, east, and south
to open trading centers and new food supplies, only
to scurry back to the cities on the highlands before
the revolutionary hordes of Hidalgo and his suc-
cessors. The ebb and tide of revolutions, empires,
and republics have caused a corresponding ebb and
tide of population from the central plateau and the
safe cities, and back again to these centers in the
82
MEXICO'S POPULATION
face of succeeding uprisings. The Porfirian civiliza-
tion, however, did give new outposts against the
forces of disintegration, so that less and less has the
population tended to rush back to the City of
Mexico and its immediate environs. Monterrey,
Guadalajara, Tampico, and Vera Cruz, once only
outposts, have been, through the terrors of the
last decade, centers of safety, usually as secure as
the capital itself.
This development of the country by the elements
within it the Mexicans call " auto-colonization."
Under the viceroys it was specifically encouraged.
The colonial government planned definite expedi-
tions into sections where Indian reports or rumors
indicated that there were rich lands, mines, or
mineral outcroppings to be developed. Native-
born Creole adventurers, mestizos, and their Indian
retainers, accompanied the armies and the priests
on these expeditions, opening new territory and
founding new cities. It was in this way almost
alone that the present states of San Luis Potosi,
Guanajuato, Zacatecas and Jalisco were originally
populated, and this is also true in part of Tamau-
lipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora,
Durango, Sinaloa, and Lower California. This
process of auto-colonization, so deliberately studied,
was interrupted during the revolutionary period
from 1823 until the late 'seventies.
Under Diaz this conscious pioneering was re-
sumed, and the modern industrial development
harnessed itself to long custom, to the forces which
have always determined Mexico's slow advance and
83
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
struggled against the depressing factors of climate,
revolution, and racial destructiveness. The plans
under which the railways of Mexico were built
were almost identical with the fan-shaped develop-
ment of auto-colonization which took place under
the viceroys. Northeast, north, west, south, and
east again, the railways branched out from Mexico
City. Lines were built for the development of
new territory in much the same way as the railways
of the western United States were built, always
looking forward to an ultimate increase in the value
of the railway properties as the importance and
richness of these new sections developed. The
Diaz railway concessions have often been criticized
as tending more to feed Mexico and her riches into
the United States than to centralize the Mexican
nation, but an understanding of the Spanish auto-
colonization system, and of Diaz's realization that
the development of Mexico inevitably followed
those fanlike branches from the central cradle of
Mexican civilization, explains simply this national
railway plan.
The auto-colonization of Mexico is one of the
great pages of her history, including in its pano-
rama such diverse scenes as the founding of the
missions of the American Southwest, the opening
of virtually all of Mexico's storied bonanza mines,
and the building of the railways by American en-
gineers encouraged by Diaz and the Mexicans of
the Diaz epoch. It goes back to the beginnings of
modern Mexican history, but not least of its im-
portance is the fact that it was by following this
84
MEXICO'S POPULATION
ancient Mexican custom and by developing the
outlying districts and bringing the inhabitants
into contact with the culture of the center that
the Mexican national ideal was crystallized under
Diaz.
VITALITY
THE three factors from which we can reach an
understanding of vitality in a population are
birth and death rate, infant mortality, and average
longevity. Such Mexican statistics as exist Can
be set forth briefly, always understanding that all
figures from Mexican sources are excessively inac-
curate and must be taken as indices and not as
final all that we may be sure of is that they err
on the side most favorable to the appearance of
modern progress.
Mexico belongs in the lowest of vitality classes,
for her birth rate and her death rate are alike
enormous. In the decade 1901-10, her registered
birth rate, as corrected by the census growth, was
42.5 per 1,000 (the births actually registered were
33.5 per 1,000) and the average death rate over the
same period was 32.6 per 1,000, comparing with
the rates of the United States (calculated from the
net rate of population increase after deducting the
foreign born), which were 29.7 births and 14.6
deaths per 1,000 per year from 1901 to 1910. The
Mexican birth rate was thus 1.52 times and the
death rate 2.3 times those of the United States.
The death rate of Mexico City, the worst in any
86
VITALITY
reports, was, for 1907, 56 per 1,000, although the
average for twelve years was placed as low as 47
rates exceeded only by Lucknow, India, (58.5) or
Cairo (49.2). Comparison with other centers of
population in the same period (1900-13) gives
the following rates: London, 14.7 per 1,000; St.
Louis, 16.3; Paris, 16.9; New York, 17.3; Balti-
more, 19.4; Rio de Janeiro, 22.5; Moscow, 26.1;
Johannesburg (with much the same climate as
Mexico City), 29.5; Panama, 30.1; Bombay, 37;
Vera Cruz, 41.2.
Births in Mexico are not registered with accuracy,
a condition due not only to lax enforcement of
regulations, but also to the ancient difficulty
between the Church and the government, for no
effort is made to harmonize the records of the
churches and the civil register. Moreover, the
large proportion of illegitimate births makes regis-
try touch the delicacy of the family, while the vast
number of births without attendance by either doc-
tor or licensed midwife increases the problem. In
1910 the civil registry showed 435,386 births, the
Church registry 294,201, while theaverage calculated
over the ten-year period by the census was 614,024. 1
As to ratio of birth and death rates, we find that
Baron von Humboldt, in 1803, estimated from the
data available that the proportion of births to
deaths between 1752 and 1802 was as 170 to 100,
which, if we accept the figures of this great observer,
shows this to have been one of the most prolific
J Of the births registered civilly in 1910, 251,252 were legitimate
and 184,143 illegitimate; 226,107 were boys and 209,279 girls.
87
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
periods of Mexican history, when, indeed, the losses
of the early colonial period were undoubtedly
being made up rapidly. 1
The rates per thousand between 1901 and 1910
would indicate a ratio of but 127 births to 100
deaths, however, as the normal condition of the
population under the peace of Diaz. We must
remember that Humboldt had only one census,
that of 1793, to work with, and his calculations
were based mostly upon parish registers, the in-
crease of the Church's tithes, and the estimates of
provincial officials in isolated localities. It seems
fair to assume, therefore, that the ratios shown by
the Diaz figures are more accurate, and that, as
noted above, they err, if at all, on the side most
creditable to Mexico, in this case, in showing a
greater preponderance of births.
A comparison of Mexico with other countries
will illumine this point :
RATES PER THOUSAND INHABITANTS 2
Country
Births
Mar-
riages
Deaths
Natural
Increase
Infantile
Mortality
Mexico
42.5
44
32.6
9.9
241
United States
29.7
10.5
14.2
15.5
124
Spain
35.59
8.74
26.07
9.52
180
France
21.64
7.55
19.49
2.15
135
Holland
31.80
7.59
16.26
15.54
130
England and Wales
Ireland
28.50
2298
7.93
5 18
16.23
17 53
12.27
545
133
100
Italy
3329
723
22 15
11 14
175
Norway
29 13
642
13.91
1522
75
Russia
4905
925
31.02
1803
240
1 It was upon these figures that Humboldt estimated that Mex-
ico was doubling her population every thirty-six to forty years.
2 Mexican figures for 1910 from the Boletin de Estadistica; United
States from Bureau of the Census; others from Almanack de Gotha.
VITALITY
In infant mortality, Mexico, as shown in this
table, surpasses all other civilized communities in the
world. Of all the deaths in 1910, a total of 467,965,
those of infants under 1 year numbered 143,297,
or 30 per cent of the total, while more than half the
entire number of deaths (239,970) were of children
under 7 years. The corresponding figures for the
United States show that the deaths of children
under 1 year are 17 per cent, and of children under
5 years 25 per cent, of the total deaths, while we
have to count all to the age of 42 to account for
half the deaths in the United States. Infantile
mortality is calculated on the ratio of deaths under
1 year per 1,000 births. The average of deaths
under 1 year of age for 1901-10 in Mexico was
148,177, and the average of births per year (based
on the census interval 1901-10 and not on regis-
tration) is 614,024, which gives the infantile
mortality rate of Mexico at 241, which is nearly
twice that of the registration area of the United
States, which in 1910 was 124. *
This heavy infantile mortality is usually con-
sidered the most outstanding feature of Mexican
vital statistics, the basis of her immense death rate,
and the clearest index of her sanitary and social
conditions in general. Significant it is, and ap-
palling it is, but the actuality is yet more so, for
the loss of infant life may be discounted because the
social cost of child creation and support for a few
1 All Mexican figures are from the Boletin de la Direction Gen-
eral de Estadistica for the 1910 census, and unless otherwise stated
those for the United States and other countries are from the Mor-
tality Statistics of the Bureau of the Census, 1911.
89
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
months is infinitesimal in Mexico. More appalling,
if we accept the Mexican data, is that half of all
who are born in Mexico die before they are 7
years old, and three quarters before they are 40,
while half of all who are born in the United States
live to be 42. It is the loss each* year of the thou-
sands who have passed through early infancy and
into promising childhood and youth and early
maturity that constitutes the greatest loss from the
death rates of Mexico, that make, indeed, the in-
vestment in childhood a matter of apparently such
questionable wisdom "they die like flies hi any
case!"
More than this, half of the Mexicans living to-
day are under 20 years of age, while half of the in-
habitants of the United States are over 30, the
years of greatest production and greatest addition
to the growth of civilization. Only one third of
the Mexicans are living after 30 and less than one-
fifth attain the maturity of 40 years.
The Mexican statistics available make the com-
putation of average longevity inaccurate, but from
the death rate it may be taken at about 15 years,
which compares with the average life of residents of
New York City, about 23 years, and of the United
States, about 35 years.
The following table illustrates the difference in
the population of Mexico and the United States at
various ages, itself an astonishing commentary on
birth-rate, infantile mortality, and the populations
at the truly productive ages of human life. The
Mexican figures are for 1910, those for the United
90
VITALITY
MEXICAN AND TYPICAL UNITED STATES POPULATIONS BY AGES 1
MEXICANS
UNITED STATES
AGE INTERVAL
Living at Ages Named
in 1910
Total, 15,160,369
From U. S. Life Table
for Population of
15,445,608
1-10 days
13,263
11-20 days
13,540
2 1 days 1 month ....
33,369
01 month
60,172
24,180
26 months
205,049
116,586
6 mos.-l yr
512,417
134,793
Years
0-1
777,638
275,559
1-2
467,943
261,285
2-3
467 977
256 587
3-4
461,849
254 049
4-5
457,761
252,348
5-10
2,147,633
,246,191
10-15
1,594,729
,229,907
15-20 . .
1,569,639
,212,999
20-25
1,339,252
,186,263
25-30 . . .
1,485,927
,154,049
30-35
817,105
,117,359
35-40
1,089,418
,074,183
40-45
518,771
,025,242
45-50
689,135
968,451
50-55
284,350
901,521
55-60
461,909
817,065
60-65
167,446
709,428
65-70
172,993
576,090
70-75
59,035
429,686
75-80
69,364
277,935
80-85
17,696
143,799
85-90
15,411
55,032
90-95
4,229
14,436
95-100
3,861
2,322
Over 100 . ....
917
222
Unknown
18,317
15,160,369
15,445,608
1 The Mexican figures are taken from the Boletin de la Dir. Oral,
de Estadistica, Censo de 1910. The United States figures for a
similar population were obtained by multiplying by three the
"Lx" column of the "Life Tables for Both Sexes in the Original
Registration States, 1910," which covered a typical population
of 5,148,536. United States Life Tables, Washington, 1916.
91
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
States an adaptation of the 1910 United States Life
Tables for a similar population, including both
whites (native and foreign born) and negroes.
There are certain elements of error in the Mexican
side of this table, due chiefly to the overwhelming
tendency to group the figures about conventional
divisions, such as "6 months " and the years ending
in and 5. This is always the case in censuses of
ignorant people, and the tendency of Mexicans to
observe their annual saints' days instead of their
birthdays adds to this confusion. Only by this
theory can we account, for instance, for the figures
which would indicate that there are more than
twice as many children listed as between 6 and 12
months of age as under 6 months an obvious
absurdity.
These comparisons indicate, however, that the
heavy birth rate of Mexico is not entirely wiped
out by the mortality of the early years, for the
children who complete their first year are almost
three times as many as in the corresponding typical
American community, and up to 10 years, even,
apparently number about twice the American child
population. Balancing the Mexican figures roughly,
we can take it that after the early mortality of the
first seven years (when, despite half the deaths
being at these tender ages, the heavy birth rate still
keeps the Mexican age groups greater than simi-
lar American groups) youth maintains the Mexican
lead until about the age of 20, when the number
of Mexicans at each age falls with astonishing
rapidity. This is borne out by the mortality
92
VITALITY
statistics by ages, which show that after the years
previous to the age of 7, the heaviest death rate in
Mexico is between 20 and 30.
The mortality figures available in the Mexican
census reports make comparison with the United
States census tables, and indeed even with the
Mexican population statistics themselves, almost
impossible. The following table had to be made by
the aid of crude estimates at important points
which, combined with the inaccuracy of Mexican
statistics in general, greatly reduces its value.
Where estimates were necessary, however, the
graph system was used, making them correspond
as nearly as possible to the statistics available.
In view of the additional fact, that these calculations
were certainly not anticipated by the Mexican
census statisticians, and so were not provided
against, they reveal figures which probably have no
greater errors than those made intentionally and
unintentionally by the Mexicans themselves in the
tables of other sorts that are available.
The information conveyed by this table is, with
all its possible inaccuracies, thoroughly significant.
The fact that the Mexican death rate is overwhelm-
ing in every age group indicates a condition of
health and living conditions that is appalling, even
though it does bear out (and emphasize) all that
has been suggested in theory and observation by
physicians and students. Compared with the
United States our figures show the following ratios :
The Mexican infant mortality rate is 1.93 times
that of the United States; death rate between 0-5
93
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
years, 2.77 times the United States rate; 5-10
years, 3.24 times; 10-15 years, 3.57 times; 15-20
years, 3.36 times; 20-30 years, 2.88 times; 30-
45 years, 3.20 times; 45-65 years, about 2.75 times;
over 60, about 1.51 times the similar United States
death rate. The infantile mortality of Mexico is,
DEATHS STATISTICS AND RATES BY AGES
Age
Intervals
Mexicans
Dying in
Age Group
Corres-
ponding
Deaths,
Pennsyl-
vania 2
Mexico
Deaths
10003
Penn-
sylvania
Deaths
per 1000
U.S.
Deaths
per 1000
Spain
Deaths
per 1000
England
Deaths
per 1000
All Ages..
Fears
0-1....
0-5....
1-7....
5-10...
7-14...
10-15...
15-20. . .
20-25..
467,965
143,297
213,000 i
93,673
23,000 J
21,550
12,000!
18,980
222,292
48,390
67,576
32.6
241. 4
91.2
14.2
124.80 4
37.3
14.2
124.0 4
32.9
26.5
1S0.0 4
104.1
17.2
129.0 1
53.5
5,260
10.7
3.3
3.1
8.6
4.1
3,106
5,258
8,048
7.5
12.1
2.1
3.6
5.2
2.2
3.6
5.2
50
4.3
7.1
9.4
2.3
3.3
4.3
20-30...
25-35...
30-45...
35-45.. .
. 40,847
' 48,235* '
144
16,672
' '18,482'
30,824
67.330
6.2
6.4
62
9.2
5.9
19.9
35.2'
97.7
8.8
8.9
11.1
9.9
45-60...
Over 60.
50,495
49.956
Estimated. The Mexican statistics for deaths below age
20 are in groups of 7 years; above 20, in groups of 5, 10, and 15
years. The population by ages, on the other hand, is in groups
of 5 throughout.
2 Double the deaths of Pennsylvania are used, as this state's
population (7,665,111 in 1910) is approximately half that of all
Mexico. The deaths used are for 1911.
3 Mexican death rates are calculated from population reports
set down in the preceding table.
4 This is the infantile mortality rate, the ratio of deaths under
1 year to births (not to the population). Spanish mortality rates
iromMovimientodela Pobladon de Espana, Madrid, 1906: English
from Annuaire Internationale de Statistique, The Hague, 1917.
94
VITALITY
apparently, less in proportion than Mexico's losses
in the higher age groups, a condition less sig-
nificant in its relation to infantile mortality itself
(the rate is vast enough in any case) than in its
indication of the health conditions in youth and
maturity, as was pointed out above. The most
healthful age in Mexico appears to be, as in other
countries, between 10 and 15 years, but this group
has, by Mexican data, the largest multiple of the
United States rate in the entire scale; in other
words, more Mexican children, in proportion to
normal, die at their healthiest age than die in the
perilous days of early infancy.
The figures are an index, above all else, of a state
of almost continuous ill health on the part of a
large majority of the Mexican people. Perhaps the
truest indication that this is the case is this dis-
proportionate number of deaths at the most active
age (10-15 years), but there is also the evidence, at
first confusing, of the endurance of Mexicans, and
particularly of Indians, under the most enervating
living conditions, poor food, alcohol, sexual over-
indulgence arid hard labor apparently having but
little effect on thousands of the population. The
vigor of many Mexicans, in the face of the conditions
under which they live, has long been remarked.
The famous runners of Aztec days, who in relays
carried fish caught in the late afternoon at Vera
Cruz over 300 miles and up 7,500 feet into the moun-
tains, to Montezuma's noontime breakfast table in
Mexico City, seem like creatures of legend. Yet
to-day such runners still cover long routes with mail
7 95
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
and with heavy loads as well, in interior Mexico,
and one need not leave the cities to see a single
cargador carrying a 650-pound piano on his back.
In the mines Indians carry loads of 200 to 300
pounds up ladders of 2,000 rungs, and pack great
loads over the trails at an endless, unvarying dog-
trot hour after hour. The Mexican soldier and
the soldadera, or woman commissariat who marches
with him can cover fifty miles a day, if necessary,
and the average day's march of Mexican infantry
is said to be twenty-four miles, a good day's journey
for cavalry.
Indications of great vigor as these are, their very
presence forces us, even without the death rates,
to a realization that there must be tremendous
factors of ill health working on the sections of the
population which do not demonstrate such vigor.
If we accept the estimate that to an ordinary life
there are 6,000 days of slight illness and 300 days
of severe illness 1 and realize that in Mexico these
days of illness are crowded into fifteen years, instead
of the thirty-five years of the average American's
life, something of the prevalence of sickness in
Mexico becomes evident. To be sure, only about
a quarter of the deaths in Mexico are listed as
" classified by doctor," which indicates that the
rest are without medical attendance and therefore
that disease in Mexico probably is fatal after fewer
days of sickness than elsewhere. But even giving
a liberal discount on this account, we may safely
1 Cf . Ellsworth Huntington, "The Relation of Health to Racial
Capacity The Example of Mexico," Geographical Review, 1920.
96
VITALITY
assume that there is at least 50 per cent more sick-
ness in Mexico than in other countries. In other
words, there are at least half as many days again
in which a Mexican has attacks of indigestion, colds,
or fevers, than the American or Englishman. That
this is literally true, anyone who has lived long in
Mexico and dealt much with Mexicans will agree.
Thus ill health becomes one of the great elements
working on the Mexican vitality, whether we regard
the hard, abusive work, alcohol, bad food, etc., as
contributants to this ill health or additional de-
pressants. The fact must be recognized that all of
these are destined to remain until relieved by im-
proved social and educational conditions, condi-
tions which, although now .truly affected by the
resulting apathy, in the long run must be con-
sidered as affecting rather than affected by the
elements which make for national vigor.
In studying the causes for Mexico's high birth
rate, we trace them quickly back to race and cli-
mate. The customs which cause early marriages
and which eliminate practically all birth control,
as well as the fecundity of the women, are perhaps
all, in the last analysis, racial and climatic. The
Indian is a breeder probably second only to the
African negro, and in the mixture of white and red
which make up the bulk of Mexico's population
this fecundity has apparently not been lost. Mex-
ican families are almost invariably large, and save
for the heavy death rate the country would have
been populated and overflowed by the early Indians
long before the Spaniards came. With the fe-
97
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
cundity still persisting, as it apparently does, only
the fact that the Spanish civilization did almost
nothing to reduce the Indian's natural enemies,
disease, war, and famine, has kept the Indian popu-
lation within bounds. Such improved sanitation
as there has been in Mexico has acted upon the
mestizo almost alone, and has touched the Indian
but little; so that the growth of the mestizo popu-
lation stands for all the improvement in Mexican
living conditions that there has been from Spanish
times to those of Diaz.
Although the fecundity of the Indian seems to
persist into the mixed breed, there is a noticeable
falling off in the size of the families as we ascend
the social scale. The records of births among the
Indians and peons, however, show a continuation
of the immense birth rate. Prof. Frederick Starr l
records the figures which he gathered from the sub-
jects of his ethnological measurements. Twenty-
one Tarascan women had had 152 children, of whom
101 had died, the largest family in the group being
13. Nineteen Tlaxcalan mothers had borne 116
children, of whom half had died, the largest family
being 18. Twenty-four Aztec mothers had had
140 children, of whom 60 survived. Twenty-two
Mixtec women had had 122 children, of whom 77
were still living. Only one of the group was
barren. The record continues through many pages
of his book, families of 18 and 20 being common,
but almost invariably from half to three quarters
1 Physical Characteristics of the Indians of Southern Mexico,
p, 18 et seq.
VITALITY
died in infancy. On the father's side there are
often startling figures, a Protestant missionary
reporting a father of 31 children, 15 by one wife
and 16 by another, as being not unusual.
One of the chief contributions to the numbers in
Mexican families is the custom of early marriage,
as about one half of the Mexican women marry or
bear their first child at the age of sixteen. The
marriage statistics for 1910 show that out of 58,000
marriages 35,000 of the women were under twenty,
and 18,000 between twenty and thirty, while,
interestingly enough, about 15,000 of the men were
under twenty, and 32,000 between twenty and
thirty.
In observing the heavy death rate of Mexico we
find the great infantile mortality apparently due to
a number of interrelated causes, the first of which
is the birth rate, which, by its very preponderance,
lessens the care which is given the infants in their
tender years and complicates the problem of sup-
port, so that the entire family is undernourished,
with resultant heavy deaths among the younger
members. Early marriages, the heavy strain upon
the women of continuous motherhood, and sexual
overindulgence all have a bearing on the low vitality
of the resultant children.
Custom takes its toll in yet other ways, such as
intemperance in food and alcohol and in methods
of infant feeding, children being taken from the
mother's breast to be fed with tortillas, bananas, and
hot peppers. Superstition and ignorance combine
to prescribe loathsome and inefficient cures for tem-
99
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
porary ailments, cause the abuse of patent medi-
cines and nostrums, and continuous violation of all
the laws of hygiene. Crowded tenements, lack of
any fresh air at night, uncleanliness, and all of the
unhappy phases of the living conditions of the low-
class Mexican have their part in both infantile
mortality and the general high death rates. The
climate makes the natives subject to bronchial and
pulmonary diseases, furnishes a kindly breeding
zone for vermin, animal and insect, with resultant
typhus and malaria, while smallpox and digestive
diseases are encouraged by both climate and un-
cleanliness. The climate, moreover, is deleterious
hi its effect on the food crops, uncertain rains,
noxious weeds, and a none too fertile soil combining
again and again to devastate the land with famine.
War has been no less a factor in its effect on the
death rate in Mexico than elsewhere. The non-
combatant element of the population has always
suffered from war, and such inaccurate figures as
we have of the period previous to the rule of Diaz,
and since, suggest that the toll which has been
collected time and again by Mexico's interracial
struggles probably transcends anything else in her
history. Just how great this toll was we shall
probably never know, as statistics were not taken
during the troublous times in the middle of the last
century, and the Carranza government studiously
concealed all facts regarding military losses, epi-
demics, and deaths by famine within Mexico during
the decade just closed.
The lack of scientific hygiene, both municipal and
100
VITALITY
personal, in Mexico has had effects on the death
rate which can only be remarked figures are abso-
lutely unavailable. The Spanish records reported
tremendous plagues, the most important of which
were those of smallpox, typhus, and measles. When
smallpox brought by a negro slave first appeared in
Mexico almost immediately after the conquest, the
Spanish historians glibly record that "half of the
Indian population succumbed." Later epidemics,
like that of 1544, took 800,000; that of 1576,
2,000,000 in the central plateau alone; and so on
down the years, with decreasing toll, due perhaps
as much to the increasing accuracy of statistics as
to the lessening of the plague, for we can give but
little credence to the very crude estimates of these
early epidemics.
Typhus, which, if identical with the traditional
Indian plague, matlalzahuatl, wiped out millions of
Indians at various times before the conquest, has
appeared from time to tune throughout history
since. The so-called "filth diseases" are generally
considered endemic in Mexico, but the statistics
gathered under Diaz indicate that, although they
often appeared, the ravages were comparatively
slight, although the epidemic of typhus which raged
in Mexico City in 1914, under Carranza, was re-
ported by newspaper correspondents to have carried
off well on to 50,000 people.
Probably the most serious phases of the problem
of disease in Mexico are the carelessness and ig-
norance in treatment and the lack of sanitation
and pure water supply. The conception of disease
101
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
as a visitation from Heaven, and that there is
nothing to do for it but to manifest patience and
resignation, is deep-rooted in the Mexican philos-
ophy, extending from the lower classes to the
highest ranks of society. The directions of doctors
are ignored, medicines are not taken, ventilation,
sunlight, and baths are varied according to tradi-
tion and not to the instructions of the physician
even when a physician is called which is astonish-
ingly seldom. Of the 467,965 deaths in Mexico in
1910, 139,008 were listed as " classified by doctor"
and 328,957 as " unclassified," apparently indi-
cating the lack of medical attendance in more than
three quarters of the deaths. A sick Mexican is
kept in utter darkness and, what is worse, almost
without air, he is not bathed, and is stuffed with
food; only in the treatment of smallpox, where the
light causes the disfigurement of scars, and where
baths are notoriously dangerous, are sunlight and
water used freely.
Quarantining is almost impossible, owing to the
fatalism with which the lower classes regard disease,
leaving weather as probably the chief saving factor
in the history of Mexican epidemics. The changes
between the hot, dry season and the cool, wet
season are so great and so sudden that the typical
diseases of each quickly succumb, so that typhus
will rage in the Mexican capital almost unchecked
until the rainy season suddenly and completely
stops its ravages.
The sanitary conditions of Mexico towns have
never been adequate, and what improvement has
102
VITALITY
been made has been more than counterbalanced by
the crowding of the lower classes into unsanitary
dwelling places. Moreover, such municipal sani-
tation as exists is but recent, and even hi Mexico
City the achievement of the notable drainage sys-
tem which the capital now possesses was at great
cost and after literal centuries of labor. 1
Impure and unclean food is almost the rule in
Mexico. Such inspection as there is is made by
officials without education and without any real
conviction of the value or importance of the work
which they do. The markets reek with flies, and
adulterated and partially decayed food is sold
with impunity. The almost complete lack of re-
frigeration either in transportation or in storage
has a salutary effect upon prices of foods, but,
unfortunately, eliminates this factor in the preser-
vation of the soundness of the products offered.
The food animals are raised under the most dis-
gusting conditions, the Mexican razor-back hog,
which furnishes the chief pork supply, competing
with the buzzard for the food which he gets.
Trichina is almost invariably present in Mexico
pork, and he who dares to eat underdone beef in
Mexico runs imminent danger of tapeworm.
The climate of Mexico is a most significant factor
in the vigor of the people. The warm, humid air
of the hot country has much the same effect on the
resident as a continuous warm bath that is, it is
debilitating and sedative. In the temperate and
cold regions the people are more active, and espe-
1 See part ii, chapter ix, Cleanliness and Sanitation.
103
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
cially so in the northern sections where the climate
more nearly approximates that of southern United
States, but there seems no doubt that on the plateau
the rarefied air, with its accompanying absence of
oxygen, and the strain of the long, dry period upon
the nervous system, have a definite effect upon the
inhabitants, tending to nervousness in the Creoles
and in foreign whites, and probably resulting in the
early death of the nervous types of the lower classes,
leaving the lethargic alone as the typical Mexican
of the plateau as well as of the hot country.
It is noticeable that when the natives of one
section are transferred to another they often suc-
cumb by debility or even by early death to the
local conditions; the newcomer from the high
lands is very likely to break out into sores and to
find himself unable to do a full stint of physical
work in the hot country, while, on the other hand,
the hot-country Indian or mestizo transferred to
higher altitudes often falls a victim to the ravages
of alcoholism and tuberculosis.
It is generally conceded that as a nation the Mexi-
cans are undernourished. This is due to several
causes; first, poverty; second, the apathy which
keeps the provider for the family from working
more than is necessary for his own personal com-
fort, with the resultant undernourishment of his
large family; and third, the nature of the food
consumed. 1 The overindulgence in stimulants
ranges from the excessive use of hot peppers for
seasoning to a craving for noxious drugs. The ex-
1 See part ii, chap, vii, Mexican Food.
104
VITALITY
cessive use of coffee, the drinking of pulque, which
is not only an intoxicant, but an autointoxicant
(Mexican doctors hold that it sets up a fermenta-
tion in the digestive tract and brings on a stupid
languor comparable to narcotic poisons), and the
almost continuous use of tobacco, mark the scale
up to the use by thousands of the lower-class
Mexicans of the herb marihuana, a native variant
of the hasheesh. The use of alcohol is all but uni-
versal among Mexicans. Climatic causes combine
to make the immediate effect of use of liquor per-
haps more pernicious than in lands in the temperate
zone, and the fact that the Mexican of the lowest
classes is likely to start his day with a capita (little
drink) of native rum or alcohol, that he washes
down his meals with pulque, or beer when he can
afford it, the habit of taking a number of drinks
before dinner, and after, make the effect of alcohol
one of the most serious problems of Mexican
vitality.
In sapping the strength of the Mexican people,
probably no single factor is greater than venereal
disease. Prevalent from one end of the country to
the other, it is said that 90 per cent of Mexican men
are affected. Recognized by the social organization
as one of the inevitable facts of life, these diseases
lower the vitality and sap the strength and mark
the new generations with blindness and inherited
weaknesses. Syphilis was probably introduced by
the Spaniards, there being no confusion on this
point in Mexico except the efforts made by some
chroniclers of the colonial regime to confuse local
105
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
forms of leprosy with this Oriental plague. In
Mexico, however, the disease apparently does not
assume the virulent form noted elsewhere, and is
said to respond promptly to careful treatment. In
this, as in other diseases of uncleanliness, the
apathy and ignorance of the people are the most
serious factors.
On the subject of defectives and mental incompe-
tents statistics in Mexico are almost completely
lacking. A study of 26,000 students in the elemen-
tary schools of the Federal District made in May,
1913, recorded that 1,063, or 4 per cent, showed
mental incapacity, 39 (only a trace in percentage)
were listed as morons with retarded intellectual
development, 108, or .04 per cent, were of "bad
character "; which divisions, combined with others
not specified, brought the number of children de-
clared to be " really abnormal" up to 2,229 or 8.3
per cent of the total of 26,981. The number of deaf
mutes in the republic in one year for which reports
were made by the governors, 1897, showed 6,235,
the population of the country at that time being
about 13,000,000.!
The prevalence of goiter in Indian Mexico was
remarked on and recorded in his reports by Prof.
1 The following is the official, but probably inadequate, census
of defectives in 1910:
M. F. Total
Blind 7,116 4,746 11,862
Deaf mutes 4,644 3,130 7,774
Idiots. . . 2,768 1,400 4,168
Cretins 1,829 801 2,630
Mental debility 2,840 1,971 4,811
Totals 19,197 12,048 31,245
106
VITALITY
Frederick Starr, previously quoted. In some places
he found that astonishingly large numbers of the
inhabitants were affected and confirmed the report
that forty years before it had been even more
common, by the surprising number of deaf mutes
among the children. In one village he found that
perhaps half of the people had goiter, sometimes in
the most astonishing degree and yet without seri-
ously affecting their work; deaf mutes were very
often present in these goitrous families. There is
undoubtedly a great deal more goiter and deaf-
mutism than any records show, as it is found
naturally in restricted communities where inter-
marriage has been going on for centuries.
The figures upon insanity have never been reli-
able, and even those which have been taken have
not been published in digested form. In using
Mexican statistics, one has always to remember that
the material has been furnished by the local author-
ities, and that the principle of putting the best foot
forward, which was one of the basic tenets of the
Diaz regime, was followed with extreme literalness
by practically all officials in the republic.
In general, however, it is safe to assert that the
physical and intellectual defectives are not in ex-
traordinary proportions. Students of the Indians
agree that such signs of degeneracy as appear in
Mexico are in about the same proportion as those
found among the American savages north of the
Rio Grande. Racial conditions, including the com-
paratively simple conditions of life and the natural
checks on population, still combine to make the
107
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
question of defectives a very small item in the study
of the Mexican people.
To sum up, the birth and death rates of Mexico
indicate a primitive community of low vitality.
The factors which directly affect them are racial
tendencies, the climate and a prevalence of vices,
undernourishment and apathy. Despite these de-
pressing factors, the Indian still remains the
strongest of the racial elements, surviving alike his
own vices and living conditions and the diseases
of the white man. The mestizo, almost in direct
ratio with the increase of his white strain, is phys-
ically weaker, and, despite his improved living con-
ditions, as a race is actually less resistant to the
Mexican climate than the Indian. The white, as
always in tropical lands, with difficulty holds his
own.
More obvious, then, than race persistence, but
linked inexorably with it, is the factor of health
and its effect on the Mexican character and Mexi-
can achievement. No person who is continually
sick can be happy or can achieve greatly. No
nation with such an overwhelming death-rate and
thus sick rate can be an agreeable or active mem-
ber of the councils of nations. Mexican race can-
not be changed; its slow developments move on
with the inevitability of a glacier. But Mexican
health can be improved, and in its improvement
the white world will have much to say and much
to accomplish. If, in years to come, through gov-
ernment or private initiative, such work as was
done by the American army doctors during the
108
VITALITY
Vera Cruz occupation, or as is being done in South
America and the Orient by such elements as the
Rockefeller Institute, shall come to Mexico, the
outside world will have done mightier things than
diplomacy and economic pressure can dream of.
VI
CASTES AND CLASSES
FROM colonial times Mexico's social organization
has been characterized by distinct caste or class
lines. Formerly these followed race divisions al-
most identically, and to this day parallels of class
and race go deep into the fabric of Mexican life.
To understand the significance of race we must
uncover these deep-grown associations;* to under-
stand the cohesive elements in Mexico's population
we must understand their relations to race.
When the Spaniards came, they brought this one
definite and ineradicable class cleavage. The Span-
iard was a white man, the Indian was a dark man,
and the white man, whatever his social standing at
home, whatever his occupation or rank, was the
superior of any Indian. Effort was made by the
king to preserve a recognition of the Indian aristoc-
racy, but this lasted hardly a generation, and soon
the race distinctions had stratified into the Spanish-
American caste system. The colonial social struc-
ture recognized four grand divisions, first: the
peninsular es, or Spaniards born in Spain ; second,
the castes, including the native-born whites and all
no
CASTES AND CLASSES
the mixtures of Spaniards with Indians and ne-
groes; third, the Indians; and, fourth, the negroes.
These strata persisted even beyond the expulsion'
of the peninsulares, and it is upon them that the.
social fabric of Mexico is built to-day.
The castes at the close of the sixteenth ^century,
when they had taken definite form, were as follows:
Children of Spanish men and Spanish womenT-creoles
Children of Spaniard and Indian mestizqg
Children of Spaniard and mestizo castizos
Children of Spaniard and castizo espanoles^
Children of Spaniard and negro mulattos
Children of Spaniard and mulatto moriscos, or Moors
Children of Indian and negro zambee
The castes and classes of the colonial period were,
then, definitely racial. The Spanish whites de-
spised the Indians and looked down on the Creoles
and mestizos with degrees of superiority varied
directly in proportion to their Indian blood. The
Creoles considered the Spanish-born whites as their
only equals. The mestizos were arrogant toward
the Indians and servile to the whites. The Indians
and negroes hated the whites and despised the
mestizos.
Not a pretty picture, this, but a fair presentation
of the feelings which marked, and indeed had no
small part in creating, the colonial caste divisions
just noted, divisions which continued with little
variation well into the period of independence.
The attempt to eliminate the " color line" and to
inject a semblance of democracy into Mexican
social institutions was largely responsible for the
S in
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
change from " caste" to " class" divisions, a change
without significance in the beginning, and with little
significance even now, when the Mexican census
takers vary it only to call the obvious upper class
" white," the middle class " mestizo" and the lowest
classes " Indian." There are distinct reasons for
these race parallels. In the beginning is the now
accepted fact that the caste and class divisions of
Mexico do not go back to the Aztecs. There was
in pre-Hispanic Mexico no hereditary nobility and
no distinct class divisions except of the most
primitive sort, certainly nothing approximating
the elaborate social system which appeared early
in the Spanish regime, a fact borne out by the ap-
parent absence of caste lines within the distinctively
Indian groups to-day.
The caste, and hence the present class, system of
Mexico was brought in by the Spaniards, giving the
dying feudal system of Europe a new lease of life
in the New World. There were rapid shiftings of
social position due to great wealth acquired in the
mines and through royal grants of property and
slaves, but to the end of the colonial regime no
creole could hold high ecclesiastical office or the
higher positions in the colonial government, and
perhaps most significant of all, the new heiresses of
the white aristocracy almost never married Creoles;
"a husband and fine linen come only from Spain,"
as an old proverb had it.
Below the pure whites, Spaniards and Creoles,
came the lower castes. The divisions were origi-
nally created by law, and at one time education was
112
CASTES AND CLASSES
allowed the mestizos only when they were the recog-
nized descendants of Spanish soldiers.
Caste gripped Mexico in yet another way in the
guilds which grew up under the viceroys. The
most powerful were those of the clergy and the
military, but physicians, miners, merchants, pot-
ters, even, all had their guilds and each guild its
fuero, or special court, in which all matters dealing
with members had to be adjudicated. The clergy
with its great patronage became the most powerful
of all the guilds, and at least from the social view-
point the important feature of the Reform under
Juarez was rather the abolition of the fueros with
their caste privileges than even the nationaliza-
tion of Church property or the religious upheaval.
The force of land ownership early came into the
Mexican social scheme as a determinant of class
regroupings. In Spanish times the number of land
owners was very small and in their hands (and in
the hands of the Church) was concentrated prac-
tically all of the real property of the colony, while
the remainder of the population was almost with-
out possessions. This gave a solid support for the
caste system, but the emphasis on property, com-
bined with the very instability of wealth in a new
country, was powerful in the change from caste to
class divisions.
The great haciendas helped to create a landed
gentry upon which the upper class still depends,
for through all Mexican history the haciendas have
been the symbol of aristocracy. The middle class;
probably had its origin in a desire for emulation of
113
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the rich and powerful, for the middle class of Mexico
had its beginnings not in the time of Diaz, but in
the days of the viceroys. Wealth was the privilege
of the whites, but position, and with it opportunity,
could also be enjoyed by the lower Creoles and the
mestizos. The desire for possessions and for place
created, in the colonial era, the class of office-
holders, or " bureaucrats," as the Mexicans call
them, who were the first bourgeois of Mexico, a
type as characteristic as the bourgeois of France,
and at first composed largely of mestizo sons of
Spanish officials. The creation of small nests of
capital, either by graft in office or by business, gave
the means first for acquiring Indian communal
lands under redistribution plans, or bits of ancient
haciendas after disastrous revolutions. First ap-
pearing in the early days, the increase in the number
of ranches has gone on steadily, but the owners have
not often been Indians, but rather the new ranchero
class, usually mestizo, and usually definitely ambi-
tious for social place and honor. In 1856 there were
2,860 great haciendas, the property of aristocracy,
and about the same number of ranches, while in
1910 there were 8,872 haciendas, 26,607 ranches,
and 2,479 small ranches, not counting the small
Indian farms. We must, indeed, recognize the
element of land ownership l as one of the great
originating elements of the middle class of Mexico.
The ranchero, who is described at great length
and with much dramatic effect in Mexican histories,
1 Land distribution is discussed more fully in part ii, chap x,
Conditions of Labor.
114
CASTES AND CLASSES
forms an interesting group from which have sprung
the bandits and many of the revolutionary leaders.
As far back as 1906, in talking with men of this type
in far-off Tabasco, the writer learned 'that it was
chiefly the political aspect of their class which in-
terested them they considered themselves a "new
aristocracy," yet to come into its own. The peace
of Diaz was to them, even at that tune, an ephem-
eral condition and predictions of the revolution
and the chaos following the passing of the great
dictator were freely indulged in. Essentially self-
ish, but with a germ of true national consciousness,
the attitude of these men was extremely significant
as indicating the class bias which is now sowing
and reaping the whirlwind of revolution.
In the cities and towns the lower middle classes
and the upper lower classes were formerly trades-
men and small manufacturers, but the creation of
a working middle class of Mexicans through indus-
trial labor and organization belongs almost alone
to the Diaz regime. The Mexicanization of the
railways gave a tremendous impetus to the rise of
artisans and lower executives, and in the later days
of Diaz there was evolved, literally as the world
looked on, a distinct class of Mexican machinists
and trainmen, the conductors and brakemen being
mostly mestizos, and the mechanics and enginemen
largely Indians. In the training schools of the
National Railways alone over 22,000 young Mexican
peons were turned into skilled mechanics and engine-
men, the nucleus of a producing middle class, in the
course of some twenty years of American tutelage.
115
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Thus it appears that, although race was the first
determinant of class in Mexico, tradition, posses-
sions, and industry have varied its effects. Never-
theless, while the " color line" has theoretically
disappeared, class distinctions of to-day are still so
sharpened by race as to be almost parallel to race
groupings. The upper class is white, or nearly so,
and includes practically all of the Mexicans of pure
European lineage, but in it also are some of clear
Indian stock, and it is doubtful whether the ma-
jority of the upper classes was not of mixed blood
under Diaz, as what passed for "upper classes"
certainly was under Carranza. On the other hand,
although the lower classes are overwhelmingly
Indian, the very lowest type of Mexicans are a
group of fairly light mestizos, a strain of degenerates
so numerous as to be given a distinct name leperos.
The middle class is mostly mestizo, and yet there
are thousands of pure Indians who are properly
included in this group of Mexicans who are rising
by their own efforts.
Culturally, the race parallel in Mexican classes is
largely through two lines education and dress.
For generations, the children of the Mexican whites
have been educated, as far as could be, in Europe
and the United States, and where that was not pos-
sible, in private, usually Roman Catholic, schools.
From the beginning of Spanish rule, some of the
mestizo children were especially provided for by
institutions supported by the Crown but the
beneficiaries were only a few, and to this day the
narrowness of the mestizo middle class is traceable
116
CASTES AND CLASSES
in no small degree to the limitations of its educa-
tional opportunities. The Indian has always been
left almost to his own devices and to the limited
teaching which the Church could give; under
Spanish rule he was usually taught practically noth-
ing but religion and the rules of politeness belonging
to his class. The thirty years of the Diaz rule,
with its pitifully inadequate educational program,
mark the only era in which any attempt was made
to break down this educational cleavage.
The dress of the Mexican does not concern us
just here l but it suffices that from the London and
Paris styles of the upper class, through the grada-
tions of sartorial distinctions conferred on the
mestizo middle class by native tailors down to the
flowing white cotton pantaloons of the Indian, class
and race lines are marked with the inevitability
with which* the cut of of a Frenchman's smock
announces hi& calling.
Although at first glance the complicated class
divisions which are set down by Mexican sociolo-
gists seem due to their Latin joy in delicate dis-
tinctions, the student of Mexican life early finds
that these divisions are ingrained in the minds of
the whole people. 2
The very lowest class Mexicans are the leperos,
the pariah mestizos, who have marked the country
1 See part ii, chap, viii, Clothing.
2 Judge Julio Guerrero's interesting book, La Genesis del Crimen
en Mexico (Mexico, 1908), and, to a lesser degree, Andres Molina
Enriquez's Las Grandes Problemas Nacionales (Mexico, 1912),
may be taken in general as the authorities for the class divisions
described below, though the scaling is new.
117
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
in the foreign mind as a land where the natives touch
water only on St. John's Day. They have no as-
sured livelihood, and earn with difficulty the twenty
or thirty centavos a day which keep body and soul
together. They are mostly town dwellers, are sub-
ject to all manner of diseases, and almost invariably
die in early life. Their language is an almost unin-
telligible argot, a combination of Spanish and Indian
adorned with vile metaphors. Many of the lepe-
ros are astonishingly white, apparently showing a
large admixture of Spanish blood, although this
may be in reality an indication of the separation of
the strain into its primordial types through inter-
breeding with close relatives, and thus of itself a
physical sign of the degeneracy which their lives
indicate. 1
The lowest class of Indians includes not only
the lower city types, but also a large number of
those who still live in their distant villages and have
almost no contact with the world outside, so that
their social value is practically nothing. These
village dwellers produce enough food for themselves,
but none whatever for the market, and where they
have found their way into the cities live in crowded
hovels, degenerated by the alcohol and the diseases
of the white man.
Slightly above the leperos and the low-caste
Indians come the soldiers and their women, a class
of Indians and mestizos practically unintelligent
save on the animal plane, but the men wearing
presentable clothes and the women camp followers
1 See p. 41,
118
CASTES AND CLASSES
showing some improvement over the women of the
lepero class.
From the soldier the transition, still in the lower
class, is easy to the unskilled " slave" laborers of the
haciendas, Indians and mestizos, some of them fair
workers, essentially animal in instincts and appe-
tites, yet imbued with certain ambitions. On the
man's part we find here the desire for a great som-
brero, and for prestige as a gambler and as a person
of bravado, especially when he is in his cups. The
women begin wearing copper and ebony finger rings,
and silk handkerchiefs draped over their dirty rags
indicate the beginnings of adornment. The men of
this class, both Indians and mestizos, wear white
pantaloons and shirt, and the women nondescript
dark cotton dresses topped with the eternal blue
cotton reboso.
The free, unskilled laborers are slightly above
this group. These are the men who earned about
a peso a day in the tune of Diaz, and who main-
tained some semblance of a household. The men
of this class in the cities have begun to wear cloth
trousers tight at the ankles and blouses instead of
the white cotton suits just described, although they
still wear sandals instead of shoes. The women
wear long dresses of printed cotton, their hair is
combed and braided, and, while they usually go
barefooted, on state occasions they appear in high
patent-leather shoes, but without stockings. There
is some legal marriage in this group, but it is not
common. The women are faithful to one man at a
time, however, and are generally religious. The
119
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
men usually have several affairs on hand which
cause frequent quarrels and often bloodshed. In
the cities this class lives in the unhealthful casas
de vecindad where single rooms furnish a home for
eight or ten people at a time. They are entirely
illiterate and often know nothing of the world be-
yond the immediate neighborhood in which they
live and work. The use of artificial light begins
with this class, and there is some furniture, first a
rough table and chairs, even a bed of boards with a
thin straw mattress.
Next above come the Indians of better breed, the
enterprising truck farmers of the city suburbs, the
makers of baskets and pottery, a most important
and interesting division of the aboriginal popula-
tion, men and women of a degree of genuine intelli-
gence, hopeful, intent on their work, living lives
circumscribed by tradition and by ignorance, but
capable of development, able to discuss their own
small affairs, their own legends and superstitions,
with native wit and shrewd appraisal of the listener.
These are all native types, unmixed with white
blood, but clean, self-respecting, and capable of
real development under wise educational methods,
could those be continued through several of their
short generations.
Above this class come the servants. They are
paid low salaries but receive money with which to
buy for themselves their tortillas, beans and chile,
for they do not eat or like the more delicate foods
of the upper classes. Industrial workers were
being recruited from this class in the closing years
120
CASTES AND CLASSES
of the Diaz regime, and it was distinctly a feeding
ground for the lower reaches of the middle class.
An interesting division is the country Mexicans
who work as servants in the cities, saving their
money in order to return in wealth to their home
villages. These are found in all cities, and especially
in the capital, and indicate the growth of forward-
looking ambition. They usually work as husband
and wife and have been married in the church. In
this class are both mestizos and Indians, the former
predominating.
In the industrial field the employees are still to
be considered as belonging to the lower stratum, for
there is only the faint beginning of industrial ambi-
tion, and the limitations of class are heavy on the
minds of the workers. The disturbing factors of
socialism and the political chaos in Mexico to-day
are transforming many members of this class, but
the group itself remains, the more ambitious ones
merely passing into other divisions. The simple-
minded factory worker toils on stolidly, poorly paid
as we judge it, but better than he has ever been at
anything else. This class remains at its work,
strangely enough, through all the turmoil of revo-
lution, the firm, lower class upon whom such a land
as Mexico must still depend for a few years longer.
From these we move into the middle class proper,
if we may make the arbitrary division. And at* the
bottom may be placed the policeman of the cities
and the rural police (of the Diaz time) of the coun-
try. Here is a man who can read and write a little,
and on his shoulders his responsibilities rest with a
121
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Castilian pompousness, perhaps, but still with
some degree of safety for the commonwealth. Next
comes the new class of skilled artisans, distinctively
the growth of the Diaz regime, and typified by the
railway employees, both mestizos and Indians, who
carried on the traffic of the steel highways with
some efficiency as the Americans were gradually
replaced after the merger which created the Na-
tional Railways of Mexico in 1908, though, since
the expulsion of all foreign executives in 1914, their
success has not been so marked. Noncommis-
sioned officers of the old army, the clerks in the
stores and the small shopkeepers, the real begin-
nings of the middle class of the republic, follow in
ascending grade.
This lower middle class should also include the
lower clergy, who are often placed in the lower class,
although, with all their defects, they are to a certain
extent educated, and although poorly paid and not
always carefully selected, do wear shoes an un-
failing mark of class distinction in Mexico. These
priests and curates are Indians or low-caste mestizos.
In dress the lower middle class is distinguished by
shoes and by ponderous black felt hats, while the
women wear the black merino shawl instead of the
eternal blue cotton reboso of the peon women, have
calico dresses, worn very long, also in unmistakable
cut. Corsets and lingerie are almost unknown, but
they use handkerchiefs, as do the men, and knives
and forks, though napkins are in the distant cul-
tural future. The residence is in a flat or tiny hut
of two or three rooms, fairly clean and furnished.
122
CASTES AND CLASSES
Masculine fidelity is not frequent, but the women
are faithful and good Catholics.
The upper ranks of the middle class include the
government clerks and minor officials, the " bureau-
crats" who go back to the mestizo government em-
ployes of colonial times. They approximate the
English clerk class in many ways, live and dress
well, have distinct codes and manners, and are
extremely ambitious socially.
In times of revolution, the bureaucratic division
of Mexican society suffers from strange and aston-
ishing invasions. All the generals and bandits who
rise to power invade the cities and seek and achieve
recognition and welcome from the often cringing
politicians. Quite incapable of entering the ranks
of the intellectuals or the aristocracy, they are igno-
rant of the existence of the former at least and con-
tent themselves with basking in the light of the so-
ciety of the bureaucrats and their families. But
these temporary accessions almost all ultimately
slip back in the scale, for they find the exactions of
bourgeois society very wearing.
The men of the bureaucratic class are well dressed
in the native variants of European style, as far as
their incomes allow, and their women follow the
Mexican version of Parisian fashions. All the
foibles of the hour are found, often worn only as a
badge of position before the outside world, but at
least owned and enjoyed as such.
At this point in the class scale we find the first
foreigners. The Spanish clerks are the lowest, but
their long hours of labor in the grocery stores often
123
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
result in their accumulating a small capital and
perhaps marrying the daughters of their employers
or middle-class Mexican girls, settling down and
remaining as part of the Mexican middle class of
merchants.
Next come the Frenchmen, in the pre-revolution
days typified by the dry -goods clerks, called
" calicoes, " an unstable, non-marrying class which
seldom remains long in Mexico. The French colony
of business men is, however, a substantial and pow-
erful element, ranking with the best English and
Americans.
The Germans are next in the scale, having come
to Mexico as clerks and accountants, learning
Spanish quickly and thoroughly, and settling down
in Mexico, very often marrying Mexican girls of
wealth. Germans have always wielded consider-
able power in Mexico, and under Carranza, owing to
political machinations, were the most important
element of the foreign population.
The Americans and the English stand at the head
of the list of foreigners. Under Diaz the Ameri-
cans were divided, not only in their own cliques, but
also in the Mexican mind, into a lower grade repre-
sented by the railway men and, as it happened, the
fakers, adventurers, and tramps, and the higher
ranks represented by the railway executives, bank-
ers, business men, and those interested in industries.
The latter, with whom must be ranked most of the
British in Mexico before the 1910 revolution, un-
doubtedly wielded much influence, due to their
financial standing and their genuine interest in and
124
CASTES AND CLASSES
identification with the development of the country.
The Mexicans, however, justly regarded them as
temporary residents and noted their inability to
mix socially with the natives, and the extremely few
international marriages.
The true upper class of the Mexicans themselves
is made up first of the members of the professions,
a numerous group of lawyers, doctors, engineers,
teachers, artists, newspaper men, etc. Like China,
Mexico gives rank and place to all who would be-
come her mandarins of professional life, no matter
what their origin. A vast majority of these pro-
fessional men have no standing as intellectuals, and
do not seek it, but, because of their education and
degrees, take definite social place.
Above the mass of professional men, but below the
true intellectuals, come the business men, who were
interested, often with foreigners in the old days, in
national enterprises. This class of " self-made
men" was one of the great achievements of the
Diaz regime, and it is to these whites and mestizos
who have got close to Mexico's problems that we
must look for the practical side of the regeneration
of the country. After the passing of Diaz, and
during the brief rules of de la Barra and Madero,
they sprang to the front with working theories on
the more idealistic side of the lines in which they
had been engaged in the days of Diaz, and to-day
many of them, in exile, are continuing their plans
against the time when they may return to work
them out.
Next above come the true intellectuals of Mexico,
125
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
a group of men not confined to the capital by any
means, but well educated in the Latin sense, keen
students of their country and its problems, men
capable of taking a place in any company, scientists,
philosophers, teachers, writers, poets, archaeologists,
sociologists, and economists.
The aristocracy, based on heritage of blood and
property, stand at the top. Here are most of the
hacendados and many of the government officials
under the old regime almost all now in exile, but
an important part of the Mexican social organiza-
tion. These upper classes, practically all Spanish
Creoles, as one has said, " preserve the graces of the
Bourbon period of France" with charm and ele-
gance. When they have dabbled in business other
than the management of their great farms or
haciendas, they are often successful, and in the ele-
gant arts and the elegant professions of the law
and the Church, have attained not a little of the
perfection of accomplishment which fills the imagina-
tion and suits the picture of true aristocracy. As
a rule, this class has never occupied itself with poli-
tics, but has left to the middle class the determining
of policies and the carrying out of revolutions.
There are, of course, genuine and significant excep-
tions. Those capable aristocrats whom Diaz gath-
ered around him were men of birth and genuine
executive ability. Whatever may have been said
regarding their probity or their wisdom, the mag-
nificent efforts which they devoted to the great
Mexican problems during this period more than
outweigh the criticisms which have been showered
126
CASTES AND CLASSES
upon them. That they were aristocrats to the
bone, that their attitude may have been at variance
with modern sociology, that their economics may
have been faulty, that their business instincts may
have been archaic, does not change the fact that
the Mexican aristocracy had a tremendous respon-
sibility and to a certain extent its individuals ful-
filled that responsibility.
This group has been destroyed or scattered from
Mexico by her political upheavals. Practically no
strong men of high type have appeared in the
revolutionary horizon, and, indeed, in the whole
Mexican field to-day there is no true upper class.
The aristocrats are in exile, the intellectuals who
gave color and idealism to the Madero revolution
have either died at the hands of the bloody suc-
cessors of Madero or are in exile like the old aristo-
crats, stigmatized as reactionaries. All this may
indeed be the fault of the men who surrounded Diaz
and who failed to lift the level of the dull, unthinking
mass toward their own intelligence, the recurrence
of the age-old failure of those in power to raise up a
generation of strong men to succeed them.
It seems, however, that in this, as in all else in
Mexico, we must trace our way slowly back to
race, to the long lethargy and apathy of racial
stratification, and see not the failure to do more,
but the wonder that they could do so much. For
three hundred years Mexican race castes evolved
slowly into the Mexican class divisions we have seen
here; for only thirty years was it possible, on the
social plane, to apply modern government and
9 127
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
sociology to the problem. Race built the solid
wall to which caste and class have conformed them-
selves, and back to race we must go again for our
understanding of the class line and for the solution
which will some day be found a solution of race
and of education, the elements through an under-
standing of which came the brief development of
that middle class of artisans who are to-day lending
almost all there is of stability to Mexican govern-
ment by bandit and bureaucrat.
PART II
HOW THEY LIVE
CLIMATE
MEXICO lies in the midst of the Americas, a
great cornucopia, but the riches and the fruits
hidden therein do not pour forth with the prodigality
of legend. The mouth of the cornucopia is rigidly
upright, symbolic of the situation throughout the
history of this traditional treasure house. For
four hundred years Mexico has stood in the vocabu-
laries of those who have talked of her as a horn of
plenty, a land lavish beyond dreams, but she has
yet to record the real pouring forth of any gar-
gantuan riches. Gold and silver, yes; but gold and
silver, and the oil which to-day rivals the minerals
in production, are the impersonal, tangible wealth
which belongs to the world and to anyone who can
carry it away. The wealth that pours from cornu-
copias is the wealth of fruits and grains, of fabrics
and of manufactures, the wealth that is essen-
tially and personally that of the people and of the
nation.
Since the days of the conquerors Mexico has been
thus extravagantly described, and yet, since those
days and long before them she has proven anything
131
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
but a horn of plenty for the inhabitants of the land.
Despite the wealth which has been wrung from
beneath her soil from mines and oil wells, she must
rank as an essentially poor country. Lying almost
entirely in the tropics, where, theoretically, fruits
and flowers grow in profusion, in reality nearly
three-fourths of Mexico is desert, and of the en-
tire area of about 500,000,000 acres not over 25,-
000,000 acres can be called suitable for the pro-
duction of the agricultural products which the
people need.
Climate is the chief detemiinant of the conditions
under which Mexico's inhabitants must live, the
overwhelming element of her environment. That
the zone of achievement which belts our globe is
confined almost entirely to the north temperate
zone is no mere accident of topography or race dis-
tribution. In that zone there are benignant winter
snows which nurture the cereal crops, and .summer
suns that ripen them; there is a broad distribution
of rainfall throughout the year; there are clay sub-
soils and vegetable molds and great river systems
with rich valleys and well-drained highlands. In
tropical Mexico there is no winter season. The
climate varies from scorching desert to dank
jungle, and from the glaring sands of the Gulf to
the delightfully equable seasons of the mountain
slopes, but snow never falls upon her wheat fields
and rain comes either in a short, uncertain "rainy
season" or in tropic torrents that vitiate agriculture
by their unhappy abundance.
Overwhelming is the influence of rainfall in
132
CLIMATE
Mexico, but behind it are the five great factors
which always determine the relation of climate to
human progress. The first of these is the mean or
average temperature in its relation to physical
energy; second the mean temperature as related
to mental activity; third, the variation and range
in temperature; fourth, humidity; fifth, altitude.
The ideal climate has a mean summer temperature
of 65, giving the season most favorable to physical
exertion, and a winter temperature of 40, the great-
est stimulant to mental activity. The ideal varia-
tion in temperature would give some warm days in
winter and some cool days in summer, produced by
such ordinary storms as vary the climate in the
United States and England. The favorable condi-
tion of humidity is about 60 per cent at noon in
summer and nearly 100 per cent at night, produc-
ing dews after sundown. The ideal of the fifth
point would be an altitude of not more than 3,000
feet. 1
Mexico has three distinct types of climate, to be
found in three definite geological zones. The tierra
caliente, or hot country, is the lowland section along
the coasts from sea level to an altitude of 3 ; 000
feet, where the yearly average temperature is be-
1 These limitations of the "optima" of climatic efficiency are
those of Prof. Ellsworth Huntington of Yale, the great American
climatologist. Much of the climatic data in this chapter is also
due to his courtesy and to his published and unpublished material,
including "The Relation of Health to Racial Capacity The Ex-
ample of Mexico," Geographical Review, 1920, and "The Factor of
Health in Mexican Character," read at the Clark University Con-
ference on Mexico and the Caribbean, 1920.
133
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
tween 76 and 88 Fahrenheit. The Mexican in-
cludes in the hot country not only the lowlands
south of the Tropic of Cancer, but the whole coastal
plain up to Matamoras on the Gulf of Mexico and
to California on the Pacific. The tierra templada
lies along the mountain slopes and in the lower
plateaus, including the sections whose altitude is
between 3,000 and 6,500 feet and where the annual
mean temperatures are between 65 and 76. This
climatic zone includes most of the area of the north-
ern deserts as well as the finer southern mountain
slopes and lower plateaus. The tierra fria, or cold
country, includes the high plateaus and' the moun-
tains, the section of Mexico lying between 6,500
and 12,500 feet altitude, where the yearly aver-
age temperatures vary from 30 to 64, although
in reality the temperatures of the populated sec-
tions are generally 50 or above. The three
climatic zones each cover approximately one-
third of the area of the country. About half
the inhabitants live in the cold zone, and roughly
a quarter each in the temperate and the hot
country.
The three zones naturally have differing relations
to the climatic factors set down above, but it should
be remembered that these differences are due more
to altitude than to latitude. The following table,
taken from official reports, gives a picture of the
relation of mean temperatures and seasonal range
to these elements of latitude and altitude. The
table is arranged with the most northerly towns
first, the most southerly last:
134
CLIMATE
MEAN TEMPERATURES
SEASONAL
RANGE
ALTITUDE
Coldest
Warmest
MatamorQ
Monterrey.
Saltillo
Fahrenheit
63
56
53
54
52
55
72
53
70
63
75
Fahrenheit
84
85
73
73
66
71
83
65
82
73
82
Fahrenheit
21
29
20
19
14
16
11
12
12
10
7
Sea level
1,600 feet
5,400 "
6,200 "
8,200 "
6,200 "
Sea level
7,500 feet
Sea level
5,162 feet
Sea level
Durango
Zacatecas
San Luis Potosi . . .
Merida
Mexico City ....
Vera Cruz
Oaxaca
Salina Cruz
The first and second of the five climatic elements
mentioned are the mean temperature in its relation
to physical and mental energy, 65 being the best
for the former and 40 for the latter. At Vera
Cruz the mean temperature of the coldest months
of the year is 70, which is 5 higher than that favor-
able to physical health and 30 above that which is
best for mental activity, while in summer the aver-
age is about 85, which is more than 10 higher
than the hottest month in N*ew York City. In
general, in the hot country, the body struggles with
a temperature averaging 20 higher than its best
efficiency, but the brain, with the handicap of 40
more than the relatively mild winters of the tem-
perate zone, tends literally to stagnate. In Mexico
City, on the plateau, the coldest month averages
53, which is 13 higher than the best temperature
for mental activity, and the warmest month is 65,
which would be the ideal for physical exertion, if
altitude and humidity were not unfavorable.
In the most densely populated section of Mexico.
135
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
in the so-called "cold country/' the coolest month
does not average below 50, which is the tem-
perature of April in New York City, and half the
people of Mexico live where the coolest months
average 60, the temperature of May in New York.
In addition to the low stimulus of this temperature
to mental activity, the monotony of the endless
spring days which it predicates has another effect
on physical health, for it seems to make the Mexi-
cans and even the foreigners who have long resided
there extremely sensitive to cold, so that they have
little power of resisting even the relatively mild
chill which accompanies the " northers" or pre-
vailing storms from the Gulf of Mexico.
It is the location of Mexico within the tropics
that is responsible for the enervating sameness of
temperature which gives almost the whole country
the most debilitating type of weather from the view-
point of variety. There is little variation in tem-
perature even hi the procession of the seasons, and
winter and summer are but slightly distinguished
even in the cooler regions. The northern part of
the country is in the temperate zone, but even there
the difference between the coolest and warmest
months is but 25, which is only one half the sea-
sonal variation of Chicago. In tropical Mexico
(and this includes both "hot country" and "cold
country," for both are below the Tropic of Cancer)
the seasonal variation is only 10 to 15, a quarter
of the seasonal variation of New York. In Mexico
City (altitude 7,500 feet), for instance, the differ-
ences in mean temperatures between January and
136
CLIMATE
May, the coldest and warmest months, is 13, while
in Vera Cruz, at sea level, the similar difference is
12, for the two cities are in the same latitude.
There is a considerable variation, however, be-
tween day and night on the high plateau as well as
in the north, though in the lowlands night and day
are much alike. There is about 25 difference be-
tween day and night in such plateau towns as
Oaxaca and Zacatecas, but at Vera Cruz the average
is but 6. This variation might do much to save
the health and energy of the plateau dwellers if
it were not for the custom of shutting themselves
up at night and covering their mouths and noses
whenever they go out into the night air. There is
a tradition in Mexico that the night air is poisonous,
and surely it tends to become so when one refrains
from sleeping or going out in it. However, no one
who maintains fresh-air habits in Mexico suffers
from the night air.
In contrast with the variation between night and
day is the practical uniformity of one day after
another. The average change is less than 2
Fahrenheit, so that one can predict the type of day
from one year's end to another. In the United
States the change from day to day is three or more
times that of Mexico. The only daily variations
in temperature come in the sudden " northers/'
whose changes are likely to be more dangerous
than healthful, and in the brief respite from summer
heat which follows the showers of the " rainy
season." The "cold country" is often visited by
frosts in the winter, but these are disastrously un-
137
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
certain and have almost no stimulating effect,
owing to the traditional fear of night air. So com-
plete is the sameness of the temperature that vic-
tims of " colds" at almost any season in the Mexican
highlands find a trip to the tierra templada indis-
pensable in order to get the change needed for a
cure.
The humidity of Mexico could hardly be more
disadvantageous to health, physical and mental.
In the rainy season the saturation of the air often
reaches 95 per cent even in the "cold country,"
and in the dry season it falls to virtually nothing.
In the "hot country" summer air reeks with con-
tinued moisture, and the combination of high tem-
perature and a water-soaked atmosphere is ex-
tremely depressing; in the dry season, whether on
the northern deserts or on the plateau, the lack of
moisture in the air seems nerve racking and destruc-
tive to mental poise. 1
In altitude, the hot country of Mexico, being
close to sea level, is well below the 3,000-foot
maximum limit for the best climatic efficiency, and
so furnishes the one favorable condition in this
section. On the other hand, on the table-lands of
tropical Mexico, the elevation, well above the
efficient limit, is the chief deterrent factor, and the
favorable feature is the fact that the mean tem-
perature of 65, as well as the averages for winter
(about 55) and for summer (about 70), are close
to the ideal for physical health. Here the Indians
are strong and hardy, but the endless train of
MX E. Huntington, World Power and Evolution, p. 85.
138
CLIMATE
delightful but unstimulating days combines with
the wearing altitude to reduce the vitality of the
more nervous types, so that we find prevalent a
physical laxity surprisingly like that of the lazy hot
country. The result, then, is that, as far as his
general attitude toward life is concerned, the Mexi-
can is very much the same the country over, the
only difference being in the physical strength and
endurance (though without great energy) of Indians
of the high plateaus, which has been traditional
since the days of Cortez. Among the whites and
many of the mixed bloods the combination of alti-
tude and dryness has a definite effect on the nervous
system, and the traditional excitability and in-
stability of the Creoles may, therefore, have a clear
climatic explanation.
This is the background of temperature, humidity,
and altitude upon which the yet more important
factor of rainfall is thrown into relief. The rainy
season all over Mexico extends roughly from June
to September, and the dry season from October to
May. Still well north of the equator, Mexico has
practically the same divisions of the four seasons
as in the United States, but these seasons in Mexico
are marked by rain and drought more sharply than
by the variation in temperature. Without going
too deeply into the reasons for the rainfall condi-
tions in Mexico, we may summarize Professor
Huntington's analysis of the three main climatic
conditions of Mexico; first, the summer rains due
to the vertical rays of the sun at that season;
second, the great stretches of desert in the north.
139
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
due to the same conditions of trade winds and high
barometric pressure which make the Sahara desert;
and third, the winter storms which are popularly
called " northers." The direct rays of the sun fall-
ing upon the central portion of Mexico in summer
heat the earth and thus the air; the heated air
rises rapidly and the sudden expansion brings
about the condensation of moisture into clouds and
rain. The great stretches of desert in the north
are the result not only of the general circulation of
the atmosphere, but also of the mountain contour
combined with the distance from the eastern sea-
shore and the influence of the so-called continental
type of climate which has formed the American
desert farther north. The " northers" are the
fringes of the storms which sweep over the United
States in winter and sometimes carry frost as far
south as Florida.
The obvious results of these three climatic ten-
dencies are the contrast between the very wet
southern portion of the country and the very dry
northern; the very wet rainy season and the dry,
almost rainless winter; the contrast between the
eastern slopes of the mountains, which are moist,
and the dry western slopes, and the contrast be-
tween the usual warm sunny winter days and the
occasionally raw, chilly ones which are to the Mexi-
can more trying than is zero weather to the natives
of the temperate zone.
The rains usually fall during the rainy season for
a few hours in the early afternoon, and are accom-
panied by thunder and lightning. In the south the
140
CLIMATE
rainfall is often almost continuous, but there are
sometimes intermissions, after which the rain seems
to come with renewed vigor, sometimes a fall of
six inches in thirty-six hours following a period of
drought. In the central regions of Mexico the
rainfall is moderate and fairly well marked by the
seasons, so that it is here that agriculture flourishes
and the centers of population have grown up.
Here the rainfall is about the same for the year as
in the United States from thirty to fifty inches.
On the west coast and in the north the rainfall is
very slight, western Sonora, for instance, ranging
from five to thirteen inches, while Lower California
is sometimes dry for years on end. The length of
the wet season varies with the annual rainfall, from
seven months (October to May) on the plateau,
with thirty to fifty inches a year, to ten months in
the jungles of Chiapas, where there are one hundred
inches a year.
Influencing rainfall and also the distribution of
arable land is the contour of the country. Two
thirds of all the territory of Mexico is covered by
mountain ranges. These are in the form of an
immense "Y," the two upper points skirting the
borders of the cornucopia, joining near the center
of the country and covering it broadly to the south.
On the eastern, or Gulf, side there is a wide coastal
plain, but on the west the mountains extend almost
to the Pacific. Between the two arms of the "Y"
in the north are the great desert stretches of Chi-
huahua, Coahuila, Durango, and Zacatecas. The
rainstorms of Mexico come generally from the Gulf
141
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of Mexico, and the eastern slopes of the Mexican
mountains are, therefore, well watered; the Gulf
coastal plain is covered with jungle growths for
almost its whole length, and the eastern sides of
the mountains are always a surprising contrast of
verdure to the western slopes. This seems due to
the fact that the winds blow almost invariably from
the east and northeast, the rains being precipitated
by the mountains, while the clouds rise to the
summit and pass over the western side without pre-
cipitation. The most important agricultural sec-
tions of Mexico, and at the same time the most
satisfactory regions for human habitation, are the
plateaus and valleys on the eastern mountain slopes
and the great table-land of south central Mexico,
which vary in altitude from 4,000 to 7,500 feet
and comprise the most densely populated and most
prosperous sections of the republic.
Although the contour of Mexico would indicate
that there should be great rivers, there are prac-
tically none. Half a dozen partially navigable
streams pour into the Gulf of Mexico, but the dis-
tance they traverse is, except in the case of those
of the state of Tabasco, so slight as to make them
of little value either for transportation or irrigation.
The rain which falls on the mountains in and around
the plateau country creates practically no rivers
save at the height of the downpour, the moisture
being absorbed in a porous soil, to be carried down
under the surface to points on the eastern face of the
mountains, where they spring out again, forming
sudden waterfalls and riotous mountain streams.
142
CLIMATE
The "hidden river" is a commonplace in Mexico, as
are great waterfalls which tempt the engineer to
dream of immense irrigation projects and great
water-power developments. But such engineering
enterprises have proven extremely and often un-
expectedly expensive, owing to the porousness of
the soil and the shortness and irregularity of the
rainy season. Immense storage facilities are vital
to any such plan in Mexico, as was discovered at
Necaxa (when the hydro-electric power for Mexico
City was developed). There it was found that
although an immense head of water about 1,300
feet could be obtained, dams in the narrow moun-
tain valleys could hold back only a small per-
centage of the water which came down in the tor-
rential rainy season. Attempts to hold water in
the plateau above were either ineffectual or ex-
tremely expensive, owing to the fact that, although
an ordinary dam would create a vast reservoir,
quantities of the impounded water would seep
through the soft soil and porous rock and actually
waste away into hidden springs and underground
rivers before it could be used for power generation.
There has, however, been irrigation in Mexico
from time immemorial. Many of the communal
lands of the Indians before the Spaniards came were
irrigated through long canals, and the distribution
of property was often upon the basis of the amount
of land which could be cultivated with the water
which was allowed the individual farmer in other
words, the water was the desirable property, and
the value of the land was recognized as dependent
10 143
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
on water rights. There was, however, no storage
against the dry season, and this irrigation was
practiced only where the streams, fed by springs,
flowed the year around, or where water could be
lifted from underground rivers by the crude native
foot wheels.
Toward the end of the Diaz regime a number of
franchises were given, mostly to foreigners, and the
sum of P90,000,000 also set aside for the develop-
ment of irrigation. Under the Mexican laws of
that period all such irrigation projects were allowed
only on the provision that the concessionaire on the
completion of his work should turn over to the
Federal government a large share of the irrigated
lands for distribution in small agricultural holdings;
in some cases the amount to be given the govern-
ment totaled more than a third of the lands which
were watered. This was the beginning of a thor-
oughly intelligent distribution of land, as under this
plan the property would be really available for cul-
tivation, in contrast with the revolutionary schemes
of redistributing land almost worked out or unirri-
gated land not adapted to the growing of food
crops. In a country like Mexico irrigation must be
done on a scale which only large capital or govern-
ment can compass, and without irrigation land dis-
tribution to farmers who have no capital has proven
worse than useless.
The complicated land question of Mexico is, in
the last analysis, one of climate and rainfall.
Mexico's agrarian problem has been succinctly
stated as being, not the mere distribution, but the
144
CLIMATE
actual creation of lands for the people. As noted
at the beginning of this chapter, only about 25,000,-
000 acres of the 500,000,000 of Mexico's area are
arable, a fact due primarily to rainfall and the other
factors of climate. Irrigation is the only means of
" creating" new sections of arable land, and land
distribution, legal or revolutionary, will not im-
prove conditions unless the land can be successfully
tilled.
Great sections of Mexico are arid; the state of
Chihuahua, 90,000 square miles in extent, has only
about 125,000 acres (two tenths of 1 per cent) of ara-
ble land, most of that irrigated, while other desert
states have only 2 per cent or 3 per cent of their
area under cultivation, a condition due far more to
rainfall conditions than to ruggedness or any other
factor. Even the production of the soil that is
cultivated in Mexico is not only low, but it is rapidly
decreasing, due to the wasteful extensive farming
methods (as contrasted with " intensive farming")?
in the creation of which weather conditions have
had much to do. Baron von Humboldt wrote in
1803 that the production of Mexican farms was
150 fold (that is, 150 grains of corn for every
grain sowed). This is estimated at about 86
bushels per acre. 1 To-day, on the other hand, an
average return in the typical agricultural district
about Monterrey (where the rainfall is twenty-two
1 This astonishing figure, astonishing in fact as well as in com-
parison with present Mexican corn crops, is given as the equivalent
of a 150-fold return by Francisco Bulnes in The Whole Truth
About Mexico, p. 44. Mexican farmers still count their yield
by the return per seed planted.
145
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
inches per year) is 7 bushels per acre for dry
farming, 15 for land under irrigation, and 25 bushels
per acre with selected seed on the fertilized and irri-
gated farms of a Canadian company, whose prize
plot of 70 acres produces 52 bushels per acre.
When it is remembered that over forty-five years,
good and bad, the whole state of Kansas averaged
22 bushels of corn per acre, that fair Kansas corn
land produces 35 bushels, and the best farms, over
their full area of 160 to 320 acres, 75 bushels per
acre, 1 one can gain some realization of the conditions
which the climate has forced on Mexico.
The figures for the Monterrey section are taken
because they not only show the poverty of ordinary
production, but the appalling scale of difference
between the dry-farming product, the ordinary irri-
gated, the well irrigated and fertilized, and the
"prize" sections where acclimated Kansas seed
corn is used. There are especially fine corn-growing
farms in Mexico where returns of 100 bushels per
acre are obtained from two crops, 50 bushels per
crop, but even there the rainfall conditions are such
that crops of this sort are harvested only once every
five to ten years. Average crops of the good corn-
raising sections of Mexico are 8 to 12 bushels per
acre, under dry-farming conditions. The use of
good seed and deep cultivation are to a very great
extent responsible where there are good showings,
but above all the climate and rainfall, including
both total precipitation and favorable distribution
1 Data furnished by J. C. Mohler, secretary, Kansas State
Board of Agriculture.
146
CLIMATE
throughout the growing season, are the chief
factors of every successful farming community.
The climate may thus be held largely responsible
for most of the poor crop conditions in Mexico.
Without irrigation the uncertain rainfall and the
fact that much of what falls is so irregular or comes
at such times as to be useless, create a condition
where intensive farming only adds to the expense
without making the crop any surer. The Mexican
dry farmer is the greatest of all gamblers, for
where in England a crop of 85 per cent of average
is a calamity and in Germany before the war a 90-
per-cent crop was a serious matter, the Mexican
farmer is not discouraged if he averages crops that
are but 25 per cent of normal. Farming in Mexico
is handled on the basis of " getting out" if there is
a good crop every seven years, and Mexican crop
experts hold that if intensive farming were fol-
lowed, the increased cost, with weather conditions
always against the farmer, would eat up all the
profit possible from the increased yield in the
good years.
Under these conditions most efforts to induce in-
tensive farming have been futile, and will remain so
until irrigation can be harnessed to give assurance
of the moisture which is the primary requisite of
all agriculture. Baron von Humboldt's conclusions
regarding the rich future of Mexico were un-
doubtedly based on the belief that intensive agricul-
ture could be made successful his rain statistics
were, in 1803, inadequate and most inexact. But
the country continues to-day, one hundred and
147
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
twenty years later, as she has for untold centuries,
on the plane of the most wasteful of extensive
cultivation, save only where irrigation has given
impetus to industry and where long tradition has
softened the crudeness of Indian wastefulness.
It is impossible in a work of this general character
to go farther into the land and crop problem, but
it should be noted that, owing to weather condi-
tions, the so-called ninety-day corn requires about
one hundred and twenty days to mature in the
temperate zones, and on the plateaus, where most
of the food crops are raised, it grows no more rapidly
than the ordinary varieties, requiring six or seven
months to ripen. This long growing season and
the danger of frosts in this section add another
factor to the uncertainty of climate. 1
For Mexico knows famine to her bitter cost.
The single phase of climate may not, indeed, be the
only factor which contributes to the recurring
ravages of hunger, but beside it such problems as
the system of land distribution, the difficulties of
communication and the customs which place one
third of the corn production in the hands of small
farmers who raise only enough for their personal
needs, are greatly minimized. Indeed, in the last
analysis, climate has much to do with these prob-
lems, for land distribution has been to a certain
extent determined by climate; the lack of rivers and
the poor roads certainly have a climatic first cause,
and the apathy of the Indian farmer, who hopelessly
plants only enough corn for himself because all the
1 Francisco Bulnes, op. tit. p. 47.
148
CLIMATE
odds are against his getting a crop anyway, is in
part at least due to the discouraging rainfall.
But in the larger sense we have seen climate and
above all inadequate rainfall as the great Nemesis
which ever hangs over Mexico, the most cruel and
evil genius of her destiny. Indian tradition reach-
ing back into farthest antiquity told of famines
succeeding one another, and one of the high spots
of Aztec civilization was the fact that there had
not been a devastating famine for forty years!
Under Spain there were serious droughts and
periods of great suffering, and during the time of
Diaz Mexico was often saved from similar experi-
ences through the medium of world distribution
which brought the surplus of the United States and
Argentine to her rescue.
Baron von Humboldt, studying Mexico in 1803,
wrote many basic truths about Mexico, as well as
laying the foundations for many of the fantastic
claims which still persist regarding her wealth.
He spoke again and again of the famines which
wasted Mexico in historic time, and added that
"the disproportion .between the growth of the
population and the increase of the food supply
through cultivation renews the sad spectacle of
famine whenever, through a great drought, or some
other local cause, the corn crop fails." 1 Always
those great droughts menace, and since the failure
of government to make irrigation possible and the
destruction of the great estates which, despite
1 Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of
New Spain, vol. i, p. 69.
149
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
their mistakes, did furnish something of the large
organization necessary to food production in
Mexico, the great droughts which the climate will
inevitably bring loom more terrible than ever. No
Joseph is in Mexico to warn her dusky Pharaohs,
and were he there, there is no surplus to store up-
only the despised hacendados had the organization
to raise a surplus and the wisdom to store it.
For famine still stalks in Mexico. It is easy to
attribute the growing importations of food into
Mexico during the Diaz period to the diversion of
increasing numbers of her laborers to industry, but
the erratic variations in the importations were
undoubtedly due to more or less serious crop
failures. Since the revolutions there has been
another easy explanation the bandit raids un-
doubtedly have discouraged food raising for the
market. But in 1917 there was a genuine famine
in northern Mexico which was not due to banditry.
The official American records show the facts, for
the city of Monterrey was saved only through the
enterprise of her American residents, who imported
many carloads of corn, contributed by the American
Red Cross, to feed the people. The direct cause of
this famine was a serious and far-reaching drought,
but the world was very busy in 1917, and because
the famine was not the result of banditry primarily,
it passed with little notice. But famine it was, and
famine with direct climatic causes.
And famine will come again, and again it will be
traceable directly to climate, and it may well
happen that the next great climax in Mexico's
150
CLIMATE
history will be a nation-wide hunger which her
strength, sapped by war and graft, cannot avert,
which no charities can alleviate, and which no fair
words or glowing promises can conceal. For Mexico
is still in the making, and still heredity and environ-
ment, race and climate, are determining the nature
of her people, race the great matrix in which mold
was cast, climate the chisel which has shaped the
conditions under which they live and the health
which inexorably decrees the way in which they
think.
II
THE MEXICAN COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
THE Mexican community consists of a popula-
tion of some 15,000,000 mixed Spanish and
Indian peoples distributed, chiefly in villages and
small cities, over a triangular, largely mountainous,
area of 767,000 square miles lying to the southwest
of the United States. Its government 'is a republic
of thirty states and territories, patterned in theory
on the federalized system of the United States, but
in actuality centralized and dominated by the na-
tional ruler or dictator, from Congress and the
judiciary down to the most insignificant village
official.
The community life and the system of govern-
ment are alike the result of the combination of the
customs and systems of the two races which make
up the people. In the larger phases of government,
however, it is the Spanish heritage which is strong-
est, while in the community life and in the systems
of rule in the villages and even in the larger towns,
Indian tradition and standards dominate.
The feudal system, which had all but passed in
Europe when Columbus set sail for America, was
152
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
transplanted bodily to the Spanish colonies and
became the chief basis of their government for the
three centuries of colonial rule. Since the inde-
pendence, although the forms of Mexican govern-
ment have changed often, and bloody wars have
been fought over the theories and practices of re-
publican rule, the actual spirit of the central govern-
ment has continued Spanish and almost feudal,
even down to this day.
The conditions of Indian community life have
continued in Mexico with similar persistence.
When the Spaniards came to Mexico in 1521 they
found the Indians possessed of a communal organ-
ization upheld by traditions which went back so far
into prehistoric tunes that there was no memory
of any other life. The basis of the political form
of tribal organization was the common ownership
of land with the parceling out of portions to the
individuals who were able to work them, a sort of
temporary tenancy continuing only for life. There
were no land titles and no heritage. The natives
lived in villages; they almost never had their homes
on the land they worked. In theory, if any owner-
ship existed, it was vested in the cacique, or petty
chief, who in turn owed feudal fealty to the rulers of
his clan and nation. No individual enterprise ex-
cept exploitation by the priests and caciques was
possible, and no ambition for land ownership, for
homesteads, or for self-betterment entered into
Indian psychology.
The Spaniards introduced the idea of property
as it was known in Europe, but the communal
153
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
system of the Aztecs gave them an opportunity,
which they promptly took, of fastening a serfdom
not unlike the feudal system on the natives. Great
tracts of land and whole villages of Indians were
distributed among the conquerors, and there grew
up the anomaly of Spanish possessors of vast
estates within which their Indian serfs held com-
munal title to village lands. 1
The Indian communes and the haciendas, 2 on
which the Spaniards built their feudal castles, were
the basic centers of the community life of colonial
Mexico. The growth away from both these firm
traditions was slow, and even to-day their irrecon-
cilable differences are the root of many of the coun-
try's problems. The beginnings of the change to
more modern systems were found early, however,
in the appearance of a group of small private land-
owners known in Mexico as rancher vs.
At first largely mestizos who tried to make their
ranches into imitations of the feudal haciendas of
their Spanish fathers, the development of the
rancher type has been paralleled by the change of
their little farms to more democratic holdings,
wherein the rancher was himself a working farmer,
his peons real " hands."
The increase in small rural properties is a sig-
nificant fact in the community growth of Mexico
under Diaz. It seems to indicate an approach to
European ideals of national development, and indeed
1 See part ii, chap, x, pp. 317 ff. for fuller description of the
land conditions of the time.
2 Literally, an hacienda is a rural property of twenty thousand
acres or more; a rancho, a private farm of smaller size.
154
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
one of its most potent causes was the insistence of
Diaz on a revision of land titles and the consequent
breaking up of the communal properties in order
that they might be developed by individual
initiative.
The Indian mind, however, has never been truly
friendly to this modern development. There was
much opposition to the breaking up of communal
properties, and indeed the census of 1900 reported
2,082 formally organized communes still in exist-
ence. The effective bribe of the later revolution-
aries to the Indians was the promise not of farms,
but of the restoration of communal properties, and
undoubtedly there was a large increase in their
number under Carranza and a probable decrease
in the number of the small individual properties
which, under Diaz, marked the slow advance of
modern community organization.
This fact of Indian conservatism and reversion,
demonstrated so clearly in the actual organization
of land distribution, is of deep importance to an
understanding of the nature of Mexican community
life. There is yet another index in the industrial
organization of the Mexican villages. Under the
Aztec plan, every village was a center of some sort
of production, usually a specialty, such as pottery,
baskets, hats. The artisans who made them ac-
cumulated then 1 surplus and, when ready, themselves
carried it to the market places of the towns, where
they bartered for other products needed in their
commune. From the very beginning there was
barter of foodstuffs in the cities, but as a rule each
155
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
village was supposed to be self-supporting in this
regard, and to this day the contribution of the
Indian villages to the national food supply is almost
nothing. Except for the farm communities around
the great cities, such as Mexico, and for the haciendas
which almost alone produce staples for the market,
the country districts have practically no surplus
food supply.
The village life is expressive in very concrete
form of the separation in the Indian's mind of his
work and his true life. He works for an employer
to obtain money to spend upon his pleasures and
satisfactions, and he tills his little milpa (a tract of
land which is assigned him by the communistic vil-
lage, or by his employer if he is on an hacienda) and
raises there only enough for the needs of himself and
his family. If he is bound to an hacienda he looks
to his patron for support and living when his crops
fail, but he seldom contributes anything voluntarily
to the national food supply to which he looks for
this charity in case of trouble. He lives in the
village, preferring to walk a long distance to his
work, and in the village life obtains such satisfac-
tions as his simple nature craves.
This village life of the rural Mexican might be
compared with the farm villages of England and of
France, but the farming villages of Europe are the
result of a system of intensive land cultivation which
makes communication between the farms or garden
plots and the village very easy, while in Mexico,
under the system of extensive cultivation, the
Indian may have to go a long distance each day
156
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
to and from his work. He lives in the village, not
for economic reasons, but from his own personal
preference, despite the tremendous loss of efficiency
which this way of living entails. He may go to the
mines, he may work on the railways, he may take
employment in the little mills in his neighborhood,
but he continues to live in villages. If the village
commons or little farms about can support him,
well and good, but if not the aid of a paternal
government must be invoked and the economic
organization necessary for industrial development
must arrive at the hands of political adaptation.
Wrapped around with this conservatism, this
mass of tradition upon which the Indian habitually
acts and which has been the same for probably
2,000 years, the community life of Mexico is an
unchanging background. The life of the farm vil-
lages of 1,000 people approximates the life of the
City of Mexico with its 500,000. Half an hour's
walk from the cathedral in Mexico City will bring
one to a section of the capital where life follows the
same regime as will be found in the most typical
Indian village in the wilds of Chiapas. In the
little patio which is surrounded by fifty dirty rooms
in each of which a family of five to a dozen people
lives, one will find women patting tortillas, grand-
mothers weaving blankets, children cutting their
teeth on sugar cane, men weaving baskets and mak-
ing sandals, just as one will find them at Pichucalco,
a thousand miles to the south.
The life of the cities has its Spanish phases, but
it is impossible to ignore the Indian influence in the
157
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
life of all and particularly the smaller units of the
great Mexican community. The business of the
hacienda has largely to do with the petty problems
of its Indian retainers, and the human element is
many times more exacting there than in more
modern lands. The cities, for all their many
European aspects, are almost dominated by the
desires and standards of the Indian, a fact that
tourists or old residents realize best. Only in
the larger phases of government do the white and
mestizo codes take prominence.
There are, indeed, these two codes. The Euro-
pean white brought with him aristocracy and the
responsibilities of aristocracy; the mestizo has
turned these to bureaucracy and demagogy. The
first revolution, as we have seen, was carried to
success by the Creoles, who sought first to bring
Ferdinand VII, whom Napoleon had dethroned in
Spain, to rule a new kingdom in Mexico, then to
set up a Creole emperor, Iturbide, and, a generation
later, to bring Maximilian to a Mexican throne.
The mestizo ideal was noisy " democracy" and was
expressed in a lively imitation of the political codes
of the American and French revolutions. Finally,
after bitter struggles in which the conservative
element sought to create at least a centralized
republic, like that of France, the mestizo imitators
of the American revolutionists finally imposed an
imitation of the American Constitution, carving out
states where none existed, and setting up a sham
democracy which has been struggling between the
bureaucrats and the demagogues through the eighty
158
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
years which have followed. Mexico's eight hun-
dred revolutions and her nearly ninety Presidents
make the discussion of her political evolution a
subject more related to history than to community
life, for in Mexico politics is revolution and has
been so since the beginning of her national history.
There are no elections, and indeed never have been,
the forms through which the government goes being-
intended not even for the deception of the public,
but rather as blinds to screen succeeding dictator-
ships from the eyes of a democratic world.
The government problem of Mexico has seldom
got beyond the primary question of public order,
for only under the white regimes of the colonial
period and of Porfirio Diaz has even this been
attained. Of the one hundred and ten years of
Mexican independence only twenty can be called
completely orderly, and those were of course the
period of Diaz's most complete control. Taking
the question of Mexico's government from this
angle, her whole history resolves itself into a series
of abortive failures, lightened only by the successes
of the viceroys and the brilliant era of Diaz.
In the maintenance of order the Indian has until
now been a docile tool, willing (and as anxious as
his mentality allows him to be) to lend himself to
the works of peace, waiting for wise rulers to build
him into the fabric of Mexican nationality. The
whites have, as a rule, been of the landowning class,
which is always conservative, so that the restless
mestizos have been the great disturbing element,
the great problem of government from the simple
11 159
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
angle of the preservation of public order up to the
more subtle questions of national development.
Their refusal to lend themselves for long to the
maintenance of any ordered government has ever
been the destructive element in Mexican history, the
chief deterrent in its path along the ways of peace
toward the higher development of the nation.
With the Indians as the inert element, it becomes
evident that from the Spaniards to the fall of Diaz
government in Mexico was not a problem that
extended below the middle class. The Indian, the
blind follower of leaders, was the weapon of all her
revolutions, but he did not really become a po-
litical problem until the tide of Indian resurgence
was stirred up and encouraged to the danger point
after Madero. Where public* office, graft, and loot
appear on the horizon of a man's social possibilities,
there begins the problem of government in Mexico.
It is upon that plane that government exists as this
is written (1920), and there it seems likely to remain
until again the white code which ruled in the days
of the viceroys and in the tune of Diaz is again
called back to control.
Both the Constitution of 1857 under which Diaz
ruled, and that of 1917, which was the tool of Car-
ranza, are the product of the mestizo politicians.
Diaz maintained his control by ignoring many of
the provisions of the instrument which gave him
power, and Carranza was no more respectful to the
1917 Constitution, which he allowed to be used for
the spoliation of the country and the enrichment of
his generals.
160 *
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
Under both documents Mexico was provided
with a theoretically representative, elective govern-
ment. Under both, however, the President was
able to arrange to succeed himself despite antire-
election clauses; he has been able to dictate the
individual make-up of both Houses of Congress, and
to appoint, often without the cloak of elections, the
governors of all the states. These in turn named
the jefes politicos (under Diaz the executives of
cantones comparable to American counties), and
selected mayors, chiefs of police, and even the
most minor officials. Under both, moreover, the
courts have been completely subject to executive
domination.
This is the political organization of Mexico in
its simplicity. Even in actuality it was little more
complicated under Diaz, whose famous motto,
" Little politics and much government," hung high
before the eyes of every Mexican official.
The government of Mexican municipalities, be
they Indian villages or properly constituted urban
towns, is vested in a municipal president and a
council with largely advisory powers. This muni-
cipal organization controls the police and sanitary
functions of the government and draws its authority
from the chief of the canton, or county. He in
turn is answerable to the governor, and thence to
the central authorities. Taxes are collected by
city and state authorities, save for the Federal
imposts, which are gathered in the form of a sur-
charge of stamps equaling a fixed percentage of the
state and municipal taxes.
161
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The state governments in Mexico are in control
of the school systems and to a large extent of the
broader policies in local affairs. Local self-govern-
ment is largely a name, and yet the basic com-
munistic idea persists in the regulation of social life
through the municipalities and villages. The mu-
nicipality, for instance, has charge of the music in
the band stands, of the amusements which come to
the one official theater, and of the streets, plazas,
and market places where the people live. It is to
this, perhaps, that the town spirit can be traced,
for the town spirit of Mexico is a very real thing.
In sections where the Indian system still endures
and where the common lands have persisted, village
spirit runs high, and there is always a boundary
dispute with some neighboring village to keep the
local patriotism fanned to flame. The tierra, or
homeland, is the one spot dear above all others to the
Mexican, and particularly to the Indian. He will
travel all over Mexico and even to distant coun-
tries, but he will return sometime, if he lives, to his
tierra.
In its provincial Indianism, the Mexican com-
munity owes its nature very largely to the historic
lack of good communication. The Aztecs had no
beasts of burden, and human backs were the only
carriers, so that, although Montezuma's civilization
was far advanced in many ways, it had not yet
reached the point of building adequate roads be-
tween its cities. The Spaniards, who introduced
horses and burros, also devoted much effort to the
building of certain great highways across the coun-
162
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
try, notably the stone-paved causeway leading up
from the hot country at Vera Cruz to Mexico City
on the plateau. They also built this road westward
to Acapulco and Manzanillo, where the galleons
from Manila brought the treasures of the Orient
for transport overland and reshipment to Spain.
But these roads to the westward were never com-
parable with the great highway which was built to
Vera Cruz. Some roads were extended northward
and southward from the capital, but as a rule only
footpaths marked the ways over which friars and
explorers pushed the edges of civilization.
After the revolution, the Mexicans neglected
even the upkeep of the Spanish highways, and in
the middle of the last century, when the question
of railways began to be discussed, Mexican roads
were a byword. Pack trains of burros and mules
continued to be the chief means of transportation,
and the more economical ox carts and mule-drawn
vehicles could hardly penetrate beyond the imme-
diate environs of the towns.
The era of railway building had a tremendous in-
fluence in linking the outlying districts to the na-
tional capital, as well as in developing the resources
of the country. Much of the provincialism gradu-
ally disappeared, and where previously the Creoles
and the upper-class mestizos had lived, in the in-
terior cities and on their haciendas, an extremely
narrow life, they were now able to keep in touch
with the capital and with the world outside. The
Indians and the peons also began to feel the change
of outside contact, and they, too, began to develop
163
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
a realization of national unity and interdependence
which was unknown in earlier days.
Meanwhile, however, the roads between villages
and even those joining villages to the centers of
population, have progressed but little. Climate
here takes toll, for when a good road is built, the
succeeding rainy season is almost sure to wash it
away or to cut it into deep gullies. The typical
Mexican road, even where it was once laid out for
wheel traffic, is a broad space cut by ditches, over
which the trains of mules, going single file, work
back and forth to find the easiest trail. Around
some of the cities there are automobile roads which
were maintained during the Diaz time at consider-
able expense, but which have now fallen into dis-
repair and are so cut up in certain sections that
even light motor cars seldom leave the cities except
on vitally important trips.
The homogeneity of Mexico, despite the business
and social handicaps of poor communications, is a
continual surprise, but the Spaniards, and even the
adventurous mestizos who went into the interior,
retained something vital which contributed, even
in their isolation, to the development of an essen-
tially Mexican type throughout the entire colony
and nation. With the building of the railroads the
results of intercommunication, both in the shifting
of the population and in the distribution of national
ideas, were remarkable and encouraging. It has
shifted the population considerably throughout all
of Mexico, and has to a certain extent broken up
the idea of tierra, or home land, and had a definite,
164
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
if somewhat limited, effect on the growth of the
idea of patria, or fatherland.
That this development had not gone so far as
could have been hoped was demonstrated, however,
in the last few years of the revolution. Each out-
break, that of Madero in Chihuahua, of Carranza in
Coahuila, of Obregon in Sonora, began in a single
state and spread by state groups throughout the
country, until it finally engulfed the central govern-
ment. The inability of a Federal army to cover the
country, owing to the still inadequate transportation
facilities and the lack of good roads beyond the
railways, has had much to do with the ease with
which revolution spreads. An army of 200,000
men would not be too great to police Mexico at
any time of unrest, and such an army has never been
available. Had the communications been adequate,
a much smaller force might have kept the country
united under any government at any time. The
success of the Diaz regime was attained in spite
of the tremendous handicap of the lack of trans-
portation, and was the result almost alone of the
organizing genius of the dictator.
The police system of Mexico had reached a
certain efficiency under Diaz, whose small army
was occupied largely in garrison service and parade,
and little with police duty. Under Carranza,
however, the presence of soldiers at some time or
other in every section of Mexico has somewhat
lowered the prestige of the local police, although
in organization the police force has remained intact
in most of the cities. In Mexico City the police
165
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
have a sort of military organization and have always
been headed by an army officer; similar arrange-
ments prevail in other large cities, though the police
force is supposedly under the control of the mayor
or municipal president, who is answerable for its
efficiency to the civil officials above him. Under
Diaz there were, in addition, state constabularies
in some sections, and over all Mexico the remark-
able body of Federal police known as the rurales.
These, while controlled by the central government,
were essentially peace officers, and in exercising
their functions worked in conjunction with the
local police authorities wherever such existed, and
turned their prisoners over to the state courts
except where their offenses were against the Federal
government. The abolition of the rurales by the
revolution has left the police work outside of the
cities and incorporated villages entirely in the
hands of the army, either the Federal soldiers or
the state military constabulary, an arrangement
marked by graft and inefficiency.
The sanitation of Mexican communities, their
water supply, 1 and in general the inspection and
maintenance of civilized standards of living, are
all functions of government in Mexico, fulfilled to
a degree proportionate almost directly to the
standard maintained by the central government.
Indeed, it is to the efficiency of the police function
more than to any other single factor that the rela-
tive improvement in living conditions under Diaz
1 Sanitation and water supply are discussed in part ii, chap. ix.
Crime and charities are discussed in part ii, chap, xii,
166
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
is to be traced; and, inversely, in the inefficiency
of the police organization under the revolutions
are to be found the chief causes of the laxity and
consequent suffering in these periods. The ma-
jority of Mexicans find little use for the foibles of
modern civilization unless forced upon them by
their rulers.
The improvement of the water supply in Mexican
towns has made it possible for some attempt to be
made at modern fire fighting. Under the old
systems the municipalities made practically no
provision for combating fires and even in some of
the largest towns there were not even volunteer
departments, this function being left to the police
and the crowd. Up to ten years ago the fire ap-
paratus of Mexico City was operated by hand, but
the capital and some other of the chief centers now
have modem fire apparatus more or less adapted
to the needs of the community. In this connection
it must be remembered that there are very few
buildings over two stories high except in Mexico
City, and of course excepting the churches, which
are built almost entirely of masonry.
While the streets in all the large cities are lighted
by electricity, there is very little official street
cleaning, although the business thoroughfares of
the leading cities are brushed up irregularly by a
small force using rush brooms and making some
attempt at the disposal of the refuse. In some
places there is city garbage collection, but as a rule
the garbage is burned by the housekeeper. There is
comparatively little use of fuel for heating, and
167
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
cooking is usually done with charcoal, so that there
is little need of ash removal. Residents or property
owners in Mexican cities are required to keep the
streets fronting on their property cleaned, and in
Mexico City, for instance, the resident in the abut-
ting property is required to sweep and sprinkle the
streets, the latter twice a day during the dry season.
The policeman on patrol sees to the enforcement of
this regulation.
As a general rule the Mexican community is a
reflection of the attitude of the Mexican toward
Jife in general. It seems to function successfully
only under eternal vigilance one reason why the
Federal government has usually been so much more
successful in the capital and in the territories than
have the local governments in the states. The
Mexican has a wholesome respect for authority,
bred in him from the long years of Spanish rule, and
generally he is told what is expected of him, and, if
conscious of the proximity of a policeman, will obey
regulations religiously.
The education of the masses to a desire for civic
virtues has always been difficult, because, as a rule,
the peon has no consciousness of his own respon-
sibility in the creation or destruction of the things
that make his town or village admirable. The de-
tached attitude of the Indian and even of the better-
class Mexican toward the beautiful public buildings
of Mexico City and toward the festivals which are
organized for his entertainment, cannot but impress
even the most casual observer. The Mexican looks
to something outside himself to provide the things
168
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS GOVERNMENT
which are desirable, and has never yet been edu-
cated to a realization that he himself has any real
part in their creation. The problem of the Mexican
community is in the ultimate a problem of Mexican
education just as completely as the problem of the
increase in his wants and the improvement in his
living conditions resolves itself in the end into the
need for the creation of a definite appreciation for
them in his own mind.
Ill
RELIGION
TN the centuries-long assault upon the embattled
1 walls of Indian race and tradition, the Spaniards
were uniformly successful in only one field that of
religion. Government there was, but in govern-
ment we have watched the disintegrating forces of
mestizo and Indian crudities coming more and more
to the surface. Racial amalgamation there was,
but again to-day shows us the steady disappearance
of white blood, as of white rule. In intellectual
control, be it culture in its broadest sense or in
education, we see a struggle that still continues,
with Indian apathy still triumphant in the nation's
colossal illiteracy.
But in religion the Cross is supreme, supported
alike by the faith of white or mestizo Catholic and
Protestant and by the superstition and inbred
tradition of the Indian. The whiter Mexicans may
be Christian only in name (or only in fact and not
in name), the Indian may be consistently pagan in
his religious processes; but, white or red, it is
Christianity and the saints of the Church which fill
the human soul-needs of Mexico and furnish all the
terms and languages of native faith. For the
170
RELIGION
Mexicans are deeply and inherently religious, and
from the very beginning the Roman Catholic
Church bent itself to meet the ^native conditions
and thus to conquer them, and in later days Catholic
and Protestant have fastened upon the country the
moral standards which, whatever their failures, are
essentially Christian.
It was no mean thing to uproot the millenniums of
ancient Mexican paganism in three brief centuries
of Christian domination, and in the final analysis
the formal and largely actual Christianization of
Mexico is a work of vast credit to the militant mis-
sionary work of Rome. Whatever else may be said
of the Catholic Church in Mexico, neither its re-
sponsibility for building a Christian basis there nor
the completeness of its control can be questioned.
Beginning with the 6,000,000 baptisms in the six-
teen years immediately following the conquest (how-
ever many may have been the duplications of the
rite) and continuing to this day, when virtually
every infant born in Mexico is baptized by a priest,
there has been no time, even in the height of the
political warfare which waged around the Church,
when the overwhelming majority of Mexicans have
not been baptized Catholics.
According to the Mexican census of 1910, almost
the entire religious population of 15,115,343 is ac-
counted for as Catholic, only 82,167 professing
other creeds, as follows: 15,033,176 Catholics,
68,839 Protestants, 630 Greek Catholics, 12,698
of non-Christian faiths, 20,015 " unknown," and
25,011 with "no religious belief."
171
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The data of the Catholic Church should of course
give the basic figures. Even this, however, is in-
complete and inaccurate. The Catholic Directory 1
gives data by dioceses, and shows a total of Mexican
" Catholic population" of 13,694,507, most of the
diocesan populations being given in round thou-
sands, and others showing astonishing variations,
due perhaps to typographical errors, between the
various years.
The Catholic Church in Mexico is divided into
eight provinces, with eight archdioceses, twenty-
two dioceses, and the vicarate apostolic of Lower
California. The census of 1910 reports 4,405
" Catholic priests," the Catholic Directory showing
4,177 secular priests, 761 priests of religious orders,
and 357 brothers, the priesthood for two small
dioceses (Colima and Tabasco) being missing, and
the number of priests belonging to religious orders
probably being inaccurate, especially in those
dioceses where the Reform Laws, which prohibit
many of the orders, are rigidly enforced. Only
1,881 sisters and nuns and twelve additional
" sisterhoods " whose membership is not given are
reported in the Directory, the maintenance of
religious orders for women, except for a very
limited number, being illegal in Mexico.
1 Mons. Francis J. Kelley, head of the Catholic Church Extension
Society and the chief American authority on Mexican Catholicism,
takes this as the most reliable data obtainable, either in Mexico
or the United States. In arriving at the figures given, both the
1910 and 1919 Directories had to be used, as the former, which
was for the census year which we are using, did not have data
for all the dioceses.
172
RELIGION
Twenty-nine seminaries for education for priest-
hood are noted in the Catholic Directory, but the
number of schools and colleges is inaccurate, as
some diocesan reports merely stated that "each
parish has parochial schools " and many mentioned
none. On this point there are no exact figures ob-
tainable anywhere, owing to the combination of
Mexican official inaccuracies and the fact that the
Catholic Church is chary in its announcements, as
its schools have always been a point of attack,
though a Mexican government brochure published
in 1901 said there were 32,000. There are certainly
several thousand schools, caring, it is said, for more
than 300,000 pupils. 1
The Catholic Directory lists 9,325 churches and
chapels, the number, of course, including many
places where services are held only occasionally, and
many dioceses give only round numbers. The in-
complete records of the various dioceses published
by the same authority list 190 asylums, hospitals,
and other charitable institutions, probably far
below the actual numbers.
Of these figures the most interesting are those
for the number of priests in Mexico, which is at the
rate of one for every 3,000 Catholics. In 1810, the
period of greatest Church control in Mexico, there
were 7,341 priests (of whom 3,112 belonged to the
1 Testimony of Monsignor Kelley before the United States
Senate Sub-Committee Investigating Mexican Affairs, p. 2680
of the hearings, May 1, 1920, the Catholic Directory of 1919
giving the number of schools in the archdiocese of Mexico as 232,
and attendance, 50,000.
173
THE PEOPLE OP MEXICO
orders devoted to teaching and charity) and 2,098
sisters, most of them teachers, the total popu-
lation in that year, all officially Catholic, being
6,122,354, so that the proportion of Catholic clergy
DISTRIBUTION AND SIZE OF CATHOLIC CHURCH ORGANIZATION
DIOCESE
Secular
Priests
Priests of
Religious Orders
Sisters
Catholic.
Schools
m
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
4
1
Charitable
Institutions
Churches and
Chapcla
Catholic
Population
Arch, of Mexico
Chilapa
620
94
46
120
138
6
400
320
92
243
225
650
60
218
'is
38
1,497
"42
232
'io
18
13
1
300
130
11
97
156
All
Parishes
30
100
i
4
6
"s
1
'io
23
2
'l
4
4
"2
3
5
"4
1
11
1,000
'366
428
300
25
2,000
350
210
503
158
800
100
"65
281
999
500
180
300
40
'250
64
70
54
75
150
41
82
1,839,250
361.239
1.50,000
260,000
800,000
43,104
1,200,000
1,000,000
279,414
800,000
325,000
1,200,000
200,000
72,500
180,000
525,000
920,000
270,000
174,000
300,000
80,000
100,000
350.000
240.000
250,000
130,000
357.000
620,000
163,000
315,000
Tulancingo
Vera Cruz
Lower California ... .
Arch, of Puebla
Arch, of Michoacan. .
Queretaro
200
80
20
39
55
5
'.'. '.
Leon
Zamora
Arch, of Guadalajara.
Aguas Calientes
Colima
Tepic
98
129
206
62
33
94
16
iii
32
40
40
80
132
40
50
'30
'l7
"3
11
'ioo
6 sister-
hoods
5 sister-
hoods
"90
10
1 sister-
hood
'53
68
31
37
3
2
12
'20
4
14
All
Parishes
1
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
V
1
1
1
29
Zacatecas
Arch, of Oaxaca
Chiapas . .
Tehuantcpec
Arch, of Yucatan
Campeche
Tabasco
Arch, of Durango
Chihuahua
Sinaloa
Arch, of Linares
8
22
761
45
97
Saltillo
Tamaulipas
Total
4,177
1,881 and
12 sister-
hoods
1,242
190
9,325
13,694,507
174
RELIGION
to the population was at that time one to 834.
In the United States, with a Catholic population
in 1917 of 15,742,262, there are 20,287 priests,
or one to every 776 Catholics. The 42,044,374
church members of all denominations in the United
States (1917) are served by 191,722 clergymen of
all denominations, or one to every 153 church
members. 1
The list on the preceding page, of the Mexican
dioceses, with the data from the 1910 and 1919
Catholic Directories, correlated and combined, gives
some idea of the distribution and size of the Church
organization in Mexico.
The data on the churches and missions of the
Protestant churches in Mexico are available in more
detail. In 1910 there were 19 American, Canadian,
and British societies maintaining missionary or-
ganizations in Mexico, with 87 ordained mission-
aries, 12 physicians, 30 lay missionaries and phy-
sicians, and 167 women missionary workers, a total
of 294 foreigners (including 6 British), and 130
ordained Mexican missionaries. There were 331
church organizations and 25,046 baptized Protestant
Mexicans, the total number of " adherents" of the
Protestant churches, baptized and unbaptized, of
all ages, being 92,156.
The following table gives the details of these
missionary organizations : 2
1 Mexican data from Navarro y Noriega; American from United
States Bureau of the Census. Both quoted by Monsignor Kelley,
loc. cit. p. 2671.
2 World Atlas of Foreign Missions (New York, 1911).
12 175
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
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176
RELIGION
The number of members of the Orthodox Greek
Church was 630 in 1910, and of the 12,698 adher-
ents of non-Christian religions the official clas-
sification specified the following: Mohammedans,
602, Buddhists, 6,237, Jews, 254, and others,
5,605.
The "free-thinkers," atheists, etc., are included
in those of "no religious belief," the census num-
bering them at 25,011, though the total is probably
much higher, including most of the 20,015 of
"unknown" faith. Mexico has since Juarez been
theoretically a country without religion, and the
name of Deity is carefully omitted from all public
documents. This had become something of a
fetish under Diaz, and it is said that the dictator
never pronounced the word "God" in any public
place, and when Elihu Root visited Mexico officially
as Secretary of State of the United States his al-
lusion to the bounty of Deity in a speech before the
Mexican Congress was the subject of comment.
This atheistic spirit manifested itself with great
violence during the Carranza revolution, the story
of whose persecutions of priests and nuns, coupled
with the pillaging of the churches and the unmen-
tionable desecrations of holy relics, vestments, etc.,
is one of the ugliest pages of Mexican history. 1
During this period of outrages (1914-16) against
the Catholics, the Protestant missions were left
almost untouched and were, on the other hand,
1 Cf . Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part,
p. 231, if. (New York, 1916), and Francis J. Kelley, The Book of
the Red and Yellow (Chicago, 1916).
177
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
specifically encouraged by Carranza, as they had
been under Diaz.
This brings us to the much-discussed question of
the nature of the religious population of Mexico.
The Protestant missionary bodies have long justi-
fied their work on the ground that, although osten-
sibly Christian, the majority of the Catholics of the
country are in reality little better than pagan, owing
to the domination of forms and rituals and to the
superstitions with which the churchly ceremony is
interpreted by the Indians. There are not lacking
in Mexico native critics of the Church who say
much the same thing. One of these l divides the
Church population into three divisions, which he
calls Pagan Catholics, Utilitarian Catholics, and
True Catholics. All are baptized, married (if at all),
and buried by the Church, but the Pagan Catholics
perform all sorts of strange rites and find their
chief bond to the Church in this satisfaction of then*
superstitions. While they profess full faith in
Christianity, they also perform rituals for the preser-
vation of their crops from drought and wild animals;
they exorcise demons during illness and find their
sweetest revenge against their enemies in the use
of charms and philters. This commentator points
out what Protestant missionaries have also claimed,
that images of the saints in Mexican churches are
worshiped with much the same devotion as would
be given idols, and that the religious festivals are
often marked by pagan dances and exotic cere-
monies on the part of the Indians. The Pagan
1 Maniel Gamio, Forjando Patria, p. 157.
178
RELIGION
Catholics arc indeed mostly Indian, and it may be
that the approximation of many of the special
Mexican saints to the Aztec gods has had much to
do with the exceeding importance given to these
saints in Mexican religion. Our Lady of the
Rains, much esteemed by the simple natives of the
farming communities, seems undoubtedly related
to the important Aztec Goddess of Water, and her
miracles are said to approximate those attributed
to the ancient deity. Many of the important
shrines of the Mexican Church are in spots formerly
sacred to Aztec gods and that of the patron saint of
Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe, is said to have
once been a holy place of an Aztec goddess. In
fairness to the Catholic Church, however, it must
be said that the Indians are not allowed to dwell
on these alleged correspondences, and many of the
miracles attributed to the Virgin of Guadalupe are
absolutely authenticated, and recognized by the
Vatican. The Church has always been lenient
with native superstitions, and each year at the
Church of St. Anthony the Abbot, in the heart of
one of the poorer sections of Mexico City, a priest
blesses a motley crowd of burros and horses, cows
and goats, pet dogs, cats and parrots, while in some
of the country churches the priests go so far as to
bless sackfuls of ants, worms, etc., so that these
pests, having become " Christians," may mix with
their fellows in the fields and induce them to leave
the afflicted farmer in peace. 1
1 This last is upon the authority of a former Spanish priest, now
a Protestant. Interview No. 433, Doheny Foundation Files.
179
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The number of these so-called Pagan Catholics is
undoubtedly very great, but so is the number of
true, deeply religious Catholics, and also of those
who profess the prevailing religion because of the
social pressure upon them the so-called Utilitarian
Catholics.
It is obvious that many of the factors which de-
termine the nature of the religious population,
genuine and " utilitarian" as well as " pagan, "
antedate Catholicism. The Aztec empire was a
complete theocracy, wherein the priests ruled not
only in religion and morals, but in government and
in war. The priesthood dictated the policies
toward other tribes, and their demand for human
sacrifices was one of the chief causes of the devastat-
ing wars which marked Mexican history previous to
the conquest. An infinitude of gods, a vast number
of temples, and a priesthood which included most
of the ruling class in one form or another were its
chief characteristics.
The Spaniards who overthrew them were what
would be called to-day fanatically religious. Only
a few generations earlier Spam had won the last of
the wars which had been waged for centuries against
the Moslems, and religious fervor ran high in the
Spanish court. With Cortez came priests, and in
the first ships which followed him came friars and
the Jesuits. Conversion of the Indians of Mexico
was one of the chief objects of the conquest, and
the mission priest and the explorer in search of gold
went side by side into the distant wilderness. The
" conversion" of the Indians was wholesale and
180
RELIGION
incomplete at the beginning, but during the cen-
turies that followed a more thorough inculcation of
Christian doctrine went on. This was found not
only in the populous centers, but also in the vast
outlying sections where the friars established the
missions.
These wonderful centers of religious proselytizing,
civilizing industiy, and political control were estab-
lished not only along all the frontier from Saint
Augustine, Florida, to San Francisco, California
(where their remains still delight lovers of romance
and beauty), but throughout the interior of what is
still Mexico. A true and beautiful religious zeal
animated the friars and later the mission priests,
and history holds no record of devotion, self-
sacrifice, or martyrdom that cannot be duplicated in
the stories of these great missionaries.
The history of the missions is epitomic of the
whole attitude of the colonial Church toward the
natives, an attitude which has marked the life and
psychology of the Indian so deeply that neither
subsequent abuses nor broken faiths nor anti-
Church revolutions and propaganda have been
able to eradicate its influence. Throughout the
interior of Mexico, and extending far into the
American Southwest, the friars, with but one u or
two soldiers for guards and messengers, gathered
the Indians into villages about the missions, and
through wearing years impressed upon them a
religious and civic discipline which extended to the
most intimate details of their private, industrial,
and community life.
181
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The missions, dramatic as their story is, were but
a part of the work of the colonial Church. From
the very beginning, it was only the priests and
nuns who were willing to devote themselves to the
education of the Indians, and to them alone (for
hardly anyone else has ever touched the problem)
is due most of such civilization as has been gained
and such implantation of Christianity as they have
even to-day. Moreover, all the schools of the
colonial period, including the great colleges and
asylums which still exist, were largely church foun-
dations, and not least of all is the vast material
monument of 9,000 churches, virtually all of which
were built in the colonial days.
Much criticism there is and much is deserved,
but no other people and no other cult has so trans-
formed and beautified a land as the Spaniards and
then* Church transformed and beautified Mexico
in the three centuries which ended in 1823. Spain
gave Mexico a government and a language; the
Church gave her religion, morals, and such art as
now exists. Much might have been done that has
not been done, and a field so vast and so sordid that
it sickens the observer awaits correction and
development. The Church alone dared face the
problem for many centuries. On the broad shoul-
ders of Diaz it rested like a cross; through Mexico's
periods of revolution and distress and struggles for
personal aggrandizement it has lain inert and sodden
upon all her governments. Here and there a
corner has been lifted by a Protestant missionary,
by a handful of self-sacrificing educators, or by a
182
RELIGION
puny idealist like Madero, but taken all in all only
the Roman Church has sought to lift the whole
mass, or has so far achieved any broad success in
moral and perhaps even in educational uplift.
During the colonial period there was almost no
distinction between Church and state in the affairs S T\ (U i
of government. The crown enjoyed all the rev-
enues which the Church collected in Mexico, the^v^ /f)
Holy See's only requirement being that the mis-
sionary work and worship be maintained, churches
built, convents and schools established. The bishops
were practically chosen by the king of Spain, and
in reality the Church was part of the colonial ad-
ministration, paying its returns after the main-
tenance of its functions to the government in
Madrid, a princely gift from the Holy See to the
throne of Spain. In this arrangement, however,
were the roots of the troubles which later grew out
of the relationship of the Church and state in
Mexico. These troubles had two phases, one the
wealth which the Church kept in Mexico, the other
the question which the independence of Mexico
brought to the fore, whether the rich eccle-
siastical revenues belonged to the Church or to the
new government. Both these issues brought the
Church into politics, the first because the power
which this wealth gave the Church over the ruling,
landowning class tempted the clergy to meddle in
government affairs, and the second because it made
Church control one of the burning questions of
political readjustment during the early revolutions.
The wealth of the Church was the first element to
183
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
cause trouble, and that began before the inde-
pendence. From the earliest times, the Church in
Mexico had been almost the only banker of the
country and lent vast sums to the landowners on
generous terms at an interest rate of 5 per cent
one excellent way of keeping from paying unneces-
sarily large amounts to the king (another way being
the building of noble churches and great institu-
tions). In 1804 Charles IV of Spain, looking about
for ready cash, ordered the Mexican Church to
collect and pay the crown, forthwith, the P44,-
500,000 which it had loaned to the landowners, an
order which could not be obeyed and which was
later revoked, though PIO^O^OOO 1 of the " Pious
fund" was taken. But the fear of the ruin of their
farms and the country had stirred the Creoles against
Spain, and to this royal edict may be traced not a
little of the ultimate willingness of the native white
aristocracy definitely to throw off Spanish rule.
But in that order there lurked yet other difficulties,
tied up with the fiscal question of the Church's
revenues after the revolution.
After independence from Spain was finally accom-
plished the country was cleaved on the question of
the division of the spoils. The Conservatives
(mostly Creoles) were the champions of the Church
and indeed the chief beneficiaries of its favors, and
the Church now claimed as its right the capital
1 The Mexican peso will be designated by P. Previous to the
demonetization of silver in the United States the $ and P were
of equal value. The peso is now of gold value, equivalent to
fifty cents, or two shillings.
RELIGION
and all the surplus revenues which it had formerly
given to the Spanish king. The Liberals (the
majority of whom were mestizos) held that the
new government, as the inheritor of all the other
perquisites of the Spanish crown in Mexico, should
also enjoy the surplus revenues of the Church.
The issue was clear cut and the Church entered
definitely into politics.
As early as 1833 the question of the government
taking over the wealth of the Church, first officially
suggested by Charles IV in 1804, was brought up
again, the proposal being for the nation, assuming
the support of religion, to take over the Church
lands and subdivide them into small properties
which should be sold on long terms with 5 per cent
interest, the returns to be used to pay the public
debt and "maintain worship in a manner more
adequate to the needs of the people." 1 This was
linked with other anticlerical plans, and was op-
posed by the clergy and the Conservatives, and the
government of Gomez Farias, which had proposed
it, was overthrown.
The issue of Church property was kept alive,
however, and the Church revenues were reduced by
forced loans and heavy taxes. In 1856 the remain-
ing capital of the Pious or charitable fund was
taken on the pretext of putting it into circulation,
and by succeeding laws from 1859 to 1861 all the
Church's property was finally wrested from it and
sold. But there was none of the division of the
1 Jos< Maria Luis Mora, Obras Sueltas I, quoted by T. Esquivel
Obregon, op. cit., p. 161.
185
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
land or the maintenance of the old loan system
which had been proposed in the plan of Gomez
Farias; on the contrary, the Church loans were
immediately called in, forcing great tracts on to the
market and resulting in a new concentration of the
land in the hands of the wealthy.
This, in essence, is the basis of the political
activity of the Church in Mexico, an activity more
economic than political, and least of all touching
upon the religion and morals of the people. All the
later appearances of the Church in politics, from the
Empire of Maximilian to to-day, have their genesis
in these old politico-economic difficulties, and in no
sense in religious questions.
Through all its kaleidoscopic troubles, however,
the Church has not been overthrown. During the
earlier revolutionary period, from 1810 to 1876, the
churches, convents, and monasteries were sacked
much as they were sacked during the revolutions of
1910 to 1920. In 1857 the Mexican Church was
stripped of its properties, the church buildings and
adjoining structures being "loaned" by the govern-
ment for religious purposes, but, save politically and
economically, the Church was little affected. In
1917, under the Carranza regime, the church build-
ings themselves were actually taken and the final
dissolution of the property-holding right of the*
Church, even by subterfuge, was apparently
achieved. During the time of Diaz there had been
some little return of convents and church schools,
but these, under the Constitution of 1917, were
again wiped out as in 1857.
186
RELIGION
There had been some apparent relaxation of the
grip of Diaz on the Church, 'particularly in the
matter of schools, but such leniency was usually
balanced, as, for instance, in 1906, when the Diaz
government prohibited the long-accustomed open-
air service in the cemeteries, a ruling that gave
ample warning that there was no real loosening of
the government domination of religion.
The Carranza era in Mexico, despite its violences,
had little of the firmness which characterized the
age of Diaz. The recovery of the Church from its
persecutions was astonishing, and could be indica-
tive of nothing but a lack of real foundation in
public approval of the anti-Church features of the
campaigns. In the last two years of Carranza's
rule, 1918-20, the bishops and many of the priests
returned to Mexico and resumed their work.
Some came under sufferance from the government
and some entered Mexico in disguise, and at the
fall of Carranza in 1920 practically all of the
churches had been reopened.
Even if the Church has not been permanently
damaged, however, great harm has been done to the
moral tone of Mexican life by the continued battles
over religion. The Laws of Reform, while they had
a most definite effect on the political power of the
Church, also brought in a controversy which,
waging to this day, has steadily undermined the
morals of the people. This is the quarrel over the
rite of marriage, which, previous to 1859, was
solely a religious sacrament. The Laws of Reform
made it a civil contract, and the Church in its po-
187
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
litical zeal carried its battle with the anticlerical
forces of Mexico to the very altar of the Mexican
home. By refusing to recognize the civil ceremony
and by continuing to make the religious service an
expense to the Indian, the forming of illicit relations
became a commonplace, until it is probably true
to-day that, in the lower classes at least, marriage,
whether civil or religious, has practically no sig-
nificance. By adopting this attitude the Church
undoubtedly weakened the moral tone of its people
and gained little except a cause for complaint
against the government.
Another serious blow to Mexican moral standards
that resulted from the Wars of Reform, and in lesser
degree from the Madero-Carranza revolution, was
the effect on the priesthood. During the colonial
regime the policy of Spain toward the Indians (re-
garding them as minors) limited the clergy to
whites and mestizos. The exile of the Spaniards
after 1823 not only took away thousands of able
Spanish priests, but it also drew many of the edu-
cated Creoles and mestizos in the priesthood to
vacated opportunities in the learned professions,
and many, influenced by Liberal opinion, no doubt,
left the Church to become lawyers, doctors, etc.
The Laws of Reform closed the seminaries, and
thus limited the opportunities for replacing these
losses with Mexicans, and the Church was forced
to depend for its hierarchy and for its best workers
largely upon foreigners, from France, Italy, and
later again from Spain. As a result, the Mexican
priesthood has long been composed of a mass of
188
RELIGION
inadequately educated native curas, with a thin
veneer of often disinterested foreigners and a few
able Mexicans educated abroad. Moreover, in pro-
portion to the great work to be done and indeed in
proportion to the immense plant of church buildings
and their appurtenances at the Church's disposal,
the number of priests in the field has been astonish-
ingly low. The twenty-nine seminaries in Mexico
in 1910 were all relatively new, but were doing
much both to correct the shortage of priests and
to raise the low standard of the mass of the clergy.
The relatively limited number of the Catholic
clergy and the low qualifications of many of the
priests are, however, at once the cause of and the
excuse for the Protestant missionary work in
Mexico. The government encouragement which
the Protestants have had from the first came from
two sources, one the realization of the vastness of
Mexico's need for ministry, and the other the
political aspect, which undoubtedly influenced Diaz,
and to a far greater extent Carranza, to welcome and
to nurture this new means of control of the power
of the Catholic Church. This political factor is no
less distasteful to Protestants than it is to Catholics,
and under Diaz the former took no part whatever
even in such politics as there were. During the
revolutionary period there was some appearance of
change, but such support as was given to Carranza
by the Protestants was individual, many being
active in the armies and not a few native Protestant
ministers achieving political prominence, tem-
porarily giving up their church rank, in compliance
189
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
with the law. The foreign missionaries generally
held aloof, although among the warmest defenders
in the United States of the ill-starred Carranza
regime were returned American missionaries from
Mexico.
The object of the Protestant missions in Mexico
has never been very clear to the Mexican mind,
the idea of many being that the Catholic Church
should have been allowed to continue its work
without the definite opposition to its teachings
which it is generally conceded that the Protestant
missions promulgate. The contention of the
Protestants, however, has always been that there
is just as much reason for them to carry on their
work among the Mexicans as for them to send
home missionaries into the western part of the
United States, and the repeated assertion that the
majority of the Catholics of Mexico are still essen-
tially pagan gives support to their attutide. There
was bitter opposition, and some bloodshed, in the
early periods of the missionary work, and even to
this day the Protestants are sometimes regarded as
emissaries of the American government looking
toward the ultimate annexation of the country.
The confusion of religion with politics in the
Mexican mind has affected this attitude toward the
Protestants very considerably, and the fact that
most of the Protestant converts in Mexico supported
Madero, and that Carranza, after he came to power,
was extremely favorable to the Protestant churches,
has apparently given new ground for this suspicion.
The Protestants were undoubtedly used very
190
RELIGION
studiedly by Carranza to relieve himself as far as
\vas convenient from the stigma of being anti-
religious in his opposition to the Catholics, and the
Protestant work was greatly benefited by his im-
plied support and by the prominence he gave its
adherents in the revolutionary councils. This is
the chief basis for the many charges on the part of
Mexicans regarding the " pernicious activities of
Mexican Protestant clergymen."
The Reform in Mexico was achieved without any
substitution of Protestantism for Catholicism, and
it was not until 1870 that the first Protestant
missionary board (the American Baptist Home
Mission Society) officially began its work in Mexico.
This was not the first work done by individual
Protestant missionaries, however. When General
Scott marched from Vera Cruz to Mexico City in
1847 his army was accompanied by an agent of the
American Bible Society, who distributed several
thousand copies of the Bible in Spanish between
Vera Cruz and Mexico City. He retired with the
army, and the only missionaries who entered Mexico
before the Reform were a few travelers from Texas,
among them a woman, Miss Matilda Rankin, who
held services in Monterrey in the 'fifties. In 1862
a Baptist missionary did some individual work in
Mexico, to be followed, eight years later, by his
Church organization. Between 1870 and 1880
eight missionary organizations of the United States
began the work which they have continued since.
There were in 1910 nineteen missionary organiza-
tions with stations in Mexico. The official figures
13 191
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
on the activities of the Protestant churches in
Mexico given in the table tell only a part, of the
broad work attempted and accomplished. Though
the few hundred Protestant workers (one foreigner
or native to each 20,000 of the population) cannot,
of course, fill the gaps, they have, for more than
forty years, been diligent workers in then* many
fields churches and Sunday schools, hospitals and
asylums. For about fifteen years they have been
operating efficient schools hi their chief centers and
have presented a high scholastic standard both in
their normal and seminary courses and in their
primary schools. Although under the antire-
ligious laws of Carranza the Protestant schools, like
the Catholic, were closed, not a little of the criticism
of the Mexican Protestant clergymen by anti-
Carranzista Mexicans was based on the alleged
domination of government education by former
Protestant school-teachers who were said to have
been placed in the schools by former Protestant
clergymen who were influential in educational
affairs under Carranza.
The evangelical work of the Protestant mission-
aries has been conducted on a high spiritual plane,
and has often been an effective leaven in the
Mexican community. Always the uncommon
standard (for Mexico) of legal marriage for all
" wedded" converts has been insisted upon before
baptism, and conversion carries with it a full ac-
ceptance of the tenets to which the churches hold
their members at home. This condition has had
not a little to do with the limitation of their mem-
192
RELIGION
bership, but it has doubtless also resulted in much
more thorough conversions.
Drawing their converts, as they often do, from
people who are essentially religious, the Protestants
have encountered two difficulties which at first
may not be apparent. One is the deep resentment
of the Catholics, for the most conscientious Mexican
Protestants are likely to be men and women, for-
merly good Catholics, who, because of their very
sincerity, had come to feel limitations and deficien-
cies in the Catholic Church. The other is the
social ostracism which sometimes almost approaches
spiritual martyrdom in the separation of Protestant
converts from their families and friends. These
conditions have made many unique problems for
the missionaries, and indeed the whole work in
Mexico has to be carried on on a plane different
both from the work among the heathen and from
home missions in the United States. To this field
the missionaries have adapted themselves, and
they are to-day tilling it diligently, while they con-
tinue also to develop their greater opportunities of
reaching the thousands of Mexicans who have
never been touched by such work as the Catholic
priests have been able to do.
The present status of Protestant work in Mexico
is not so much advanced beyond the place held in
1910 as it should be under the undoubted advan-
tages it had hi Mexico under Carranza. This is
due, however, largely to the shrinkage in missionary
funds during the period of the Great War, when
effective work might have made very great gains in
193
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Mexico had not the call of Europe and the Near
East been more urgent. In organization, however,
the work has been greatly facilitated by the zoning
of the country and its division among the evan-
gelical Churches. The missionary organizations
formerly worked independently, and there was much
concentration in such centers as Mexico City and
Monterrey, while other equally fertile fields were
almost neglected. The organization of the Com-
mittee on Co-operation in Latin-America has now
divided the country up into sections, in each of
which one or two Protestant churches work alone,
only the Southern Baptists being outside this ar-
rangement. Supplementing the committee is a
Mexican National Committee on Co-operation,
composed largely of native ministers and laymen,
which had elaborate plans for broad national evan-
gelical campaigns, for the publication of a religious
magazine, and the ultimate establishment of a
national university patterned, in a way, after
Robert College in Constantinople.
IV
EDUCATION
OF the four great determinants of the conditions
under which the Mexican people live climate,
government, religion, and education the last is the
most humanly vital, and at the same time the most
beclouded in its basic facts and tendencies. Its re-
lationship even to the impetus to progress, surely
the most obvious of its functions, is lost in the
childish anxiety of Mexican educators to appear
progressive and advanced, while the long quarrels
of Church and state to control the intellectual
processes of the yet-to-be-awakened Indian have
made education the football of politics and the
door mat of revolutions.
Probably the most teachable of all the backward
peoples of the world, the Mexicans are to-day almost
illiterate. Hardly a tenth of the population has
a common-school education and more than three
quarters can neither read a street sign nor scratch
their own names. Keen and active as children,
easily led, accustomed in the main to logical proc-
esses of thought and surprisingly free from the
prejudices even of their cousins, the North American
195
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
aborigines, the Mexicans offer a fair field wherein
devoted tilling would bring forth worthy fruit.
But always the eternal discussion of systems of
education, the need of beautiful school buildings,
and the shortage of immediate funds have absorbed
more of the energy of Mexican educators than the
question of increasing the number of mere school
organizations and their efficiency in reaching the
people. Previous to the independence, all educa-
tion was in the hands of the Church and was
broadly elemental, much emphasis being put on
religion and manners and comparatively little, ac-
cording to its critics, on the training of the mind.
In the early days of the republic the schools were
continued by the Church, but under the Reform
Laws education became a function of the state.
In 1867 the first compulsory education laws were
passed, hi the face of pitifully inadequate facilities
for training the children who were theoretically
required to attend. Even then, educational sys-
tems were always under discussion. Although for
many years the Compania Lancaster iana, so called
after the English educator, Joseph Lancaster (1778-
1838), supervised such schools as there were, a Na-
tional Congress of Education in 1889 made definite
recommendations which resulted in the displace-
ment of the then antiquated Lancaster system and
the separation of the state schools from Federal
jurisdiction, the administrative system which is in
vogue to-day.
The subject of educational systems continued
controversial, however. It has been cut through
196
EDUCATION
and across by the theories of the Jesuits, the theo-
ries of the Positivists, and the contentions of prac-
tical teachers and priests as opposed to the ideals
of officials who apparently looked more to Mexico's
appearance as a modern state and the avoidance of
theological domination than to the necessity of an
education which would really lift the Indian out of
his lethargy and ignorance. In yet another sense
Mexican education has been a battle between those
who would follow conventional systems and those
who would follow the more modern ideal of making
education a preparation for life, between those who
would give the uneducated native a smattering of
learning and those who believed that this smattering
would be injurious to him by bringing him only
discontent, and therefore that education should
uplift a few with an eye to the full intellectual
development of the Mexican people of generations
and even centuries ahead.
Under Madero still another ideal took hold of the
Department of Education in a plan for general
rudimentary education in reading, writing, and
civics. This, however, was promptly abandoned
under Carranza, and the chaos was made complete
by the driving out of the priests and nuns who had
previously maintained almost the only system of
teaching in Mexico which had been based upon a
persistent and definite conception, however false,
of the needs of the people. For the Church schools,
emphasizing probably too much the religious side,
had gone on steadily through four hundred years,
with a consistency which at least is a virtue in the
197
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
tangled educational experiments of the period of
independence.
The opposition to education under religious control
has had a fantastic effect on the Mexican curriculum,
eliminating everything that smattered of theology
and even of morals, and making the typical Mexican
school a place where pupils are noisily taught read-
ing, writing, and arithmetic, but where the teacher
has little or no contact with the life of the children.
The question of moral education, including train-
ing in civics, ethics, and politeness, has absorbed
untold educational energy. The fact that the
Church held that it had the chief or only right to
teach morals apparently resulted in the early elim-
ination of ethics, and civics as well, from all the
government schools. Yet the home life of the
lower classes is so far below almost anything that is
known in the United States or Europe, that the
necessity of training the youth of the country to a
conception of obligation toward the state and of
the state's attitude toward him, becomes almost
imperatively incumbent upon the teachers. Only
the Church schools ever dared assume this duty,
and even when some factions would have been
willing, in late years, to have definite ethical
training in the public schools in a modern way, the
lack of funds and the lack of thoroughly educated
teachers made this almost impossible.
How deep the cloud of ignorance and how inade-
quate the provisions for dispelling it, can be grasped
only loosely by Mexican statistics, for here, even
more than elsewhere in the fantastic maze of official
198
EDUCATION
figures, one feels ever the baffling hand of men-
dacity, the apparent determination that no one
shall ever really know the truth. Only the most
progressive sections have ever given out school
statistics, and we are asked to judge all Mexico by
the Federal District, or Puebla, even while we are
told that their relatively poor showing is the best
in the entire country.
Even the appalling figures on illiteracy are uncon-
vincing, for again estimates are at variance with
statistics. In 1909 Francisco I. Madero, in his
famous political handbook, La Sucesion Presi-
dential en 1910, stated that the census of 1900
showed that 84 per cent of the population could
neither read nor write, while in the Federal District
the illiterates were 62 per cent of the population.
This is not borne out by a compilation of the census
figures, however, for these show that the illiterates
at that census totaled but 80 per cent. We can
easily believe that Madero's estimates are the more
correct, but we are again baffled by the apparent
frankness of the government reports, which show
only the slow gain of 2 per cent in each of the
periods 1895-1900 and 1900-10. The following
data were hidden in twelve unassembled columns
in various Mexican census reports :
ILLITERACY IN MEXICO
YEAR
TOTAL
POPULATION
ILLITERATES
PERCENTAGE
Minors
Adults
Tfotal
1895
1900
1910
12,619,949
13,604,923
15,150,369
8,007,465
(Under 12 yrs.)
6,826,673
7,165,454
2,308,434
(Over 12 yrs.)
4,095,319
4,786,277
10,415,899
10,921,992
11,951.731
82
80
78
199
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
In a bulletin published in 1912 (under Madero's
Presidency) the illiterates were classified as "of
school age or above," and showed 3,615,320 "of
school age" who were illiterates and 6,709,164
adult illiterates, a total of 10,324,484, presumably
at the census of 1910, or approximately only 66
per cent of illiteracy in Mexicans of school age or
more. There is no check against these figures, such
as signers of the marriage register, the system
formerly used in England, for the vast majority of
the Mexicans of the illiterate classes do not marry.
Some foreign companies have noted the illiteracy
of their employees, one with 525 workers having only
six who could sign their names, a proportion of 99
per cent of illiteracy, and it is fairly safe to assume
that outside the cities the average of illiteracy is
90 per cent or higher. Even taking the census
figures at their face value, the actual number of
Mexicans who were technically literate in 1900
was only a little over 2,700,000 in a population of
13,604,823. When we remember that the Mexicans
claimed that more than this number were pure-
blooded whites, and even our revised figures 1 allow
for 2,000,000 of "white culture," the appalling con-
dition of education in Mexico begins to have a
measuring stick even if a most inadequate one.
The statistics of schools are somewhat better,
but here the matter is complicated by the absence
of complete data regarding schools outside the
Federal District and territories, and by the lack of
full registration of the Church schools. Theoret-
1 See page 37.
200
EDUCATION
ically, the Catholic schools are nonexistent, though
large numbers of them functioned in every diocese
in the time of Diaz, "over 30,000 parish schools,"
with an attendance of 300,000, being mentioned
unofficially.
Official figures that allow for comparison do not
begin until 1893, but in 1876, according to the
Mexican legation in Washington, there were 8,176
"primary schools " with an attendance of 368,754,
while in 1895 there were 10,915 "public schools"
with 722,435 attending, or 5 per cent of the school
population, apparently in trie whole republic. 1
The following figures 2 from official reports are
apparently meant to cover only the Federal District
and territories :
OFFICIAL SCHOOLS
Classified According to Status
1893 1900 1906
Federal and state 4,876 6,592 5,867
Municipal 2,957 2,872 3,114
7,833 9,464 8,981
According to Kind of Instruction
Primary 7,616 9,363 8,877
Secondary 173 41 38
Professional 44 60 66
7,833 9,464 8,981
1 Matias Romero, Mexico and the United States, p. 150.
2 1. J. Cox, Monograph on Education, Doheny Research Foun-
dation.
201
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Attendance and Progesss
1893 1000 1906
Enrollment 483,337 713,394 615,134
Average attendance 346,665 490,527
Number examined 313,204 443,120
Number approved 242,692 367,868 325,266
Number completing course 1,667 19,820 25,945
Teaching Force and Expenditures
1893 1900 1906
Professors 2,376 3,451 4,004
Salaries P794,476.94 Pl,465,140.70 Pl,737,859
Aids and assistants 1,508 3,688 5,037
Salaries P296,770.40 P1 5 236,256.74 Pl,863,359
Servants.. 609 1,266 1,427
Salaries P65,321 P170,254.11 P216,196
Other expenses P953,899 Pl,435,258.17 P2,310,117
UNOFFICIAL SCHOOLS
Classified According to Ownership
189S 1900 1906
Private 1,769 2,068 1,896
Clerical. 244 493 547
Association schools 116 152 119
2,129 2,713 2,562
According to Kind of Instruction
Primary 2,088 2,653 2,536
Secondary 29 33 16
Professional 10 27 16
2,127 2,713 2,562
Attendance and Progress
Enrollment 111,142 146,709 163,020
Average attendance 78,291 117,543
Number examined 53,474 98,673
Number approved 42,259 76,571 94,422
Number completing course 1,922 3,946 8,910
202
EDUCATION
If we take the total of official and unofficial
schools for 1906 at 11,543, we have one school for
every 1200 inhabitants of the country not a bad
showing, until we discover that the average enroll-
ment in each school is but 62. This is even re-
duced, in actual attendance, to about 50, if we
take the proportion of attendance to enrollment
indicated by the more complete reports of 1893
and 1900. Tremendous things were done in Mexi-
can education under Diaz, but such facts as the
smallness of individual school organizations are the
sort that are not emphasized. A government re-
port on education in 1907 followed the usual method
of ignoring the statistical facts, but stated the follow-
ing to be the proportion of schools to population
in the various states:
Statistics of public instruction show that the state of Jalisco
has one school for every 2,354 inhabitants; Aguas Calientes,
one for every 3,103; Campeche, one for every 1,236; Coahuila,
one for every 2,090; Chihuahua, one for every 2,731 ; Durango,
one for every 2,468; Guanajuato, one for every 4,596; Hidalgo,
one for every 1,020; Michoacan, one for every 2,888; Morelos,
one for every 687; Nuevo Leon, one for every 1,158; Puebla,
one for every 886; Queretaro, one for every 1,444; San Luis
Potosi, one for every 2,592; Sinaloa, one for every 1,041;
Sonora, one for every 1,092; Tabasco, one for every 1,018;
Tamaulipas, one for every 1,777; Tlaxcala, one for every 700;
Vera Cruz, one for every 1,268; Yucatan, one for every 792;
Zacatecas, one for every 1,316, and Mexico, one for every 936.
Some of the Mexican states have actually done
considerable work in education, Puebla, for instance,
203
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
being in many ways as advanced as the Federal
District under Diaz. In fact, genuine progress has
been made not only in certain states and in the
Federal District, but also, in proportion, in many
isolated sections. In 1900 schools were rare even
in the larger towns, while in 1910 there were at least
school organizations in nearly every town and in
hundreds of villages, and in President Diaz's own
state of Oaxaca, for instance, there were schools of
some sort, and often very fair schools, throughout
its whole area.
Considering the depth of ignorance and the il-
literacy, however, the expenditures for education
even under Diaz seem very small. Diaz's total
government budget was less than P100,000,000 a
year, and the appropriation for Federal schools was
about P4,000,000. This sum was to cover the
education hi the Federal District and in the terri-
tories, and it is probable that the money annually
expended by the states on education would not
anywhere approach a similar sum. Granting that
it equaled it, however, the total possible appro-
priation for education during the Diaz regime was
about P8,000,000 per year, or P4 per child of ele-
mentary-school age. Out of this, however, came
as well the moneys for the higher educational insti-
tutions, upon which considerable sums were spent,
for these were among the show places of Mexican
progress. Under Carranza the common schools
were entirely divorced from Federal control and
support, and in view of the fact that the sacking of
the country had left all municipalities bankrupt,
204
EDUCATION
that the antireligious trend of the revolution had
closed hundreds of Catholic schools, and that the
budgets of Carranza had always to meet a deficit,
it is certain that the real expenditure for education
per-capita child of school age was far below that of
the Diaz time.
In fact, the educational conditions under the
Carranza regime were such as to wipe out much of
the slow progress made by Diaz. The stress under
which Carranza labored in his efforts to maintain
his military control of the country so depleted the
government funds that, as has always been the case
in revolutionary Mexico (and elsewhere, indeed),
the schools had to suffer. The Federal Department
of Public Instruction and Fine Arts was first
abolished, and the jurisdiction and support of the
Federal schools was distributed, the primary and
secondary being assigned to the municipalities,
commercial schools to the Department of Industry
and Labor, and the professional schools to the
direction of the University of Mexico. The Federal
government provided no money for the maintenance
of the primary and secondary schools, and the muni-
cipalities had no funds, so in May, 1915, having
received no pay, the teachers of the Federal District
went on a strike.
The result of this strike, in which street -car
employees and others joined in sympathy, was the
appropriation of some funds for the payment of
teachers by the Federal government, and some of the
schools were reopened, but with reduced teaching
force and reduced attendance. The report of a
205
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
committee assigned to the arrangements decided
that 86 primary and 32 secondary schools should be
retained, 36 primary and 10 secondary being closed,
and the selected teachers who were kept were to
receive from P3.09 to P3.56 per day, or say about
P100 a month, during the school term. It is worth
noting in contrast (although the figures are for the
whole Federal District, including several munici-
palities besides that of Mexico) that the Diaz record
in primary education in this section for the quiet
years previous to the four years of Carranza rule
showed 296 elementary schools in 1906, 338 in
1909-10, and (under Madero) 343 in 1911-12.
Beyond the facts of Mexican ignorance, beyond
the utter inadequacy of the provisions to combat it,
looms, as ever, that hopeless problem of the system
of education. The Mexican mind must indeed be
trained, but the Mexican mind that must lead the
untrained brother seeks, and justly, to know the
road he is to travel. The determination of that
road is not the province of this book it belongs in
the sphere of the science of education, and if that
science works from the facts that exist, we can well
hope that the problem will be solved. Mexico has
already tried most of the systems that might be
looked to to guide her, and probably her chief failure
has been in that she has never yet, since education
was taken from the Church, been able to take a
long-distance view and to work in ordered progress
along a predetermined road. Under Diaz the
menace of churchly control seemed too imminent,
and only under Diaz has Mexican government,
206
EDUCATION
since the viceroys, even begun to see its problems
whole. Under Madero, the plan for rudimentary
education, for all the criticisms of it, had the virtue
of being a frank facing of the Mexican educational
problem in its uniqueness, not a slavish copying of
foreign systems. Under Carranza, the fiasco of
education might be called the greatest of all the
revolutionary failures, and yet that can well be
explained by the fact that the exigencies of govern-
ment kept funds and vision turned to very different
directions. /
To him who seeks simply the welfare of Mexico,
the Hampton ideal, the training of leaders for tiny
schools, for little towns, for the centers of groups
that shall radiate idealism and education and the
happiness of adjustment to life as it is, takes hold
of the imagination. At Hampton Institute, at
Tuskeegee, the slow work of training leaders for
the negro race has been going on, passing through
deep valleys of ignorance and prejudice, the crea-
tions alike of dull, sodden despair and of polished
yet unfitted theorizing. Yet the long road seems
to the watcher to be nearing the crest, to be
promising, truly, a solution of the education of a
race.
It may be that a similar system is the ultimate
solution of the human Mexican problem, but it is a
solution which so far Mexico has never accepted,
perhaps because Mexicans dislike so much to admit
that theirs is comparable in any way with the
American negro problem.
Yet education for life seems the essential need of
H 207
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the Mexican population. The life that they must
face has tremendous problems not only in the tem-
perament, inheritance, and habits of the people, but
in the continually growing pressure from without
of the higher civilization which Mexico must ulti-
mately accept. The long list of experiments in
government which make up Mexican history has
been essentially a struggle to graft the white man's
ideals upon a people of a lower race type, without
adapting the ideals to the type or educating the
type to the ideals. The result has been a veneer
of peaceful government, and in education a veneer
of Latin culture. Many of the men who became
prominent in the Madero regime were the clear-
eyed intellectuals who had been suppressed by the
materialism of the latter days of Diaz, and these
men brought to the surface at that time a desire to
look frankly upon the Mexican people as they were
and not as it would be well to have the rest of the
world regard them. The result was a definite
trend toward a recognition of the necessity for
adaptation to the psychology and needs of the
Indian.
All this seems to be a tending, unconscious as yet,
perhaps, toward the Hampton ideal of education
for life, the raising of the mass by the elevation of
a few, and the scattering of those few far and wide
throughout the land. The way is long, the need
is great, and we have yet to see the beginnings.
Industrial training as a system is still to come, the
very education of the hands in kindergarten is
practically unknown. An ignorance so profound
208
EDUCATION
that it is itself an enigma deadens every effort, and
yet it seems that when the day of understanding
comes the leaders who are yet to find the way out
of darkness will have the torch in an education to
the true rewards of life which will illumine even
the depths of Indian apathy.
THE FAMILY
/CAPTIOUS critics of the social life of Mexico
v^rf have been concerned that there is no word in
the Spanish language for "home" and that what
they call a true domestic life of the Mexican people
is almost entirely absent. Nothing could be more
sweepingly inaccurate, and yet this attitude is ex-
pressive of that habit of judging Mexico by Anglo-
Saxon standards which makes a true understanding
of her faults as well as her virtues so difficult.
Most listeners never get beyond the solemn fact
that the Mexican (and the Spaniard as well) speaks
of his "house, " but not of his "home/' yet the word
casa (literally "house" and used commonly to
signify the building), means, in the sense of home,
that embattled retreat wherein one rules alone, a
very real phase of home. Hogar, the definitive word
for "home," is literally hearth or fireside, with an
intimate connoted meaning of warmth and seclusion
for which even English has no full equivalent.
The Mexican's word casa comes, as one knows
the people better, to be extremely expressive, for
the outside world, native or foreign, seldom pene-
210
THE FAMILY
trates behind the seclusion which wraps around the
home life of any Mexican. Here linger a Spanish
reserve and dignity that are inherent and sincere,
and behind the walls there goes on a home life that
is different, perhaps, but as real as, and in some ways
even more cohesive than, the Anglo-Saxon. Father
and mother, sons and daughters, find in this citadel
a retreat and a fortress of unquestioning loyalty, an
understanding that often needs no words, and a
spirit that brooks no issue save that of the family
unit in crisis or in criticism.
The Mexican family group is instinctively organ-
ized along patriarchal lines, with the father as the
head, the ruler, the arbiter of the destinies of his
household. In the upper and middle classes the
father (and this means the oldest father, be he
grandfather or great-grandfather) heads the family
group, and is obeyed implicitly in the smallest
details of life. He is the mentor and the inspira-
tion of the sons and daughters, of their wives, hus-
bands, and children, and of all the relatives who
gather under his roof. Of all the stable elements
which there are in Mexico (and in spite of revolu-
tions and fantastic governmental experiments there
are many stable elements) the Mexican family per-
sists as one of the people's safe foundations. The
interrelation of the families of each class in the
towns, of all the leading groups of the landed gentry,
and even of the ranchero class, forms true clans (an
instinct that perhaps goes back to the Aztec gentes,
or blood-kin groupings) each of which has a recog-
nized head whose desires and whose existence it-
211
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
self dominate their whole social life. Brothers and
sisters, aunts and uncles, all have their distinct
places; the first cousin is " cousin-brother/' and the
children themselves early find their proper grouping.
Families-in-law enter into the patriarchal arrange-
ment, the wife joining the family of her husband,
and when her father and mother unite in social affairs
the husband's father, in the male line, is the head
of the group. Close into the household are also
brought the interesting type of friends who are
called compadres (literally co-fathers), the corn-
padre having been a godfather to one of the children
of the household and thus formally brought into an
intimate and friendly association which is sealed
forever by this honored relationship.
The patriarchal organization also takes in the
servants, who are a real part of every Mexican
household, have special places at the baptisms and
weddings, and are encouraged to link their lives and
bring their sorrows and joys to the head of the
house or to its mistress. The Mexican family
organization is the basis of that patriarchal protec-
tion of the weak by the strong which is such a
potent element of Mexico's social solidarity.
The Mexican family system has long been ex-
pressed in the terms and customs of matrimony.
Going back primarily to the Spanish idea of mar-
riage as a churchly rite in which the husband and
wife are united with ceremonies analogous to the
retirement of the woman to a convent, Mexican
marriage relationships have equally definite roots in
the customs of the indigenous inhabitants. Mar-
212
THE FAMILY
riage with the Aztecs was a contract arranged by
the emissaries of the man, and consented to by the
woman's family. It was consummated with a
religious ceremony followed by a festival such as
marks Mexican marriages to-day; there were
certain recognized bases for illegal unions and for
the disposition of children of such relationships;
there were limitations to marriages between blood
relatives, polygamy was rare, and there were
certain forms of divorce. The patriarchal idea was
not unlike that of the Spaniards, and the family of
a son often lived in the household of his parents.
With the coming of the Spaniards, the Church
took sole control of the marriage rite, and until
1859 the religious ceremony and its correlated
significances were those of the Europe of their day,
and marriage was a sacrament of the Church.
After the so-called Reform Laws went into effect it
became almost overnight a civil contract, in name
at least. These laws of 1859, however, retained
many of the religious features of marriage, holding
that its bonds could be dissolved only through the
death of one of the contracting parties, perpetuating
the patriarchal conception of the rite. Legal sep-
aration was authorized under certain conditions,
but without permitting either husband or wife to
remarry. Under the new Carranza law of domestic
relations, however, divorce has now become a part
of Mexican legal procedure, and, in addition, mar-
riage has been made easier, in that many of the
almost churchly formalities are abolished. The
new law adds, however, to the disabilities which
213
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
prevent legal marriage (formerly lack of legal age,
lack of the consent, error in the statement of blood
relationship, intimidation, and fraud) several which
did not exist under the former law, such as habitual
drunkenness, physical incapacity, incurable disease,
and lunacy. In addition, the age at which marriage
can be contracted has been raised from 14 to 16
years for the man, and from 12 to 14 years for the
woman, the consent of parents or guardians being
required up to the age of 21.
The great element influencing marriage in Mexico,
however, is not the matter of its forms nor its re-
sponsibilities so much as the ancient quarrel be-
tween Church and state over the control of the
marriage rite. The division of responsibility and
the question of authority have so complicated the
idea of marriage in the mind of aristocrat and peon
alike that it seems as if only in those ranks where
social pressure or churchly authority holds sway
does any kind of marriage still remain as one of the
tilings that "is done." The Reform Laws, and
those of Carranza as well, recognize no Church
marriage as legal, while the Catholic Church has
held tenaciously that it is the one source of authority
for the bonds of matrimony. So far is this carried
that the priest does not require proof of a civil cere-
mony before performing the sacrament, and on the
other hand the Mexican government has always con-
sistently refused to recognize church marriages or to
deputize priests or ministers to perform the legal
ceremony.
There has also been the financial phase of the
214
THE FAMILY
question. Civil marriage is theoretically free, but
the Catholic Church has always charged a definite
sum. In earlier days the Church's fee was rela-
tively very high, a record for the city of Chihuahua
in 1884 being that the minimum was P18 ($16 at
the exchange rate of the day), though at the time
the civil marriage fee was P7.50 (S6). 1 In 1910
the civil marriage fee had been entirely remitted
practically everywhere, and the Church fee ranged
from nothing, where the contracting parties could
not pay, to P5 for laborers earning PI a day or
more, the fee for most of the ceremonies being P10. 2
These sums were fortunes to peons working for
50 centavos a day, but even though there were
many occasions, such as saints' days, etc., when the
Church performed the marriage ceremony free of
charge, the fiesta which inevitably accompanies
a genuine wedding in Mexico (and indeed many
unions which are consummated without legal or
Church ceremonies) is such an expense to the lower
class that often they establish their households
without the formality of either a civil or a religious
ceremony, and even without a feast, making it
informal indeed. The peon who could not afford a
religious service cheerfully gave up the civil mar-
riage which his priest had taught him was of no
particular significance.
That the disrepute of matrimony is a very real
1 Interview No. 61, Doheny Foundation Files, the informant
a former Protestant missionary.
2 Interview No. 299, Doheny Foundation Files, the informant
a member of the Mexican higher clergy.
215
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
condition is borne out by the figures, showing a
continuous and almost uninterrupted decrease in
the number of marriages performed from year to
year, despite the growth in population. The civil
register is the only one whose statistics are available,
but it is probable that most of those married in the
churches have previously been married by a judge,
for in the years where the numbers are available for
comparison, the total of Church marriages is less
than the total of civil ceremonies, as in 1910, when
there were 49,938 civil marriages to 40,289 religious
ceremonies. The decline in marriage is shown by
the following figures, which are for civil marriages
performed, so that the number of persons married
and also the proportion per thousand of individuals
is just double the figures quoted:
NUMBER OF MARRIAGES IN MEXICO
YEAR
MARRIAGES
PER 1,000
YEAR
MARRIAGES
PER 1,000
1896. .
1897 .
52,968
51,000
4.19
3.89
1904
1905
61,588
57,881
4.34
4.03
1898 ....
61,681
4.89
1906
56,339
3.88
1899
59,957
4.71
1907
60,774
4.14
1900
63,722
5.04
1908
56,359
3.48
1901
60,227
4.38
1909
55,339
3.70
1902
1903
60,098
60,117
4.32
4.28
1910
54,339
3.58^
Over against these can be set the marriage
records of other countries, the number of marriages
and not the number of persons married being given,
as follows: United States, 10.5 per 1,000; Hungary,
10.4; France, 7.55; Spain, 8.74. *
1 Additional marriage rates are quoted in the table on p. 88.
216
THE FAMILY
This might indicate a low proportion of actual
child-bearing unions, this marriage rate of Mexico
(which averages 4.04 over the ten-year period
previous to 1910) being so low as to presage a ter-
rific loss in population if legal marriages marked
even the majority of the child-bearing unions. In
the census of 1910, however, the number of "mar-
ried" persons reported was 4,110,761, or 2,055,380
couples, to which should be added 907,766 widowed
persons, indicating roughly a total of 2,963,146
couples who must have formed their conjugal unions
in the previous thirty years. Allowing for the
deaths which would undoubtedly reduce the pro-
portion of survivors of all the " marriages" of those
thirty years, it is safe to take merely the double of
the previous ten-year period as roughly the number
of legal weddings represented in this population of
1910. The total of legal marriages in the ten-year
period is 583,172, our arbitrary figure being 1,166,-
344 as the legally married portion of the 2,963,146
couples who reported themselves as " married" to
the census takers in 1910. If we consider that
many of the peon families were known to be un-
married and were so reported as " single, " it is
certainly not unfair to estimate that at least two
thirds of the child-bearing unions in Mexico are
illegal and the children thfcs" 1 illegitimate. Other
estimates place the proporaon of illegal marriages
even higher, so that this extremely arbitrary calcu-
lation seems to be sustained.
With the figures available, including our crude
estimates, it is possible to make some calculation of
217
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the fecundity of Mexican marriages. The figures
for 1909 (those for 1910 are incomplete, three im-
portant states being missing) show the following, in
a calculated population of 14,997,426:
First marriages 104,294
Widowed 6,606
Mexicans 109,942
Men
14 to 19 yrs.
20 to 29 "
30 to 44 "
45 to 59 "
Over 60 "
13,298
30,856
7,962
2,624
710
Foreigners .
Women 12 to 19 yrs.
20 to 29 "
30 to 44 "
45 to 59 "
Over 60 "
958
32,978
17,490
3,795
976
211
Civil register 55,450 Church register 47,448
The extremely early marriages in Mexico, of
course, lengthen the child-bearing period, the fig-
ures for 1909 here quoted showing, in comparison
with other countries, the following age groups of
brides, including both first marriages and widows:
PERCENTAGE OF BRIDES BY AGE CLASSES*
COUNTRY
UNDER 20
20 TO 30
30 TO 40
30 TO 45
OVER 40
OVER 45
Mexico
59.0
30.1
6.8
4.1
Russia
58.0
33.2
6.2
2.6
England
Bavaria
France
13.5
6.4
21.2
68.9
64.8
59.6
13.1
20.6
13.7
...
4.5
8.1
5.6
Over one fourth of the total number of legal
brides in Mexico were, in the Diaz period, between
12 and 16 years of age, and in many states, such as
1 As usual, Mexico's groupings are at variance with usual
standards, hence the inaccurate comparisons. The European
figures are from Richmond Mayo-Smith's Statistics and Sociology,
p. 105.
218
THE FAMILY
Yucatan, as large a portion as 82 per cent was often
reported as being under the age of 20.
The physical child-bearing period of Mexican
women is between the ages of 12 and 35, but, as
the census cannot be depended on to list as married
merely those who have gone through the legal cere-
mony, we must calculate, using the data at hand,
that if the annual legal marriages number about
50,000, in twenty years the living population of
legally married women of child-bearing age (with
a death loss of about 15,000 per year in such a
group, 12-35 years), would be about 600,000.
The legitimate births of that year (registered
civilly) were 251,252, but the baptismal records of
the Church showed 294,201, which is probably
nearer the correct figure for legitimate births, so
that the Mexican birth rate per 1,000 legally mar--
ried women of child-bearing age is about 500.
This compares with typical average figures for the
United States, about 200; France, 166; Norway,
274, England, 264.
The number of children per marriage is theo-
retically calculable by taking the number of mar-
riages of a single year and the number of births in
the year when the mean number of births from such
marriages are to be expected. This gives a sur-
prising result. In Mexico the average number of
births comes about four years after marriage. (In
England it is six years.) If we take the number of
marriages in 1906 (56,339), and divide it into the
number of legitimate births in 1910, 294,201, we
get about 5,2 children as the average number of
219
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
births to a legal marriage, which compares with
Spain, 4.47; Italy, 5.15; France, 3.42; Sweden, 4.84.
This seems low, but of course the legal marriages,
and thus the legitimate births, are overwhelmingly
in the higher classes, whose fecundity is invariably
below the national average.
The introduction of divorce under the Carranza
laws of 1916 was intended to obviate some of these
depressing factors and to revive the standing of
legal marriage by providing a means of ending it if
it had not the elements of permanency. Under the
Diaz regime, divorce was impossible, although
there was legal separation which dissolved the part-
nership before the law without permitting remar-
riage. The grounds for this legal separation
included adultery, the birth of a child conceived out
of wedlock when judicially declared illegitimate,
moral turpitude, drunkenness, and mutual consent.
All these, including mutual consent, are now
grounds for absolute divorce. The Carranza law
added three additional grounds inability to
carry out the purposes of marriage on account of
physical incapacity; absence of the husband for
more than one year; the commission of a crime
meriting imprisonment or exile for more than two
years. Adultery on the part of the wife is always
ground for divorce, while on the part of the husband
the wife has no case excepting, first, if the act of
adultery is committed in the home; or, second, if it
cause public scandal or result in public insult to
the lawful wife; or, third, if the guilty woman ill-
treat by word or deed the lawf ul wife. Divorce by
220
THE FAMILY
mutual consent may not be sought until one year
after marriage. The innocent party is awarded the
custody of the children, except when they are under
five years of age, when they go to the mother.
The divorce law was, however, only one of the
radical changes made in the fundamental concep-
tion of Mexican marriage by Carranza's decrees.
Matrimony has long been regarded as having only
the end of serving the husband and father, in his
pleasure, in his convenience, in his prestige, and in
his desire for a large and happy family. Under the
Roman Civil Law from which, through Spain, the
Church, and the Code Napoleon, Mexico inherited
so many of her customs and laws, the wife entered
her husband's family practically on the plane of a
daughter, her property becoming that of her hus-
band, and he in turn assuming the obligation of her
support and giving her full recognition as an heir.
Upon this basis many generations of happy
Mexican homes were built, but there is no doubt
that in late years there has been a beginning of a
restlessness on the part of Mexican women which,
however distasteful it is (and it certainly is dis-
tasteful) to conservative or typical Mexicans, was
bound to achieve recognition sooner or later. It
happened to be sooner, and to be given by the
Carranza laws, laws more modern in theory than
actually demanded by the social organization of
Mexico at the time, but placing much new power
and independence in the hands of the women of
Mexico.
The first criticism of conservative Mexicans is
221
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
that under the new laws marriage ceases to be a
social institution and becomes a private contract,
easily executed and easily dissolved. Indeed, under
the old law, the legal concept of marriage was that
it was a true partnership in which the wife and the
husband were each legally considered as sharing the
benefits as well as the difficulties of the other. Now,
under the new law, with marriage as a contract of
association, the woman as a separate individual has
her own obligations to meet as well as her own
opportunities to develop. In the emancipation of
woman, however, from the old rules which kept her
even from independent administration of her in-
heritance and earnings except with the consent of
the husband, the new law is considered a distinct
advance.
Even to the present day, the entry of the wife
into the Mexican household has been marked by a
dowry and a prenuptual contract specifying her
contributions to the new family and her rights in
the new relationship. All else, including her in-
heritances and earnings, belonged to the husband
and her protection was only as his heir. Under the
new law both wife and husband reserve ownership
and administration of their respective properties,
increases and accessions therefrom; fees, salaries,
and wages belong to the party earning them. Even
though husband and wife agree to consider all their
properties and incomes as one, this is not binding
upon third parties, who may seize and collect
individually. The wife, however, has prior claim
to the proceeds of the husband's property, his
222
THE FAMILY
salary, etc. A wife may not, however, render per-
sonal service to another or engage in business, etc.,
without the consent of the husband.
The wife who, through no fault of her own, is
compelled to live apart from her husband may, by
the new law, receive alimony under a petition to the
court, and, most important, the abandonment of
the wife and children without provision for their
support is punishable by imprisonment up to two
years. The law allows the wife, if necessary, to
assume the support, and so the headship, of the
family, but it also compels her "to contribute
toward the expenses of the home if she has property,
exercises a profession or business, or is otherwise an
earning member of the household."
Even aside from the strictly financial relation-
ships, the organization of the Mexican home, in the
legal sense, at least, has undergone great changes.
The most fundamental of these (aside from divorce)
is the provision giving " equal authority in the
home" to both husband and wife in the education
of the children, in the determination of family
destinies of every sort, and in the investment and
handling of family property. The Mexican home
was formerly organized on a thoroughly utilitarian
basis, with the father as the acknowledged head,
while now, as Mexicans who cling to the old idea
find, it sets up a dual authority, equally powerful
members rivaling one another. An instance, not
without its light upon Mexican domestic economy,
is found in the new law where the wife is excused
from following the husband "if he leaves the
15 223
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
republic and makes his home in an unhealthy
portion of the globe or in a place not suited to the
social position of the wife." The old law pre-
scribed, without any limitation whatever, that
"the wife must live with the husband."
In the case of children, the husband may still,
as in the old days, recognize natural sons and
daughters born either before or after his marriage,
but he shall not take them or an adopted child into
his home without the consent of his wife. In addi-
tion, the new law authorizes the legal adoption of
children, a provision which did not heretofore
exist, but a wife may adopt a child only with the
consent of her husband, while the latter does not
require the wife's consent.
Many of the fundamental supports of the patri-
archal domination of the husband have thus
actually been removed, and the effects will be
increasingly evident as time goes on.- But the
patriarchal conception of life goes very deep into
Mexican psychology, and there is little danger of
the finer phases of the traditional Mexican family
relationship being lost; if any are changed, it is
likely to be in the direction of a higher development
of Mexican womanhood and a worthier attitude
toward women on the part of Mexican men.
The home life of any community has its roots in
the relations of husband and wife, and where, as in
Mexico, the first duty of a woman is to meet the
sexual exigencies of her husband, the finer phases
of wedded life are in continual jeopardy. The con-
trol of this phase of marriage by the man has had
224
THE FAMILY
much to do both with the closely confined and cir-
cumscribed life of the wives and with the notorious
infidelity and laxity of the Mexican male. The
new independence to which the Mexican wife is
approaching seems to promise that she will not
only be in a better position to control this as well
as other relationships, but that she will achieve the
education and broader outlook on life which will
give her the wisdom to do so. Heretofore the
Mexican wife has had but two functions the
pleasure of the husband and the raising of children.
The physical side of the former soon wears away,
and the latter persists in an atmosphere often
sorrowful and unhappy and lightened only by the
wife's true devotion to her children.
Although the Mexican is not without apprecia-
tion of his women, the following poetic and sincere
tribute by an able Latin observer, gives a list of
admired virtues that is most illuminating: " Mex-
ican women are the best balanced I have ever seen.
They are good daughters, good wives, good mothers ;
they are intelligent, sentimental, discreet, lovely,
elegant, and prolific; they are virtuous on every
side; no one hesitates to state that the women are
much better than the men. . . . They are greatly
respected by the men. ... It would be considered a
disgrace for a married woman to have to earn her
living. Husbands will not allow their wives to
work." 1
Mexican men like to ascribe more influence to
their women than actually exists, except, perhaps,
1 Julio Sesto, El Mexico de P&rfirio Diaz, p. 218,
225
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
in case of fiancees or favorite mistresses. The
Mexican gentleman loves to mention the wisdom
and influence of his wife, and to quote the ancient
Spanish proverb, "If your wife asks you to jump
out of the window, pray God that the window is
near the street." The Mexican woman is, how-
ever, extremely limited by education and by her
lack of contact with the world. A woman of good
birth almost invariably studies in a convent, sees
almost no men except her brothers and her father
until she is married, and after marriage hardly
meets her husband's friends unless they are in turn
the husbands of her women friends, and even then
under the most formal conditions, with the limita-
tion of the most patronizing attitude on the part
of all the men present toward all the women present.
But Mexican women do exercise not a little real
influence over their husbands. Clever and beauti-
ful as they are in their youth, they are often able
to overcome the inherent authority of the husband
and father, but it has always been through cajolery
and without the traditions, rights, or privileges
which would make their success permanent.
The most admired of all feminine virtues are de-
votion and constancy, and these the wife studiously
develops. They are trained into her from the
cradle, and although her limitations and her lack
of contact with boys when she is a child may make
her morbid, as is often said of her, it does inculcate
a conception of the value of outward virtue which
she uses in all her relationships, and chiefly in her
flattery of her husband. In the manifestation of
226
THE FAMILY
their devotion, Mexican women are characterized
by a patience and endurance which extend through-
out all classes of the republic. The peon women
are especially the slaves and the drudges of their
husbands and sons; in the middle classes a tre-
mendous amount of work is done by the women in
the home, and even in the highest ranks of Mexican
society the woman, especially when she grows
older, is very likely to become almost a personal
servant to her husband, his valet as well as his
housekeeper. If such a wife is badly treated she
accepts it with resignation, because it is part of the
service she feels she owes her husband, just as the
peon woman accepts and. endures cruelty and
physical violence at the hands of a drunken spouse
as one of the duties of wifehood. The end of all
training of the Mexican women for marriage is in-
culcated docility and self-effacement, and it is an
unwritten law in Mexico that the wife must not
complain at her husband's paramour, her support
at his hands and the courteous consideration he
gives her being the return which she receives for
her faithfulness.
This habit and attitude of devotion on the part of
the Mexican wife has had much to do with the wide-
spread and open custom of keeping mistresses. In
the middle and upper classes, owing in part to the
absence of divorce, but more to the male security
of domination in his household, the maintenance of
mistresses long ago became a recognized social
custom. The cult of mistresses may have had its
beginnings in the existence of distinct strata of
227
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
society, but in Mexico the relationship has reached
a more settled and definite condition, as it takes in
not only the women of a lower class than the men,
but often women of their own class, whom they set
up in separate establishments, often with the
knowledge of their legitimate wives. In these
casas chicas (little houses) secondary families are
born, the sons and sometimes the daughters of
which are brought into the legal family when the
illicit relationship is broken off, the law recognizing
the right of the father to the children of these
unions.
The mistresses are often of very good family, but
they have no place in society, cannot be seen
openly with their men, and yet at the same time
are held almost in slavery by the jealousy of their
lovers and the fact that their ease and comforb de-
pend upon his caprice. Thus, as a Mexican writer
has put it, "it is not infrequently that one finds in
the wife the frivolous disposition of a mistress and
in the mistress the virtues 'of a wife."
The Mexican man of good standing speaks frankly
of his "other house" and of his legitimate and il-
legitimate children, and the gossip of the cities will
relate not only the number of "families" of a
prominent man, but the location of his houses, and
the relationship of the sons and daughters who
appear with him when his wife remains at home.
From the highest classes to the very lowest the
devotion of parents to children and of children to
parents is notable. The families are large, one of
the objects of marriage being definitely the rearing
228
THE FAMILY
of a fine family, with "race suicide" in the distant
future. Indeed, in numbering his children a
Mexican will count not only the living, but the
dead as well, and not infrequently the illegitimate,
carefully set apart in the list.
In the family organization the Mexican boy has
many privileges as heir apparent to the family
throne. In play, the oldest boy assumes the role
of director, and as the children grow older it is he
who accompanies and chaperones his sisters when
they go about in society, and whenever, indeed,
he meets them outside of the home.
The position of the girl in the Mexican home is a
part of this same patriarchal atmosphere. She is
protected from the cradle, is never seen in public
with any men save her own kin, and even in meeting
her future husband is never left alone with him.
She lives her life along rigidly conventional lines,
and until recent years received comparatively
little education, except in the arts; each Mexican
girl learns to play the piano or some other instru-
ment, to sing, to embroider, or to make artificial
flowers. Her duties in the household consist in
being beautiful, pious, and stiffly prim when a girl,
and in raising children and watching their morals
in turn when she becomes a wife.
The manners of Mexican children of the better
classes are almost universally good. They are
always respectful, do not speak in company unless
they are spoken to, excuse themselves when they
leave the room, and, with a charm which perhaps
the foreigner can appreciate most, always give their
229
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
hand limply in good night and in good morning to
the guests and to each member of the family, kissing
the hand or the cheek of the older people.
The child community of Mexico is, however, an
active and vivid one. The precosity of the tropics
shortens childhood, but it also brings to the boy and
girl a livelier sense of the realities of life than to the
children of more temperate climates. In play the
Mexican child is eager, and although it is some-
times ludicrous to note the aping of older people
in the tiniest of boys and girls, child life runs along
in much the same channels as elsewhere; the young-
sters grow as rapidly, play as noisily, and fight as
energetically as in any town in the United States or
England.
The population of children in Mexico is, in spite
of the high birth rate, relatively little greater than
in the United States. In 1910 there were 2,633,168
children of from 1 to 5 years and 5,312,001
from 6 to 20, a total of 7,945,179 minors, or
approximately 16.6 per cent under 6 years of
age, and 35.8 per cent from 6 to 20, the popu-
lation of all minors being 52 per cent of the whole.
In the United States in 1910 the population under
6 years was 24,000,000, or 24 per cent, between
6 and 20, about 28,000,000, the total number
of minors being 51,500,000, or approximately 50
per cent. This apparent parallel is accounted for,
however, by the fact that, while Mexican children
die in great numbers in their early years, the adults
who die in early maturity are also in greater pro-
portion than in the United States, leaving the
230
THE FAMILY
ultimate balance between minors and adults prac-
tically the same. 1
Although the patriarchal organization of the
family seems basic in Mexico, among the lower
classes, and at times also in the upper, there is a
tendency toward the rule of the mother, a condition
due in no small degree in the lower classes to the
fact that the father has often disappeared long
before the babies have grown to childhood. The
loose marital relations of the peons and the promis-
cuity with which they form temporary unions
often results in the children of one mother having
each a different surname, and more often in a child
having almost no acquaintance with his father.
The servants in households, especially in Mexico
City, speak with great reverence of their mothers,
and even grown men will refer matters of importance
to the feminine head of their clan.
In the middle and upper classes, also, the woman
wields a genuine influence. Indeed, when the
grandfather of a conventionally organized Mexican
household dies, his power is very likely to pass to
the grandmother (his wife), rather than to the
eldest son, and she, grown shrewd and wise with
years of experience, is often the virtual manager of
great estates and a numerous progeny.
In social life, however, it is oftenest the young
unmarried women who receive the attention and the
adulation of the males married and single. The
position occupied by the young matrons in Europe
and the United States belongs in Mexico to the
1 See p. 91 for comparative populations at different ages,
231
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
senoritas, whose charm is alone in their youth and
personality, so that when they retire to matrimony
and the raising of the inevitably large family, the
palm passes easily to their younger sisters, or,
indeed, to the older women. Although poorly
educated in books, the upper-class Mexican woman
has often traveled widely and is shrewd and wise,
so that when she has reached the years of "safety"
she often takes a place in the entertainment of men
guests and distinguished visitors, while the younger
women sit in beautiful but distracting silence.
The preponderance of uneducated women in
Mexico continually works against the improvement
of their position. The school statistics show that
the Mexican girl gets even less of such education
as there is than the boy. In 1900 there were regis-
tered in the public schools 444,897 boys and 251,271
girls, or only 55 girls to every 100 boys. In the
private schools the proportion was better, as there
were 65,921 girls and 80,788 boys, or 83 girls for
each 100 boys, but including the schools of all kinds
the proportion of girls to boys in what we would
call " common schools" remains very low 71 to
100. Yet even these poor figures are the index of
the intelligence of the Mexican women of the
future, and represent a vast improvement over the
schooling which was given the present generation.
Mexican women as economic units in the com-
munity are divided sharply along lines of class.
The peon and Indian women are universal beasts of
burden, working in the fields and at the native
industries such as the hand weaving of cotton and
233
THE FAMILY
wool, basket and pottery making. For centuries
they have been the mills which have ground the
corn for the tortillas, which are the food of 90 per
cent of the population, an appalling drudgery
which has only of late years been lightened by the
growing use of mill-ground meal.
During the last ten years of revolution in Mexico
these women of the lower classes have borne the
burdens of battle in almost as great numbers as the
men. Practically every soldier has been accom-
panied by his soldadera. These camp followers
furnish almost the only commissary, march with
the soldiers, ride on top and under the box cars
when the army is moved by rail, set the camps, cook
the meals, follow the soldiers into battle to carry
ammunition, food, and water, and, when the fighting
is over, care for the wounded and bury their dead.
In the middle classes there have, until recent
years, been practically no opportunities for the
work which, especially to the helplessly imprisoned
spinsters, would mean relative independence. Only
as teachers in miserable private schools, clerks in
suburban shops, and in certain sorts of home work
could these women earn a living. Drawnwork
(which generally takes the place of or supplements
the home industry of lace making), embroidery, and
dressmaking have always, as everywhere, been
poorly paid.
In the past twenty years business has opened its
doors increasingly to middle and even some of the
higher-class women. That this has not come
before and that it is growing rather slowly even
233
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
now is due, first, to the fact that the limited educa-
tion of women in Mexico has equipped so few for
this form of service, and, secondly, because of the
social ostracism which even in the middle classes
has followed the assumption of steady work by
women. Along the northern border this prejudice
has been fairly well broken down, but it still
persists in the central and southern parts of the
country. 1
1 Women and children in industry are discussed in part ii,
chap, x, pp. 341-345.
VI
MEXICAN HOUSES
THE Mexican house, with its two-foot walls, its
grated windows, and its secluded garden patio
flanked by cloistered corredores this is Mexico.
It is epitomic of the stream of its life, shut away
by banks of its own building, circling and eddying
within itself, unmindful alike of the call of the
rivers of the world and of its own need for outlet.
A direct development of Spanish forms modified
by native materials, the Mexican house partakes
of the grace and harmony of the one and of the
solid resistance of the other both again typical of
the nation the two have created.
The Spaniards who built the Mexico we know to-
day brought with them, indeed, the same desire to
reproduce their homeland that animated the colo-
nists of Virginia and New England. They built
their New Spain, but they did more, for they
adapted their Spanish homes and types of building
to the materials, to the climate, and to the scenery
which they found. Mexico to-day is in no sense
Spain. The plazas of her villages, the flat roofs of
her houses, the towering beauty of her churches,
235
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
are her own, and hers alone. The rectangular form
of her town plan takes its regularity from the
sweeping plains of the New World, while her narrow
streets are a heritage from older Europe made hers
by the need of confining the tropic sun. The beauty
of her bowered patios may be Spanish, but no
better or more appropriate house plan could have
been found for Mexico.
The Spanish plazas may correspond only to the
market places of the Aztecs, but to-day they are so
essentially Mexican in fact and in type that no
village of a dozen houses is complete without one.
In the very beginning the conquerors gave to each
Indian village a plaza as the legal center of the com-
munal town site ; here gathered the trade and barter
of the region, and here the missionary priest erected
his church. When Cortez rebuilt Tenochtitlan
into the Spanish City of Mexico, the site of the
great teocalli became the zocalo or central plaza;
upon one side rose the cathedral, upon another the
palace of the viceroys, and upon a third the office
of the city's government.
In every town in Mexico there is to-day at least
one plaza, and always in the center is a mushroom-
shaped band stand surrounded by dwarfed trees
and skirted by a broad, stone-flagged walk. There
are many inviting benches, and there from morning
until late at night peon and Creole, native and
foreigner, stop to sit and rest. On one night or on
several nights each week a band plays, and the
entire population walks round and round or sits
upon the benches, listening.
236
MEXICAN HOUSES
The plaza is indeed the center of the life of the
community, and often in the smaller villages the
market place is located at one end, the church is
always there, and always, too, some remnant of a
Spanish administrative palace. The main plaza
is almost invariably paralleled on one side by the
chief street, the main artery of traffic, from which
branch off at right angles the straight but narrow
byways which are the city streets.
The Mexican town plan is almost invariably
rectangular, except where nature has forced an
adaptation, as in ancient or mountainous mining
towns. This is a relic of the Spanish regime, and
where cities trace their origin directly to the con-
querors or to the colonial government, this rec-
tangular arrangement and the sprinkling of plazas
throughout the town become almost monotonous.
In Mexico City the streets were originally deter-
mined by the great causeways which the Aztecs had
built above the swamps, and these great avenues
persist to-day, as do, also, culs-de-sac and alleys
reminiscent of the mediaeval towns of Europe.
Under the Spaniards great private estates, monas-
teries, and cemeteries grew up within the city, and
the streets wandered aimlessly between convent
walls and grimly barred houses. Under the later
viceroys and still more studiedly since, many long,
straight streets were cut through old estates upon
direct routes, all approaching more and more the
rectangular town 'arrangement which is typical of
the newer Mexican cities.
By the standards of to-day, however, the streets
237
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of Mexican towns are extremely narrow, and this
narrowness is aggravated by the fact that in olden
times there were no sidewalks, and to build them the
vehicle space has had to suffer. Thus in Mexico
City even the busiest streets are cramped and diffi-
cult of passage, while in the older, outlying sections
even of the capital, sidewalks are often completely
absent for blocks at a time.
The typical Mexican street is about twenty-five
feet from wall to wall, with sidewalks three to four
feet wide, and the vista one of flat, tinted walls
seldom more than two stories in height, stretching
off, irregular and lonely, into the distance. Fine
houses and hovels stand side by side. There are
no lawns, windows are barred and shuttered, and
the entrance to each house is closed by double
wooden doors, iron-studded and often deeply
carved. Only when these doors are opened can
the passer-by find any touch of green, for it is almost
directly behind them that the Mexican patios or
inner gardens are laid out. The houses of two or
more stories invariably have balconies on the upper
floors, narrow, the railings of ornamental iron, and
entered from behind through French windows. No
eaves hang over into the street and no chimneys
rise above the roof tops. Behind the barred win-
dows of the lower floor sit always silent women and
girls, watching for their brief glimpses of life out-
side. At night the front rooms of private houses
are lighted, and as one passes on the street one turns
always to glance within through the uncurtained
windows. The loneliness in the narrow highway
238
MEXICAN HOUSES
and the intimacy that one feels with the women
who are always watching through those windows
make the Mexican street itself typical of the Mexico
that is so close about one and yet so distant from
true understanding.
This is the residence street in Mexico. Where
business thrives, whether it be the business of great
stores or the traffic of small ones, everything is
easy animation. A Spanish grocery with a glimpse
of dingy counters and shelves of merchandise
reaching up into the dimness of weathered rafters,
a pulque stall or a saloon, a pungent barber shop
Avith a row of game cocks tethered at safe distances
along the street curb in front, form the background
for an eternally repassing throng of peons in peaked
hats and lordly blankets, of dull-clad women with
babies on their backs, of loud-voiced sellers of fruit
and candy, of pompous business men walking and
gesticulating two by two, and even of bepowdered
ladies on their way to a merienda.
The determinants of the type of Mexican houses
are tradition, climate, and the building materials
available. In the hot country practically all the
better houses are made of adobe (sun-dried brick),
usually tile-roofed, while the native huts are of airy
bamboo or upright sticks plastered with mud and
roofed with thatches of straw or piled-up leaves of
the palm tree. The country peon is his own archi-
tect and builder, and the skillful thatching which
one finds in Europe is quite beyond his ken, and
not even the wet discomfort which he might avoid
has ever taught him to devise a permanent thatch.
16 239
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The roof is most often straw or palm leaves merely
piled on a set of slightly sloping poles, the only
effort at permanence being earth which is thrown on
top or boards held down by rocks which on some
day of unwonted energy the peon found time to put
in place. The common palm with its long fronds
should make an excellent roofing material, if
properly plaited, and yet even this gift of nature
for his housemaking has not been adapted. So in-
adequate indeed are the methods of housebuilding
that plantation managers long ago began importing
sheet iron for roofs and rough timber for the sides
of the huts which they erect for their employees.
The floor of the hot-country hut, as of the city
peon's hovel, is of dirt and accumulated dust. It
is the home of thriving colonies of fleas and other
vermin, but these invaders are not connected, in
the peon mind, with this architectural peculiarity.
In the towns and on the plateau the type of
house is more essentially Spanish, with one or two
stories, invariably flat-roofed, with no gardens
surrounding them, and with the patio as the most
characteristic feature. In the older days the finer
buildings were a combination of store and residence,
the store on the street level, the residence above.
In times of peace the Mexican town plan developed
away from this idea, but even to-day the upper
floors of the buildings in the central streets of
Mexican cities still contain some of their most
beautiful homes.
Generally, however, the flat-roofed buildings in a
Mexican town are one story in height. These low
240
MEXICAN HOUSES
buildings are common not only in the earthquake
section of southern Mexico, but also in the north
and in the coast towns, where earthquakes are not
to be feared. Land is not expensive, and, besides,
the native building materials do not lend them-
selves to high construction.
Indeed, the building materials available have
had much to do with the heavy architecture typ-
ical of Mexico. The majority of Mexican towns
are not near stone quarries, and there is little
structural timber in the country, except in the
high mountains or in the tropical jungles, so that
solid stone houses are rare and frame dwellings
almost unknown. The materials available for
Mexican construction are chiefly the native clay
and various soft subsoil stones which are shaped
with a saw. The adobe, which is a sun-dried brick
made of straw and clay, about 6x12x24 inches,
enters into the structure of the majority of Mexi-
can buildings, for when it is covered with plaster it
has considerable permanence. In addition to this
there is, around the central section of Mexico, a
composite soapstone known as tepetate, which is
shaped as it is taken from the ground, and hardens
on drying. Texontle is the name given to a light,
porous limestone which is also easily cut when first
taken out, hardening upon exposure to the air. At
Monterrey there is a similar stone called sillar,
which, when protected by plaster or cement on the
outside, gives a comparatively permanent structure.
All these materials, from adobe to texontk, have to
be formed into large blocks in order to be sufficiently
241
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
stable for building purposes, and this necessity for
large-sized units in structure is perhaps the chief
reason for the massive buildings in Mexico.
With the advent of the modern period under
General Diaz, there was a great increase in the use
of brick of the small oven-baked type familiar else-
where in the world, while increasingly many struc-
tures have been built of stone brought by rail from
distant quarries. There are in all Mexican cities
modern buildings of these materials, but they have
as yet had but little influence upon the type of con-
struction. Modern American or European houses
have been built in new sections of Mexico City and
elsewhere in the republic, but the tendency toward
this type is very slow, and it is doubtful whether, in
the long run, these buildings will replace the thick-
walled, low structures, with their bright patios,
which are in many ways so much more suitable for
the country.
Mexican houses are built without cellars. There
is a good reason for this in Mexico City, where the
moisture from the underlying swamps still tends to
seep upward through the soil. But the absence of
cellars also means the absence of foundations; even
under modern structural methods the foundation is
merely a great wide base of cement or stone, set
in a trench only a foot or two deep, and proportion-
ate only in breadth to the height of the proposed
wall.
The flat roofs of the houses of Mexico are paved
with smooth tile or brick and finished with asphalt,
or, in these days, made with patent roofing material.
242
MEXICAN HOUSES
There is only a slight dip in these roofs, but a
cornice keeps the water, even in the rainy season,
from dripping into the street, and it is carried off,
as a rule, in gutters to the ground, into the patio
fountain, or to the great earthen jars which cor-
respond to the rain barrel in American rural com-
munities. Another type of permanent roof in
Mexican towns is a direct Spanish importation
red or green tile. These are common in small
towns and on the haciendas, but are seldom found
in the cities. They are built with a low pitch and
the overhanging eaves carry the rain water into the
streets.
Observers are likely to consider that the old
buildings, made of native material, are more per-
manent than modern brick structures with lighter
walls. This is, to a certain extent, true, but where
this old type of building has been permanent, almost
invariably the structures have been built of stone,
and a stone building with walls four feet thick and
of a height of two stories is naturally more lasting
than the modern structure with walls of but eight
to ten inches. None of the houses of the Aztecs
has come down to modern times, while Europe still
has fine examples of Gothic architecture long ante-
dating the original Aztec buildings. The chroniclers
of the conquest spoke enthusiastically of the great
palaces of the Aztecs, but of them all only a few
truncated temple pyramids and a few half-ruined
and buried walls remain to reward the archaeologist.
Such frank descriptions as remain of those great
" palaces" tell of low walls, endless forests of posts
243
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
supporting the roofs (for the Aztecs apparently did
not know the arch), dirt floors, and the almost com-
plete absence of window openings. A picture
which, if we combine it with the realization that
the houses which crowded the Aztec capital and
which the Spaniards and their allies destroyed by
hand as Alvarado retreated before the hordes of
Aztecs on the " Dismal Night " of defeat, were
probably all of adobe, gives a fair explanation of the
absence of survivals of Indian domestic architecture.
Stone, which usually had to be transported vast dis-
tances without any traction animals, was used
almost alone for idols, for foundations, and for
facing the sides of the pyramids.
The oldest domestic structure which is still in
use in Mexico bears the date 1528, seven years after
the conquest, and is a private house of modest pro-
portions in one of the older streets of the capital.
The buildings of the colonial era, including a rela-
tively few private houses and consisting chiefly of
massive public buildings and churches, make up
most of the truly permanent structures of the coun-
try, for the Spaniards, who were builders second
only to the Romans, used the most solid of native
materials and such stout cements (burnt lime was
introduced by them) that to this day old churches
or palaces give way to modern progress only at the
urgence of heavy charges of dynamite. These
colonial buildings are all either of the ornate and
massive church architecture, or the low, ponderous
type of the National Palace in Mexico City, mag-
nificent only in its immensity.
244
MEXICAN HOUSES
During the wars of independence there was prac-
tically no permanent building, so that we must
again leap to the era of Diaz to find another type
of structure. Always the architecture and the
materials so well proven by the Spaniards are used
in domestic construction in Mexico, but during the
latter years of Diaz a number of modern steel
buildings went up, the most important being the
new Post Office, patterned after the Doge's Palace
in Venice, and the National Theater, as yet incom-
plete. For about ten years, beginning in 1905,
there was considerable building of residences of the
so-called American type structures of baked brick,
usually without a patio, and with comparatively
thin walls. These buildings have withstood a
number of severe earthquakes, but otherwise have
proven themselves not very well adapted to Mexican
weather. The Mexican does not care for artificial
heat, so that, although the modern houses and flats
are sometimes equipped with fireplaces, these never
take the place in the Mexican mind of his sun-
warmed patio. In the summer months the patio
is as cool as it is warm in the winter, and the typical
thick walls are resistant to heat or to cold and keep
the inner rooms always relatively comfortable.
The chief characteristic of Mexican architecture
is this patio, or inner court. Public and business
buildings, even the more modern ones, are built
around endless chains of these courts, large, airy,
light. The patio of the private house is the typical
one, however. The great double doors from the
street (true porte-cocheres) open toward the sunlit
245
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
patio, a charming picture framed by the dark,
stone-paved passage. The patio hi a Mexican
house of the better class is filled with potted
flowers, and sometimes has grass plots and walks,
although the usual type is a cemented, flagged, or
graveled space with a fountain in the center. In
the old days, when water was distributed by open
gravity aqueducts, these fountains were often con-
nected with the city water system and were the
only source of water in the house or, where they
were not connected, were the reservoirs of the day's
supply, which was brought by the servants from
the fountain in the near-by plaza.
The patio is flanked on all four sides by tile-
paved corridors six to fifteen feet wide, upstairs
and down, the floor and roof supported on stone
arches or iron posts. The stairway to the upper
floor is usually in the corridor, open to the weather.
The rooms which face upon the court and this is
practically all, because there are no outside rooms
except those looking on the street are fitted with
narrow double glass doors, giving them their only
light and air. Wooden shutters on the inside
shut out the light when desired.
The rooms are either square, large, and coldly
high, or in the shape of a long rectangle (as the
dining room and the sola, or drawing-room). Mex-
ican rooms are usually as much as twelve or fifteen
feet high; the ceilings are not plastered, and either
the great closely studded four-by-eight-inch beams
are exposed, or are covered by a painted canvas ceil-
ing, which rises and falls in the wind with ghostly
246
MEXICAN HOUSES
deliberation. The walls are usually painted, wall
paper being uncommon. The woodwork is painted,
though sometimes there is handsome paneling of
French style. The windows and doors are all long
and narrow, two doors or two windows opening
French fashion.
All the rooms of a true Mexican house, including
the bedrooms, are floored with tile, the Mexican
supply house presenting a large stock of different
patterns, these proper for a parlor, those for a
dining room or bedroom. Such floors may be
partially covered with rugs, but often the cold tile
presents the only floor surface. In the more
modern houses, and where foreigners have insisted,
wooden floors are laid, and rugs are used as else-
where in the world, but the dampness of the wet
season makes carpets at least inadvisable.
Even in the best of the old houses there were no
comfortable bathrooms, and the only conveniences
were a toilet and a shower upon the first floor, but
not always on the second. The Mexican bathroom
is for bathing only; it is a large tiled or cement-
floored chamber into which no sunlight ever enters,
with a drain in one corner and with a shower bath
for the warmer, and a movable metal tub for the
cooler, season.
The Mexican kitchen, a great, dark hole at the
back of the house, is fitted with running water in a
stone or cement sink, and on one side is a wide,
colorful brick or tile counter with innumerable
square holes where charcoal is burned for cooking
each individual dish. Oil and gas burners are now
247
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
found, but few coal or wood stoves, and little
electrical apparatus.
Mexican houses are not well adapted, architec-
turally, to cleanliness. Even bedrooms seldom get
sunlight, and are very liable to be damp, and in the
rainy season even moldy. Such scrubbing of the
tile floors as is done makes them more than usually
slippery for several days afterward, and it is at the
peril of one's life and limb that the servants of a
well-regulated Mexican house are kept busy with
wash pail and soap.
Furniture varies with the social or race class of
the owner, the Indians in their palm huts being con-
tented with mats for beds, a rough brazier made out
of an old square five-gallon oil tin, another of these
universal vessels for the day's supply of water (for
all purposes), a few pottery bowls, a grinding stone
for tortilla meal, sometimes a table and chair (but
as often not), and always a shrine before which
burns a tiny candle. Light, when used, is by tallow
or paraffine dips. There is literally nothing else
in the one-room hut of adobe or bamboo, and ap-
parently no need for anything.
The workingmen of the cities show their ad-
vanced caste only in the possession of a rough bed
of flexible sticks or leather thongs and a table and
chairs of begrimed white pine. The Mexican house
of higher type is furnished well or ill, as the taste
may be, but in the vast majority chairs and a sofa
of Austrian bentwood, cane-seated and draped in
the back with a bit of coarse embroidery, are the
basis of the furnishing of the sola, or drawing-room.
248
MEXICAN HOUSES
A round table, sometimes books, and often, too,
artificial flowers under glass, help to fill the dreary
space of the immense rooms. The floors are of tile,
with a few rugs, or sometimes only strips of mat-
ting. In the upper classes the furnishings are often
elegant, always expensive, and usually dominated
in taste by the style most favored in the Paris
department store from which they came.
As a rule, Mexican rooms are either bare and
cold or overfurnished, a fault as much as anything
of the architecture which has made them long and
narrow or else square in such exact proportion to
their great height that they give one the sense of
being inside a perfectly proportioned hat box
probably the two most difficult shapes of room to
furnish pleasingly.
The dining rooms are fitted in the taste of the
owner, but never with great attention to details,
even the linen (where used) being of poor quality,
and the silver almost invariably of the German
variety, in metal and in style.
The typical Mexican bedroom is usually cold and
uninviting, with its tiled floors and tiny rugs, its
great wardrobe and the "washstand set" on a
bentwood stand in the corner. The upper classes,
of course, use modern beds, usually elaborately
fitted. The middle-class bed is very likely to be a
frame of plaited leather thongs, with a thin mat-
tress, but the ownership of a fine brass bed with a
lace spread and "snowy" linen is one of the signs of
prosperity. When this is possessed, it is placed in
the front room where it can be seen by all passers-
249
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
by, and in the early evening, when the rest of the
house is practically unlighted, this elaborate bed-
room will have its lamp burning and its shutters
wide open, for all the world to see and admire.
The universal bed of the Indian and peon is
the petate, a woven mat of palm fiber, laid upon the
floor. There, with his single zerape, or blanket, he
lies down to sleep, sometimes with something under
his head, but more often with nothing, a bed
astonishingly comfortable even to one who is used
to mattress and springs. In Yucatan and some of
the other hot-country sections hammocks are used
for sleeping. The Yucatan hammock, of finely
spun henequen fiber, or of linen or cotton cords in
varied colors, is so broad that one could lie full
length across it. To sleep in a hammock, one lies
at a slight angle, so that the body is not quite hori-
zontal; when the hammock is properly made and
swung this makes one perfectly comfortable. In
the hot country, where insects are common, beds
and hammocks all have mosquito bars, which, as a
rule, have to be extremely finely woven if they
keep out all the pests. Indeed, very often the
mosquito "bar" is a shroud of thick cheesecloth,
or even muslin, which keeps out the air as well as
the mosquitoes, although when one has attempted to
sleep without this protection one is likely to be
willing to forego his air in the future.
The lower classes of Mexico seem to have a na-
tional habit of sleeping together, the entire family
and often the domestic pets being huddled into a
heap in a single chamber, with all the doors and
250
MEXICAN HOUSES
windows closed. In the plateau, during the winter
when the nights are chilly, it is probably literally true
that the warm-blooded family pig is often included in
the pile. A traveler in the tropics reports that when
stopping one night with an Indian family during a
chilling storm, he was given the position of honor
at one side of the hut, and discovered that this spot
was desirable because the pig slept on the other
side of the separating wall of bamboo and com-
municated a great deal of excellent animal heat.
The statistics of Mexican housing are as yet
inadequate, but in 1900 a number of the states,
representing about 7,000,000 inhabitants, or about
half the population, gathered some data. As this
group included the Federal District with Mexico
City, and states with large rural population like
Puebla, Tlaxcala and the state of Mexico as well,
these reports can fortunately be taken as an index
of the type of housing in Mexico, and doubling the
figures for houses and families gives a fairly safe
approximation for the whole country. In this
group there were 847,523 buildings of one or more
stories, or 1,695,046 for the whole country, and
803,257 huts, or 1,606,514 for the country. Of the
total number of buildings in the half of the country
reporting, 803,257, as above, were huts, 833,035
were one-story permanent structures, 13,362 two
stories, 1,069 three stories, 52 four stories, and 5 of
five stories or over. All of the last named were in
Mexico City, and probably constitute the total for
the country, while 45 of the four-story and 659 of
the three-story structures were also in the capital.
251
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Of actual dwellings, the figures are given for
" apartments" and for " one-room apartments/ '
71,031 of one room and 902,744 of more than one
room being reported for the section under survey,
142,062 one-room apartments and 1,805,488 of
more than one room being the approximate total
for the country.
The homes are divided into three classes those
" living in houses," those living in one room, and
those living in huts. The following approximate
figures for the country were obtained as above by
doubling the figures for the section surveyed. It
is unfortunate, but perhaps not entirely accidental,
that the figures do not go into the detail of the
sizes of the families living in single rooms or huts,
the division being only between those living alone
and those living in a conjugal state (" families of
two or more"). However, from these figures we
find that the Mexican living arrangements are
about as follows:
SINGLE PERSONS
ALONE
FAMILIES OP
Two OR MORE
TOTAL
FAMILIES
In houses or apartments
In one room
In huts
70,213
9,158
38,580
1,440,610
96,672
1,753,986
1,510,823
105,830
1,792,566
Total
117,951
3,291,268
3,409,219
This shows, of course, the tremendous preponder-
ance of the rural community living in huts among
the poor, and is surprising in the relatively small
number of poor living as families in one-room
apartments. By these figures the typical Mexican
252
MEXICAN HOUSES
family is approximately four in number, which
seems low, and yet this is borne out by checks
against birth rates. 1 The number of single persons
living alone seems about 4 per 100 households, as
against the proportion in France, 14; the United
States, 3.6; and Germany, 7.
As to the kind of dwellings indicated by these
statistics, the only divisions we have are between
huts and other houses, but even without further data
the figures are still illuminating, for the total of one-
room apartments and huts is only about 50,000 less
than the number of respectable dwelling places
half the homes of Mexico are in the veriest hovels.
The matter of crowding and tenement life is one
of the important phases of any national living
problem. In Mexico, however, it is chiefly a con-
dition of the capital, where alone true tenement and
slum sections are found. The Indians and peons
live in miserable hovels all over the country, and
there is always crowding (usually from choice), but
except for the capital there is nothing that can be
considered a chronic condition.
The slums of Mexico City are in the southwestern
and southeastern sections, and consist of what are
called casas de vecindad (" contiguous houses" or
"neighborhood houses"), ancient buildings with
rows of rooms, like stables, about a single patio,
usually with a stone fountain in the midst of a
vast mud puddle, in the center the only water
supply for hundreds of people. Usually one story,
but presenting more terrible conditions still when
1 See p. 219.
253
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
there are two stories with winding back-corridors,
these buildings consist of single rooms, each one
the home of from four to twenty people. Without
furniture, sometimes with a hand loom crowded into
one corner, and a poisonous charcoal brazier cooking
a vile stew in another, these places, usually not
over twelve feet square and with a yet lower ceiling,
reek with the stench of unwashed humanity, foul
air, excrement, and decaying food but they are
home to nearly a quarter of the city's population.
Official reports on crowding in Mexico City made
in 1900 showed that in one district there were
2,550 rooms with 18,523 inhabitants, or an average
of seven to a room; another counted 11,000 rooms
and 42,000 persons. The Superior Board of Health
estimated that the overcrowded population of the
capital was 100,000, and that in one section about
1,000 rough huts housed 5,000.
Even these figures give an inadequate picture of
conditions, for the average of four or five or even
seven to a room over large areas leaves only the
imagination to picture the hundreds of rooms that
actually do house twelve or even twenty persons,
brothers and sisters, parents and children, cousins
and brothers-in-law, grandparents and young girls,
under the same roof, the same ceiling, and on cold
nights, certainly, under the same blanket.
Not the least terrible feature of this crowding is
the huddling of the homeless into the mesones, or
ancient hostelries where once horses and mules,
carts and stagecoaches, had headquarters, but
which are to-day cheap lodging houses of the vilest
254
MEXICAN HOUSES
sort. In the great city where the homeless are
numbered by thousands, these places, charging from
three to five centavos a night, were the only homes
of perhaps 25,000 persons in the time of Diaz, and
to-day their patronage has been swollen by increas-
ing poverty and by the influx of refugees from the
interior. The city used to maintain two public
dormitories, and three or four more were kept by
private individuals or benevolent societies, but these
were not so well patronized, perhaps because the
guests were required to wash their faces and hands
in the morning, or even to take a bath. In the
common meson, the patrons, men, women, and
children, begin to arrive about eight o'clock. Each
pays his three or five centavos, takes a petate from
a pile at the door, and picks his place in the great
galeras (or galleys) where were formerly the stalls
of horses. Eighty or more people of all kinds and
ages sleep in each galera, from 200 to 300 in a single
meson. Some of the sleepers are sober, some are
drunk; some are clothed in all kinds of coverings,
some practically bare, lying side by side like mem-
bers of the same family, men, women, and children.
Effort has been made in many directions through
a number of years to remedy some of the evils of
the housing systems of Mexico. City and private
charity has done something, but the most important
and in the end the ultimate hope of reform has been
in the hands of private commercial concerns.
About Mexico City several companies, foreign as
well as Mexican, have built model " colonies" for
peons as well as for the middle and upper classes.
17 255
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
All through the later years of Diaz the rising middle
class of artisans and the more intelligent peons were
buying, on easy terms, the houses in each new
suburb as it was opened. Certain conventions long
considered indispensable in Mexican homes have
had to be followed, but the new "colonies' 7 had all
to be well drained, and with plenty of water.
Something was still being done under Carranza,
while many of the higher-type Mexican exiles are
planning their part in such a revitalizing of the
community when the time shall come for them to
return to Mexico.
In the interior, both on plantations and at the
mines, the employer has long had supervision over
the housing of his employees. On most haciendas
the huts of the workers belong, in some way or
another, to the hacendado, and are built and fitted
well or ill, according to his lights. The native is
not always a wise judge of what he will ultimately
enjoy, but in time, and under sufficient surveillance,
he uses the conveniences provided for him.
The work of this type which is being done by
American and British companies in the oil fields
and in the mining camps deserves the highest praise,
even though such organizations know, better than
any others, the definite financial return that comes
from happy and healthy employees. None of the
companies can be singled out here, but the work
they have done individually, and the example which
they have set their workers and other employers of
Mexican labor as well, must, in years to come, bear
ample fruit.
256
VII
MEXICO'S FOODS
IN no phase is the unity of Mexican life so marked
as in the people's choice of food. Except for
the highest Creoles, who retain their European
tastes, the same types of food are taken and relished
by all classes. Quality and quantity vary with the
income, but there runs through the entire scale of
Mexican diet the same desire for and enjoyment of
rich, greasy, and nitrogenous foods, relieved only by
unleavened corn and fiery condiments. The Indian
and the peon live almost solely on tortillas of corn
meal and the nutty Mexican beans, or frijoles, cooked
with grease and flavored with hot peppers; the
highest mestizo eats a solid meal which is of much
the same dietary consistency, and frankly prefers
tortillas to white bread; even if he takes white
bread from a sense of class, he still has tortillas
with the frijoles that round out his eveiy meal. No
Mexican seems really to enjoy a salad and eats
little fruit at meals, and the sweet is taken in a con-
centrated form, the usual Mexican dessert coming
from the confectionery store. In the upper mestizo
classes the hot pepper, or chile, is almost as much
257
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
esteemed as it is by the Indian, and the majority
in all classes add the stimulant of liquor or strong
coffee whenever procurable.
Corn or maize is the staff of life in Mexico.
Wheat does not grow successfully there, while corn
is perfectly indigenous, so that the com diet of the
Mexican was originally forced upon him by the
climate. The fact that the Mexican, even of the
upper classes, actually prefers corn to wheat food
would seem also to indicate that the climate has
done more than force him to grow corn; it has
forced him to desire it and eat it.
The Mexicans as a people are meat eaters when-
ever it is possible, and there is comparatively little
real demand for vegetables. Potatoes are not
used generally, rice being commonly substituted,
and where in the United States the secondary staple
vegetable is the tomato, hi Mexico squash takes its
place. This is served in a number of ways on the
middle-class table, but is never particularly appe-
tizing or tasteful, and as a general thing the Indian
and peon classes have very little interest even in
this one common vegetable. Meat is usually fried,
or, if roasted, is either thoroughly larded with
skewers of fat or basted in a greasy sauce. On the
tables of the wealthy two courses of meat are
common, and eggs take the place of fish or precede
the fish course as a regular part of dinner.
The day's meals of the middle and higher class
Mexicans begin with a light breakfast called des-
ayunOj taken on rising or in bed about seven o'clock.
This consists of strong coffee with hot milk, or
258
MEXICO'S FOODS ki {
thick chocolate, and sweet rolls of wheat flour the > -^
only formal appearance of wheat in the Mexican
daily menu. Almuerzo, which is literally trans-
lated breakfast, but is perhaps more properly
called luncheon, comes at about eleven or twelve
o'clock. This meal starts with a thick soup,
followed by a single meat course, sometimes squash
as a separate course, then beans with tortillas, and
last an insipid dessert. Coffee or liquor is usually
served with this meal. In some sections of the
country almuerzo is truly a second, heavier break-
fast, served about nine or ten o'clock, and the noon
meal is called comida, or dinner. The long period
from the finish of the midday meal until eight or
nine o'clock in the evening when the heavy dinner
is served is broken by a "tea" or merienda of coffee
or chocolate and cakes. The Mexican business
man does not make this "tea" a regular part of
his day, as is common in other countries where there
is a long afternoon between luncheon and dinner.
If he takes any refreshment at all it is in the form of
a drink at the club or cantina (saloon), though this
does not partake of the formality of the aperitif
hour in France.
The dinner (comida, or, in some sections, cena,
literally supper) is the heavy and formal meal of
the day, and its hour persists with Mexicans the
world over 8 to 9 P.M. Again there is a soup
always followed by eggs, either as a substitute for
the fish course or preceding it. After eggs or fish
come the meat courses, one of them served with
rice; in the higher classes bread has appeared with
259
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the eggs or fish. Following the meat courses come
the inevitable frijoles, served in any of their many
ways, but usually for the heavy meal cooked a little
less richly than at noon. Tortillas are almost
invariably served with the beans on the Mexican
table. Again, the dessert is an insipid French
pastry or a square of paste or jelly of guava, plum,
peach, or apricot. Coffee follows or is served during
the meal. Where it can be afforded there is always
wine, and with the demi-tasse either imported
cognac or a small glass of native brandy often
poured into the coffee.
The diet of the peon laborer varies surprisingly
little from that of the higher classes. The ordinary
breakfast of the peon is bought in the doorways of
saloons in the peon quarters, where women sell
coffee or chocolate or a tea made from an infusion
of orange leaves, at one to two centavos a cup.
Another centavo of bread and a tiny glass of native
brandy (formerly one centavo) to mix with the coffee
or tea constitute the peon breakfast. On special
occasions he will have a later almuerzo, or breakfast,
of what we might call chile con carne, a sort of soup
with beans, sometimes small particles of chopped
meat and red peppers, a dish which in the old days,
with its accompanying three tortillas, cost three cen-
tavos. The noon meal, taken at much the same
time as the more formal almuerzo or comida of the
middle and upper class Mexican, consists of a soup,
then a big piece of meat with rice, and a dish of
frijoles with from six to eight tortillas. Such a
meal as this used to cost from six to ten centavos.
260
MEXICO'S FOODS
This luncheon is usually eaten in the open air at
one of the innumerable little stalls in the market
places or in the doorways of houses along the
streets where the peon workmen are to be found.
The comida, or dinner, is usually taken in the fonda,
or rough Mexican restaurant, where only the lower
classes or those addicted to their stimulating diet
go. This comida (perhaps better in this case cena,
or supper), is usually a light meal with the peon.
He formerly got his large dish of frijoks cooked in
grease for two or three centavos, and in the old
days the price of five tortillas was one centavo.
Chopped meat, boiled or fried with chile, sometimes
entered into this meal, under the name of carnitas,
or " little meats." In Mexico City this, and usually
the noonday meal as well, is washed down with an
immense glass of pulque, of which the price used to
be two cents for almost a quart. These prices have
now about doubled.
The two staples of the Mexican diet, then, are
frijoles and tortillas. There are two types of
Mexican beans; one is a small black variety very
little larger than the Boston or navy bean, and the
other the large pink kidney bean which is known in
our own markets. No other sort will be used by a
Mexican, for the nutty flavor, particularly of the
small bean, is really vital to his enjoyment of his
food. The beans are bought dried, are soaked, and
boiled over a slow fire. The water in which they
are cooked forms the sauce in which the beans are
served, with practically no addition except the
seasoning of salt. This is the form in which they
261
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
are usually eaten at the heavy dinner at eight or
nine o'clock in the evening. The beans served at
the noon meal next day are those which were
cooked for the previous night, recooked in more
elaborate style. The usual way of preparing beans
for the second serving is to pour them with the
sauce into a hot skillet of lard, sometimes stirring
in a plentiful amount of grated cheese. The whole
is cooked a few minutes longer and served almost
dry. Sometimes beans are mashed and "refried"
until a thin brown crust covers both sides of the
omelette-shaped mass. The cooking of beans in
Mexican style is a true art, and provides a dish
which appeals to any appetite. The Mexican
himself recognizes the universality of beans in
his diet, and his jocose invitation to a meal is,
"Come home with me to beans."
The Mexican tortilla is made of ground corn
which has been soaked in lime water so that it
compares more to ground hominy than to the
American type of corn meal, which is unknown in
Mexico. In former times the corn was all ground
by hand on rough stones by the women, nearly
eight hours being required to grind and make
tortillas for a family of four or five. In the past
fifteen years, however, machinery has gradually
been installed all over Mexico for the grinding of
the tortilla meal (called nixtamal) so that this tre-
mendous waste of the women's energy has now been
very largely obviated. The nature of the combina-
tion of corn and lime requires that the meal be
ground wet, and much of the flavor is lost if it is de-
262
MEXICO'S FOODS
hydrated after grinding, although this is done and
the dry tortilla meal can now be bought in Mexico
and also in the United States. The preference for
the wet meal, however, brings the Mexican tortilla
maker to the nixtamal mill early in the morning,
either to carry her own corn to be ground or to pur-
chase the product by the pound. The tortilla meal
having been prepared, a small ball is patted into
shape between the hands until it reaches the dimen-
sions of a large pancake and the thickness of a piece
of cardboard. The lime water furnishes the only
seasoning, and no salt and no shortening or leaven
is used. Cooking is done on an ungreased hot
plate, usually a sheet of iron, heated over a charcoal
brazier.
Tortillas are cooked rapidly for about three
minutes or until they are slightly browned. They
are usually eaten hot, and when a peon woman
carries food to her man at his work, a dozen fresh-
cooked tortillas will be carried in a napkin to keep
warm. The tortilla when cooked is not crisp and
retains considerable of the original moisture, and
can be reheated again and again with little loss in
flavor. The tortilla is used by the peon (and by
the middle-class Mexican as well when he is eating
his beans) as a spoon, a twist of tortilla being skill-
fully formed into a cup with which the mixture of
beans and liquid sauce is conveyed to the mouth.
The trick is more easily learned than the use of
chopsticks, but the marvel to the foreigner on first
seeing it accomplished is no less than is his wonder
at the skill of an Oriental.
263
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
While the tortilla is the staple and universal form
in which the Mexican absorbs his staff of life, corn
is served in many other styles, but invariably the
meal is prepared in identically the same way that
is, by soaking the grain in lime water, removing the
tough "skin," and then grinding it. The most
famous of the other forms in which corn is eaten is
the tamal. This is a roll of corn meal three inches
long and an inch thick, with meat, raisins, or a
soft sweetmeat in the center, rolled in corn husks
and cooked by steaming. The meat is usually in a
hot sauce of chiles, but the sweet tamales are fully
as typical of Mexico and almost as much esteemed.
The tamal is not a staple of the Mexican diet, as
the foreigner is very likely to suppose. It is pre-
pared for special occasions and is eaten with great
relish at picnics, in the refreshment rooms of the
parks and plazas, and at the meriendas, or afternoon
tea parties. There are certain occasions when the
tamal is absolutely indispensable for the celebration
of a festival, and a tamalada, or " party-f or-eating-
tamales," is an event looked forward to for many
days.
Another enjoyable specialty of the Mexican diet
is the enchilada, which is made from an already
cooked tortilla sprinkled with cheese, chopped
onion, garlic, and hot chile sauce. The enchilada
thus prepared is recooked on a dry skillet, rolled
into a tube about an inch hi diameter, and served
piping hot.
Other corn-meal foods of Mexico are cocoles,
chavacaneSj and pemol. Cocoles are cakes or biscuits
264
. MEXICO'S FOODS
of corn meal, half an inch in thickness and two
inches in diameter. They contain some shortening
and are served hot. Chavacaryes, which are better
known, are a mixture of the corn meal with shorten-
ing and eggs. They are made up into flat round or
square crackers, and cooked rapidly, as tortillas are.
Pemol is a corn cake made from the same meal. In
consistency it is not unlike Scotch shortbread, and
it is made up in a variety of forms, from tiny cakes
the size of a half dollar and a quarter of an inch in
thickness, to large horseshoe loaves which are sold
for special occasions and may be compared to
German Kaffeekuchen. The gordas, or "fat ones,"
are the Mexican sandwich, a thick layer of corn
meal inclosing meat, chile, and frijoles, cooked, and
eaten cold. Posok, corn meal in big balls, cooked
and cooled, forms, like the gordas, a diet for long
marches and particularly for long canoe trips
where fires cannot be lighted. The Indians pro-
vided with this food are perfectly equipped for a
trip of several days. The balls of meal are either
eaten dry or mixed to a gruel with water scooped
up from the boatside in the gourd or half coconut
shell which, with this food supply and his blanket,
constitute the Indian's " outing equipment."
The Mexican diet is famous the world over for
its use of hot peppers, or chiles. The probable
explanation is the need of an edge to the appetite
and a stimulus to the formation of gastric juices
to make up for the deficiencies in the rather insipid
materials used in Mexican foods. The Mexican
cook is a great connoisseur in the use of chiles, of
265
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
which there are many varieties. Each has a flavor
that is quite distinct from its hotness; cayenne
pepper and the so-called " tabasco sauce," whose
chief virtue is their piquancy, are not used ex-
tensively in Mexico, and where attempts are made
by Mexican and other cooks outside of Mexico to
approximate the Mexican dishes by the substitu-
tion of cayenne for Mexican chiles, the result is a
hopeless failure. In the preparation of most "hot"
sauces the Mexican cook uses two or three different
sorts of chiles, combining them with onions, garlic,
and, in the case of some of the most famous sauces,
with chocolate and spices. The famous Mexican
dish, mole, which is a rich sauce of a dark red color
served with turkey or pork, is made by boiling
three or four kinds of peppers with chocolate,
garlic, spices, etc., for many hours, and the final
touch is given by the sprinkling of chile seeds over
the whole the seeds being the hottest portion of
any chile or pepper. In addition to the use of
chiles in cooking, there are certain sorts, notably
the little green chiles about an inch long and ex-
tremely hot, which are chopped up with onion and
spices and mixed with vinegar in uncooked sauces.
These are used to give zest to any dish from huevos
rancheros (eggs cooked in a piquant tomato sauce)
to the beans at the end of a long and formal meal.
Chiles are also eaten separately, the hottest of
hot green ones being placed in little dishes on the
table to be eaten raw, like olives, their resemblance
to which harmless fruit in size and color is likely
to deceive the unwary foreigner who sees his
266
MEXICO'S FOODS
Mexican friends eating them unconcernedly but
he never again eats an "olive" without careful
examination. The large, sweet green chiles (like
our mango-peppers, but much hotter) are often
stuffed with chopped meat or soft Mexican cheese,
the careful Mexican cook scalding the pepper and
removing its tough outer membrane before stuffing.
The stuffed chile is then dipped in beaten egg and
fried a delicious dish if the Mexican cook has
not left too many of the hot seeds inside in order to
flatter the taste of her compatriots.
Another characteristic of the national diet is the
use of fats and greases. Butter is considered ex-
pensive and is used only by the well-to-do, the
American imported brands being little dearer than
good Mexican butter. Lard is also costly, so that
many of the typical Mexican dishes are made and
depend for their flavor upon the use of mutton and
beef fat. The upper-class Mexican housewife finds
that her servants crave fats to such an extent that
they will eat even lard just as it comes from the
market, a fact due, probably, to the lack of shorten-
ing in their favorite corn and beans.
The typical Mexican is very little interested in
the vegetables in his menu. It is said that when
the first Chinese colonists came to Mexico their
vegetable gardens were the sights of the towns
where they settled. Around the capital and other
cities there are many truck gardens which serve
the Europeanized Mexicans and the foreigners, but
even counting the squashes, which are raised in
astonishing quantities, the onions, which are of
267
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
course esteemed, owing to their strong flavor, and
tomatoes, which are needed in the preparation of
many dishes, the total production of these truck
gardens is extremely small in proportion to the
population served. The ordinary salads are raised
for the upper classes, but even the native aguacate
(alligator pear or avocado) is used more as a butter
than as a salad. The Spaniards introduced the
chick pea or garbanzo into Mexico, and in certain
sections, notably on the west coast, this delicious
bean is extensively used, but as its food properties
are apparently identical with those of the frijol or
Mexican bean, it adds no variety to the diet.
There is perhaps a growing use of vegetables, but
the canned or tinned goods imported from the
United States or France seem to be preferred.
Potatoes in Mexico are seldom good unless they
are imported. The native cuisine does not confer
the crown of gastronomic necessity which is given
them in other lands, and the Mexican truck farmer,
even if he plants them, seems to resent the tune they
take to grow, and digs them up when they are mere
buttons. Rice is common and takes the honored
place of potatoes with the meat course of the Mexi-
can dinner. In its cooking the Mexicans are no
less artists than the Chinese, the grams coming out
firm and dry, for it is cooked in scalding grease and
water; this cooking, and tomatoes and a delicate
seasoning, give Mexican rice a flavor unexcelled hi
any cuisine.
Tinned delicacies have been in use in Mexico for
many years, for foods imported from abroad are
268
MEXICO'S FOODS
esteemed by those Mexicans of the upper classes
who have traveled, and in general by those who
affect European manners. In addition, the diffi-
culty of obtaining a variety of food in the hot
country where there are no refrigerator cars, and
no food is raised save the actual staples, increases
the market for tinned goods. Danish butter, as
well as American tinned meat, fish, and vegetables,
are part of the regular diet of the middle and upper
classes in all of the country south of Mexico City;
in Yucatan, where very little fresh food is raised,
the tinned goods imported from abroad give almost
the only variety of the diet. Throughout Mexico
tinned salmon and, interestingly enough, sardines,
have long been popular with every class, including
the peons, who consume ludicrously large quantities
of sardines at festival times when they are spending
money freely.
Fruit is seldom used as a part of a meal in Mexico,
but is eaten freely between meals. Bananas,
oranges, pineapples, and melons are common, as
well as other native fruits, subtropical and tropical,
such as the zapote, the fruit of the chicle, or chewing-
gum, tree, the tuna, or prickly pear, the fruit of the
nopal cactus, the chirimoya, a relative of the paw-
paw, the pitahaya, also a cactus fruit. Excellent
oranges, limes (called limones), and lemons (which
are limas) are native, and some grapefruit is
grown on imported trees. There are few good
native apples in Mexico, but American boxed
apples are imported and are sold in most of the
cities.
269
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The Mexican of whatever class usually " drinks
something" with his meals. In the country sec-
tions where pulque is made, the low-class peon
hardly considers any meal worth having without a
big glass of it. His breakfast is usually taken with-
out this beverage, but in its place he often has a
small glass of native brandy or alcohol, which he
pours into his coffee. This drinking undoubtedly
has an as yet undetermined, but probably very
great, effect on the general digestive health of the
Mexican of the lower class, for the tradition is very-
strong, and many of the American plantations in
the hot country followed native custom by issuing a
drink of aguardiente, or native rum, to their workers
each morning before they went to the fields. There
is also much adulteration of liquor in Mexico, gov-
ernment inspectors having reported that many
saloon keepers go so far as to mix nitric acid with
the tequila, or native brandy, which they dispense.
A "warm feeling going down" is an undeniable
result, but the effect on the digestive system is
something not to be discounted in any discussion
of the poor assimilative ability of the Mexican
stomach.
The upper classes use wine almost as much as
do the French and Italians, most of this being
imported, although there are some fairly good table
wines made in Mexico. Cognac is used as an
appetizer as well as with coffee, but mixed drinks,
and even whisky, are used only where foreign in-
fluence has made itself felt.
Coffee and chocolate are the two nationally
270
MEXICO'S FOODS
popular "soft" beverages. Coffee is made by
combining a concentrated essence with hot milk or
with hot water for the after-dinner demi-tasse.
The extract is usually homemade, being prepared
by the drip method, poured through the fine
grounds again and again. A very strong essence
results, and in the country a wine bottle full of
this cold, syrupy coffee is placed in the middle of
the table and the guests themselves pour out the
quantity they wish, usually about a quarter or a
third of the cup, filling with sizzling-hot milk.
Chocolate is prepared by the Spanish method,
which includes a steady " whipping" of the boiling
chocolate, sugar, water, and milk with a wooden
beater whirled between the two hands. The result
is an extremely rich and very delicious mixture
which can be thinned, if desired, with hot milk or
cream, though this outrage is usually committed
only by foreigners. When taken in the proper
Mexican fashion the chocolate is sopped up with
the white breads, sweetened or unsweetened, which
accompany breakfast and the merienda, the oc-
casions when this drink is served. Mexican choco-
late is mixed with cinnamon before it is marketed,
a method which was imported by the Spaniards,
and substituted the older Aztec system of flavoring
it with vanilla. The mixture is very good for
cooking, but makes the chocolate unpalatable for
eating, as it is not sweetened in the cake. Thus
even in the tropics, where "home grown" chocolate
can be bought in this form at every village, it is
not used as a food, as might be expected among a
is 271
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
people who certainly appreciate the flavor and
nourishing qualities of the cacao bean.
Tea is a drink which most Mexicans do not like,
and relatively small quantities are sold. An in-
fusion of orange leaves and local drinks brewed
from herbs are used in limited quantities, but little
imported tea is drunk save by those of European
manners. Quantities of nonintoxicating drinks,
typical among them very sweet alleged fruit syrups
diluted with plain water, are consumed, though not
with meals. The Mexican bottling companies
make various sodas of the usual varieties and ship
bottled spring water all over the country, the public
waters not being used for drinking by those who can
afford the reasonably priced mineral water.
Food in a Mexican household is invariably bought
from day to day, even to the one-centavo package
of salt which tops the market basket. This is due,
to a certain extent, to the fact that if there is a
large supply of food on hand the Mexican cook will
invariably be wasteful and is as likely as not to
cook three different kinds of meat for a single meal
if they happen to be on hand and she has no other
instructions. The Mexican housekeeper of the
upper classes very seldom does her own buying,
even though she may feel that the "commission"
collected by her cook is improper, for the prices in
the market places are never fixed and the cook is
in a much better position to bargain than the fine
lady. The cook in a Mexican household is a person
of no mean importance, and she will seldom, if her
purchases are bulky, carry them home herself, but
272
MEXICO'S FOODS
will hire a cardador, or porter, with a great round
basket on his head to follow her home in state.
The life of the servants in a Mexican menage is
distinct from that of the family, even while the
feudal and paternal attitude has to be maintained.
The division is no more distinctly manifested than
in the matter of eating. The lower-class Mexican,
raised on his diet of corn, beans, and chiles, does
not, when he first joins an upper class household,
find any satisfaction in the food which is served to
his masters. If he is given plenty of coffee and
plenty of grease in which to cook his favorite foods,
he cares nothing for the more delicate viands which
go to the family table. In this he has been skill-
fully encouraged through many centuries of caste
life in Mexico. Mexican servants are paid their
salaries, and in addition are given a definite per
diem, usually twenty-five centavos or less, for their
meals. This does not by any means prevent the
use of the food which is prepared for the main table
unless the housekeeper is extremely watchful, but
what is taken will be largely meat, fats, and gravies,
which they will reseason to suit their less delicate
appetites. Above all things in their food low-class
Mexicans desire quantity and grease.
The fresh-food distribution system of Mexico is
largely independent of that helpful adjunct of
civilization the middleman. Except for meat in
the capital and a few of the large cities, your cook
buys your food from hands only once removed from
the producer. The system of food handling in
Mexico City is typical of the entire country. Most
273
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
of the vegetables are raised on the so-called " floating
gardens" along the Viga Canal, southwest of the
city. This canal, once a part of the drainage
system of Mexico, is about five miles long, and
along its edges, joined to the main stream by narrow
canals, are many acres of little gardens, heavily
fertilized, where corn and beans, squash, onions,
chiles, and acres of poppies, pansies, and other
flowers are raised together. These little farms are
owned or rented by native Indians, the most pic-
turesque inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico, and,
incidentally, usually the cleanest. These producers
gather their crops, load them into canoes, in turn
transfer the produce to large scows in the main
canal, and themselves pole down to the city in the
night. At the landing place, not far from the
center of the capital, the produce is sold by the
men who raised it directly to the market dealers.
The Viga market is the only approximation of a
central wholesale market which Mexico enjoys, and
prices are fixed by lively bargaining and not by
any czars of distribution. The purchasers from the
markets hire carts, public coaches, or human car-
riers to transport their new stock to the market
places, where, in stalls rented from the city, they
deal directly, with much vociferous bargaining,
with your cook. The Viga market opens at dawn,
and by seven or eight o'clock the entire shipment of
the day is sold and has practically all been delivered
to the market places in the center of the city.
There your cook, or you yourself if you are seeking
adventure, will spend a happy two hours going from
274
MEXICO'S FOODS
stall to stall, inquiring prices of the squatting
market women or the cigarette-smoking market
men, engaging in violent altercations and finally
purchasing at prices which are very genuinely the
result of the stable economic forces of supply and
demand.
The milk supply of Mexico City is handled in
only a little more complicated fashion. It is
brought in from the outlying haciendas in great
wagons and is sold at wholesale by the drivers from
the farms. It is then transported to the markets
or to the little stores which encircle the market
plaza, and there is sold to the consumer. The
ordinary Mexican milk is thin and poor, for until
the last few years of Diaz, no high-grade stock was
imported. In the first decade of the century some
fine herds were established, and in Mexico City a
limited quantity of good milk could be procured
through large dairying concerns, chiefly American.
Other cities were not so fortunate, but good cows
thrive except in the hot country, and conditions
were improving. Government inspection of milk
was attempted, but no careful Mexican housewife
uses milk that has not been boiled.
Meat in Mexico City and generally in each town
is now all killed in the government - supervised
slaughter house. There it is inspected and thence
distributed to the dealers. There is some refrigera-
tion, but practically all the meat is brought into
Mexican cities on the hoof by the buyers who have
purchased it in the country, and killed where it is
consumed. A few years ago an American company
275
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
erected a modern slaughter house at Uruapam on
the edge of the rich cattle country of Michoacan
and Guerrero, and attempted to educate the
Mexican people up to refrigerated meat, but this
was unsuccessful, for the Mexican cook prefers
fresh-killed beef, even though her master knows
that the refrigerated product is tenderer and more
delicious. Meat is dispensed at retail in some of
the market places, but as a rule is sold in butcher
shops near by. Practically none of these have
refrigerators, and the meat is hung out in the open
air, unscreened, and kept fresh only by the circu-
lation of the air which enters the shops through the
barred doors and windows, which are always open,
night and day. The Mexican butcher is not a
particularly skillful cutter of meat, and a wise cook
can get the very finest cuts, with the bones removed,
for almost the same price per pound that the less
intelligent peon women will pay for a shank bone.
The filet or tenderloin is the most esteemed portion
of the beef, and is almost invariably sold separately,
though, again, the unwary purchaser is just as
likely to get the faux-filet or a carefully shaped
length of the round at the price of the true filet.
The meat used in Mexico is practically none of
it raised from true beef cattle. The old tradition
was that only cow meat was desirable, and that
even the flesh of steers (oxen are used extensively
as draft animals in Mexico) was not so desirable.
Bull meat is strong in flavor and very tough, and
is not bought where anything else can be obtained.
The animals killed in the bull fights are considered
276
MEXICO'S FOODS
poisoned, owing to the "heated blood" which came
from the wrath which they were displaying at the
tune of their death. This meat is either not used
at all or is given to prisoners and soldiers. No
horse meat is eaten in Mexico, at least not con-
sciously. The "lamb" is mostly goat. Pork is
much esteemed, but foreigners who note that the
pig is one of the chief scavengers of Mexico, do not,
as a rule, eat Mexican pork, although this prejudice
is probably as ungrounded as the native prejudice
against the meat of the steer. The Mexican market
consumes the entire animal, including lungs and
entrails, for food, and at the time that an American
company was in charge of the packing house in
Mexico City it was found necessary to import
from the United States the skins for the sausages
which were made out of the renderings of the pork,
because the prices paid by the natives for the
entrails of the animals made it unprofitable to use
the native product for sausage skins.
Poultry and fish are both popular in Mexico,
although they have always been relatively expen-
sive. Almost the only fish which is edible in
Mexico is that from the deep sea, as the fresh-water
streams have long since been exhausted. Fish in
the interior towns, therefore, commands a price
as high as or higher than meat, and is considered a
special delicacy. Poultry is always bought alive
at the market and is killed and dressed at home,
and, as in parts of the United States, is often cooked
before the animal heat has got out of the flesh.
In the tropics of Mexico there is still some wild
277
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
game, and wild turkey is sometimes to be bought in
the hot-country cities, but in the centers of popu-
lation game has been completely exhausted, with
the single exception of wild duck. In winter the
great lakes of the Valley are literally covered with
these beautiful birds, who arrive with the fall and
remain till their migration northward in the spring.
The market prices of wild duck in Mexico are
pleasingly low, but the birds are killed in ways
which outrage all the instincts of the sportsman.
One method is by volleys from guns set in regular
batteries. Ancient weapons of every sort, and
including guns made by hand from gaspipe, are
used. Sometimes a particularly diabolical inventor
will prepare three batteries, one of a dozen guns
aimed across the level of the water, another at a
slight angle, and a third at a high angle, so that
after the first shot has made its kill and the other
birds are rising, the second battery is fired, bringing
down more, and finally the third catches most of
the birds which have escaped the first two.
Another method is more picturesque and also
appeals more to the economical Indian, as it costs
him no investment for powder and shot. He will
hollow out a pumpkin or a large squash, stick it
over his head, with spaces cut for the eyes, and
wade up to his neck out into a flock of ducks on the
surface of the water. By great patience, and
thanks to the appearance of the harmless gourd
floating on the water, the Indian can often approach
the flock, and as he stands among them up to his
shoulders in water, his head covered by the gourd,
278
MEXICO'S FOODS
he can, or claims he can, take one duck at a time
by its feeb as it floats on the surface, drag it below
the water, wring its neck, and fasten it to his belt.
This, at least, is the tale which the Indians them-
selves tell, and although it may well be a figment of
the imagination, it indicates the lengths to which
the Indian will go in his efforts to acquire some-
thing without the expenditure of capital.
In general, the distribution of food in Mexico
may be said to be almost archaic. During the
unhappy days of revolution and under Carranza
and his immediate successors this condition gave
rise to the most colossal speculation in foodstuffs,
beginning with the " generals" who controlled
freight traffic and forced the farmers to sell their
produce at a low figure, to be transported and sold
for the " generals'" account at a huge profit in the
cities, and extending down the line to the bandits
who stole or destroyed the crops, and the town
merchants and speculators who took advantage of
the intermittent shortages. One of the great
sources of suffering during this period was the dis-
organization of distribution as a result of the revo-
lution, but the situation was only an aggravation
of that which has always existed in Mexico, where
the price of so staple a product as corn has in normal
times often varied 500 per cent in relatively neigh-
boring sections.
The prices of foods are discussed elsewhere. 1
They are the combined result of poor distribution
and the eternal imminence of famine, a specter
1 See part ii, chap, xi, p. 364.
279
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
which always hovers over Mexico and time and
again has reduced her population to misery and
destruction. 1 In part the varying food prices are
due also to local conditions, for even in large towns
the markets are often lacking in such staples as
eggs or even beans and corn. This seems traceable
to the custom of the Indian and peon producers,
who send their goods to market only when they
need money, while even the hacendados are often
more likely to consult their own convenience in
such matters than to follow even the demands of a
rising market.
Wordy battles have been waged by experts and
by amateurs over the nutritive value of the Mexican
diet. Doing heavy work, the peon can get along
perfectly well on beans and tortillas, with meat,
either fresh or dried, only once a week. The allow-
ance on the most successful plantations has seldom
included anything besides beans, corn, coffee, sugar,
and lard, with meat once or twice a week to the
extent of half a pound or less per person. Men
of the middle and upper classes, moreover, have
mental distractions and some physical exercise
which helps with the assimilation of their heavy
diet.
On the other hand, Mexican women and children
are notoriously unhealthy. Those of the upper
classes overeat not only of their exceptionally
clogging diet, but also in the matter of sweets, so
that they often grow fat or sallow in early maturity.
1 See part ii, chap, i, pp. 148-151, for discussion of this result of
Mexico's climatic conditions.
280
MEXICO'S FOODS
The lack of fruits and green vegetables seems to be
very evident here, and the absence of variety in
food may be largely responsible for the poor health
of the women.
Much of the heavy infant mortality is so obvi-
ously due to the habits of eating allowed and en-
couraged in children that it need only be mentioned
here. The low-class Mexican mother thinks that
her child can eat a thick, greasy soup with tortillas
cut up in it as soon as he is taken from the breast,
or before, and, indeed, gives him a tortilla or a stick
of sugar cane to assist him in teething. The young
Mexican child early begins to eat hot chiles, with
effects on his digestive tract which can be under-
stood by any foreigner who has suffered from this
violent and unaccustomed stimulant.
It seems more likely that the undernourishment
of the adult Mexican of the lower class is due to
actual lack of a sufficient quantity of food. It may
be that the continued excessive use of hot chiles
and of liquor have deadened the nerves of the
stomach so that need of food is not indicated
promptly by a sense of hunger, or that the chiles
themselves create a feeling of temporary satisfac-
tion on an incompletely nourishing meal rather
than merely stimulating the formation of the gastric
juices and the appetite, as they are supposed to do,
or that the continued use of chiles may have re-
duced the individual's digestive vitality so that
he does not get the full food value from what he
does eat.
However, the simpler explanation is that the
281
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
native apathy makes the peon a very poor pro-
vider, for there is real ground for the tradition
that he will not work except when he actually
needs food. Undoubtedly, in the face of famine
or a scarcity of food within the family's reach, the
Mexican peons, men, women, and children, accept
what seems to them the inevitable with a stolidity
which is exasperating, to say the least, to the more
enterprising white men. If he is given food he
eats it with avidity, and on the plantations where
rations are given him and he is not required to
provide them, the quality of his work and his morale
are always excellent. One report regarding Mexican
labor on American railways says that they "live on
very little when they draw rations, but demand a
liberal diet (usually including fresh meat) when
boarded. . . . Contractors and foremen find the
efficiency of Mexican laborers so much greater
when boarded that it pays to give them regular
meals instead of rations, even though higher wages
must be paid to compensate them for the increased
cost of living." 1
Similar conditions are found by careful students
of Mexican efficiency in Mexico itself. One Ameri-
can employer of Mexican labor reports receiving a
gang of workmen who seemed to be perfectly well,
but were apathetic, and giving them all the coffee
they could drink, and all the beans and tortillas
they could eat. They literally gorged themselves
at first, showing a desire for nourishment which was
1 Victor S. Clark, "Mexican Labor in the United States" in
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 78, p. 480.
282
MEXICO'S FOODS
astonishing and somewhat unexpected even by the
experienced employer. He kept them well fed for
many weeks, and made it a rule to weigh them at
intervals, noting with considerable pleasure that
his generosity was improving their health and, as
he figured it, bringing him in definite returns in
increased production. An amusing corollary to the
story is that the Indians, although getting more to
eat than they had ever had in their lives, and
working under excellent conditions, contrived to
start a first-class strike on the place, and it was
finally discovered that the only complaint was that
they objected to being " weighed like pigs."
The Mexican diet of corn, beans, and fat is gen-
erally approved by dieticians, and practical sup-
port of their theories is lent by the fact that the
country peons who get little liquor, but eat their
regular corn, beans, and fats, even without meat,
rarely have digestive disorders, but that these are
common to the city dwellers, who can satisfy their
appetite for hot, greasy masses of food which they
find cooked up and sold to them in the fondas and
on the streets concocted of one knows not what
forms of decaying vegetable and animal matter,
covered with the hot, spicy gravy. The greater
ease with which liquor is obtained in the cities
should not be lost sight of in this connection.
Some observers of Mexican life find their text for
dissertations on Mexican malnutrition in the fact
that the Mexican eats rather strange, and to other
races unpalatable, foods. The fact that he enjoys
the large white grub which lives in the maguey
283
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
plant when this worm is cooked in boiling fat, the
fact that he relishes the insect or fish eggs which
are dragged from the bottom of lakes and that he
will eat iguana or lizard and even monkey meat
with relish, are all taken as indications of the hunger
which once assailed the natives, for, as one observer
put it, "this perversion of the natural appetite can
have originated only in the torturing pangs of an
acute hunger."
Summing up the dietary situation in Mexico, we
find that the foods most craved by the Mexican
are extremely heavy, although they are well
balanced as to nourishing properties, corn and beans
and fat supplying practically all the needs of the
human body. There is a climatic uniformity in the
appetite for this type of food, for the diet of the
upper classes shows that they enjoy foods which
are more delicate in flavor, but which have much
the same properties and proportions as the diet of
the Indians and peons. We find that the same diet
is eaten by both men and women and, unfortunately,
by the children also; that the effect upon the men
is satisfactory, particularly so far as they are
engaged in labor, but that the women are either
subject to diseases of the digestive tract or are over-
fed with sweets, unhealthily fat, and prematurely
aged. The heavy infant mortality in Mexico is
undoubtedly due in part to the injurious feeding
of this same heavy diet to infants and children,
but although there has been some marked improve-
ment in the matter of child mortality where Ameri-
can companies or doctors have changed the chil-
284
MEXICO'S FOODS
dren's diet, even this extensive indication of the
unsuitability of the Mexican dietary for certain
members of her population is less of a criticism of
the diet itself than of the intelligence of the mothers.
That Mexicans are often undernourished seems
recognized, however, and this undernourishment
seems traceable more to digestive disorders resulting
from the excessive use of the stimulants of chile
and liquor than to the food itself, although the
poverty and apathy of the lower classes and the
cruelty of a climate which makes food raising diffi-
cult have had much to do with the natives 7 not
getting enough of the foods which they naturally
crave.
VIII
CLOTHING
HTHOSE who seek to find in Mexico signs of an
A identification with modern culture encounter
but cold comfort in the native standards of dress.
The Mexican male, like a true barbarian, is the
bird of gaudy plumage, and the female a modest
brown sparrow the nest builder, the worker, the
squaw. As in every country where an indigenous
population supports upper classes of more or less
international culture, the country's sartorial pecul-
iarities are, however, found only below the upper
strata of society. Wherever the national dress is
worn by the upper classes it is with much the
attitude of European aristocrats when, at certain
festivals, they put on the hereditary dress of the
peasants. In the colonial period, and into the
days of General Diaz, the sons of high-class families
did often appear in the charro costume of silver-
trimmed doeskin, with tinseled hat, peaked and
broad-brimmed, and the brilliant colored zerape.
This was, of course, not their usual attire, but they
wore it as youthful California millionaires will
appear from time to time in chaps, flannel shirt, and
bandanna.
286
CLOTHING
When one thinks of the Mexican one invariably
pictures this charro costume. It was originally
worn by the cowboys, but later developed as typical
of the Mexican countryman, and was perpetuated
in the official use of the rurales, or Federal police.
The most typical feature of the charro outfit is the
great sombrero, or hat, made of heavy felt, black,
brown, or gray, with a peaked crown twelve to
fourteen inches high, and a broadly curving brim
eight to ten inches wide, embroidered in gilt or
silver tinsel. The coat is a short bolero jacket
extending only to the waist, and usually em-
broidered in tinsel. A soft shirt, loose about the
neck, is fastened with a .bright necktie. The
trousers, supported on the hips by a brilliant- hued
twisted sash, are of the same material as the coat,
fitting as tightly as is physically possible, flaring
slightly at the bottom, where they are buttoned
skin-tight for about ten inches above the pointed
leather shoes. The trousers are trimmed with
silver braid and have silver buttons along the
sides, the buttons at the waist and at the bottom of
the leg being of use, the rest purely ornamental.
In material the suit was, in its perfectly typical
form, of soft-tanned leather, gray or brown, and
elaborately embroidered, the gray in silver and the
brown in gold. The leather was in later years
substituted by fine or heavy cloth, and some variety
in color was brought in, even white being affected
by the dandies when they rode out on horseback on
their elaborately tooled and silver-studded saddles.
This costume is to be found all over Mexico to-
19 287
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
day among the rancher o class, the most typical of
the mestizo groups. It remains the Mexican
national costume, but as time has passed fewer and
fewer of the Mexicans use it. Twenty years ago
in Mexico City every driver of a public carriage
wore a broad-brimmed felt sombrero, but to-day
one would have difficulty in finding one in the
capital. In those days the coachmen in the cities,
and others belonging to their class in the towns,
wore short bolero jackets and tight trousers,
untrimmed. Now, with the advance of American
and, later, Mexican ready-made clothes of European
type, this survival has passed. The Mexican na-
tional costume is becoming largely a tradition in
the cities, but a tradition which, happily for the
picturesque side of Mexico, still finds expression in
the countryside.
While for many generations the Mexican man
had this national dress, the woman of similar class
was garbed with a drab sameness which, though it
marked her social status, still lacked almost every-
thing that was at all picturesque. Her dresses
were, and still are, long and flaring, made usually
of a cotton print, and almost untrimmed. Only the
headdress could be said to be typical a scarf of
black merino, in the class corresponding to the men
who wear the charro costume, and in the lower
classes the reboso of a soft blue color which has been
Mexican for centuries.
If the so-called Mexican dress has been disap-
pearing of late years, the clothing of the peon and
of the Indian has remained almost unchanged since
288
CLOTHING
early days. This consists of a hat of plaited straw,
the crown round and low, the big brim curving up-
ward practically to the height of the crown, a
collarless shirt, white manta (the coarse native
muslin) pantaloons of the general cut of pajama
trousers, held in place by a scarf of red cotton wound
round and round the waist, with the ends tucked in,
and the feet in sandals of the simplest pattern.
The costume is completed by a zerape of wool about
the size of the blanket of a single bed, folded twice
lengthwise, and carried over the left shoulder during
the day, and at night, or when it is cold, wrapped
about the shoulders, covering mouth and nose as
well. Sometimes there is a coat of white cotton,
but this is found only in the tropics, where the
zerape is not always carried. The trousers, when
long, are usually so wide that, as they flap, it seems
that they touch both toe and heel. Sometimes,
however, they are cut short at the knee, and usually
when the peon is at work the wide trousers are
rolled up until the full leg is bare.
The peon women dress in dark cotton, the waist
being almost invariably covered by the reboso,
which is used as a sling for carrying the inevitable
baby, perched behind or on the left arm. The
long black hair of these women is plaited with
strips of red cotton cloth or tape, usually two
braids hanging down the back. They seldom wear
sandals except when on long marches, often going
barefoot even in the city streets.
Although the Spaniards introduced pantaloons
and shirt, the dress of the ancient inhabitants of
289
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Mexico seems to have had a part in the origin of the
typical costume of the lower classes of to-day. The
earliest forms of dress were, of course, of dried skins,
these being displaced as tune went on by tanned
and prepared leather, cut and sewed, and then by
cloth made of maguey and palm fiber. The Aztec
and related tribes were wearing cotton when the
Spaniards came, the fineness of some of that used
by the nobles being remarked by the conquerors.
The costume of the Aztec men consisted of two
garments, one the maxtli (breech cloth is our only
approximation), which, in the highest classes, was
twenty-four feet long and nine inches wide, so that
dressing was no minor operation. The other gar-
ment was the timatli, or mantle, the precursor of the
modern zerape, a four-foot square of cotton or
fiber, worn with two corners knotted or clasped on
breast or shoulder.
The Indian women wore a short chemise, or
huipil, reaching barely to the waist, and a cuetil, or
skirt, tight fitting, of cotton or other fabric, reaching
to halfway between knees and ankles. Sometimes
additional overdresses similar to the huipil, but
longer, were worn, ornamented with fringes and
tassels. All of these garments, including the men's
breech cloths, were often embroidered and tinted
elaborately, according to the purse of the wearer.
The dress of the nobles differed from that of the
peasants only in quality and ornamentation.
Survivals of some of these costumes persist, those
of the ancient-lineaged Otomis being probably the
purest, the women to-day wearing garments like
290
CLOTHING
those just described, and, rarely, the older men a
wide breech cloth and diminutive zerape with a slit
in the middle, so that it is worn over the head, its
width hardly passing the shoulders, its length little
more than to the waist in front and back, or some-
times sewed into half sleeves, the long ends belted in
at the waist.
To describe the Mexican of to-day, we find that
the social significance of his costume begins with his
hat and ends only with his shoes. The peon's coarse,
plaited, round-crowned head covering evolves, when
he becomes a free laborer, into a high-peaked straw
or felt sombrero, increasing in elaborateness as his
purse allows. His hat is truly his pride, the mark
of his grandeur and the expression of his self-esteem.
A miner stripped to a breech cloth will still appear
with a great peaked hat in which he carries his
cigarettes and his matches, his lunch, and even his
money, and which serves as well for a protection
against falling stones when he is working under-
ground. The city and farm laborer may not have
such a fancy hat, but it is usually peaked, and
therein he also carries most of his belongings, even
down to a few tortillas and a piece of meat. When,
in climbing the social scale, the peaked sombrero
disappears, it is replaced by a thick, broad felt
hat which may have been designed by American
manufacturers for their Western trade thirty years
ago, but which has now assumed a form and use
which are essentially Mexican. Above this plane
the derby, the panama, and the convenient straw
hat of American manufacture eliminate the dis-
291
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
tinctions in male headgear, but it is difficult to
wean even the most modernized mestizo away from
his ponderous and depressing black felt hat with
its heavy wide brim and its thick crown.
The outer covering of the Mexican is typified by
the zerape, whose manufacture developed one of
the most interesting phases of the native crafts, the
weaving of fine and beautiful fabrics on the hand
loom. In the early days the zerapes of Zacatecas
and Saltillo were famous for their fineness, for their
designs and color, and for their impermeability to
water. To-day one will find but few of these
ancient zerapes, in many cases even the designs
having been abandoned in the wholesale manu-
facture of blankets patterned on European steamer
rugs, and still more often on the American Indian's
machine-made red blanket decorated only with a
pan- of black bars at either end. The beautiful
hand-woven zerapes are still worn and prized, how-
ever, by those who affect the charro costume.
Even when one reaches the plane where the black
felt hat first appears, the zerape is still found as the
overcoat, though by this time it has become
sobered to a dull gray or dark blue, reminiscent of
the shawls of the Victorian era.
As a wrap, the zerape is swung about the shoul-
ders, muffling the face, an adaptation doubtless
made from the Spanish cloak, the trick of swinging
it so that it will stay without holding being attained
only after long practice. Only the shoulders and
face are covered, and on a chilly day, or even while
sleeping on a night which is none too warm, the
292
CLOTHING
peon swathes his head in his zerape, while his bare
legs are freely and unfeelingly exposed to the
weather.
The suits of t'he Mexican men in the upper
classes follow the styles of London and New York.
They are usually made by native tailors, although
ready-made suits have been imported from the
United States, and are made by some concerns in
Mexico itself. In the time of General Diaz, how-
ever, European woolens paid comparatively low
duty and labor was cheap, so that tailored clothing
was more economical than any that could be im-
ported from the United States. The advantages of
style and cut are with the imported ready-made
suits, however, for the Mexican tailor, working on
his fine European fabrics, usually produces a botch
of bunched-up material without finish or style.
As we go down the social scale the coat becomes
shorter, approaching the traditional bolero type,
and the waistcoat becomes a purely utilitarian
garment. The Mexican tailor, in fact, is very
likely to, make the trousers extremely high-waisted,
with the idea of displacing the waistcoat by the
wide belt of the trousers a Spanish adaptation.
The trousers are often made tight across the hips,
even though they may be straight instead of tight-
fitting below. The tight-fitting trousers are, how-
ever, still popular with the artisans and with the
town Indians, whom local ordinances now usually
require to appear in trousers instead of white
pantaloons.
The city ordinances referred to were passed with
293
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the idea that the sensible and convenient white
cotton " pajamas" were not decent, but the for-
eigner contemplates with something of repugnance
the spectacle of the clean Indian passing through
the city streets in a pair of tight-fitting trousers
which he has rented in one of the suburbs and which
he will return, to be used by another, when he
leaves the town.
The foot covering of the Mexican runs from
nothing but his own calloused skin to imported
American shoes. The Mexican sandal is of very
simple design, the thong of rawhide being attached
to four wire staples at the sides of the thick leather
sole. The thong does not pass between the toes,
and the sandal, or guaracha, is in reality little more
than a piece of leather or woven fiber fastened to
the bottom of the foot by leather strips passing over
the instep and around the heel. Most of the shoes
worn in Mexico are imported, but the Mexicans
have manufactured small quantities of shoes for
many years, chiefly from the poorly tanned and
ill-smelling native leather. The typical native shoe
is long and pointed, without a tip, and usually
with elastics in the sides.
The costumes of the women follow similar caste
lines. The upper classes wear French hats, and
differ from the customs of other communities
largely in the wearing of rather more elaborate
headgear for ordinary occasions than would be
chosen by the European or American woman.
The use of hats now extends quite far down the
scale. The Mexican lady wears the Spanish lace
294
CLOTHING
head covering (the mantilla and the Sevillana) only
upon special occasions, although in the colonial
period they were the proper and expected style.
The mantilla, for instance, is worn on certain cere-
monial, days of worship in the Church, notably
Good Friday, but the Sevillana, a suitable covering
for the elaborate feminine coiffure, is now almost
unknown except as an evening scarf. The Mexican
lady, when she drives, now wears a European hat,
where fifty years ago the women of her class ap-
peared with an elaborate coiffure and the light lace
Sevillana as its covering.
The mantilla is a scarf three or four yards long,
and at most one yard wide,, of black or white silk
or linen lace. When worn, formally, it is gathered
in at the top and fastened to the hair. The Sevil-
lana is a much lighter and smaller piece of lace,
also black or white, a yard or little more in length,
and diamond shaped, so that the top of the head is
covered and the tapering ends fall gracefully over
the shoulders. The ends of the mantilla are folded
loosely about the neck, but the Sevillana often hangs
undraped.
The use of hats has, with Mexican ladies, prac-
tically replaced the beautiful laces, but the black
merino scarf is still the sign of the lower middle-
class woman, the wife of the artisan and clerk.
This is worn folded about the head tightly and
wrapped about the neck, a style suggestive of the
East. The blue reboso of the lower-class women is
much longer than the black merino scarf, and in
shape is very much like the mantilla, which, how-
295
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
ever, it does not approximate in any other way.
There is a typical weave of this garment which
alternates white and blue threads and gives a pale
tone to a fabric which is, in reality, dark and sub-
stantial. The reboso is made of cotton, but it is
also manufactured in its typical pattern in silk, in
which form it is used by upper-class women as a
very convenient shoulder wrap. The peon woman
wears it almost invariably over the head, and at
the same time as a sling for the baby, or even for
the day's purchases at the market.
The dress of Mexican women of the upper classes
is of Parisian manufacture or pattern. Most of
the gowns that are not imported from abroad are
manufactured at home, the convent-trained Mexi-
can woman being always skillful with the needle.
Paper patterns, both French and American, are
used extensively. The materials are mostly im-
ported, although some finer grades of cotton goods
are made in Mexico.
The middle-class women of Mexico dress with
some semblance of European style, but in fashions
which have almost been forgotten in other lands.
The dresses are long, the skirts gored, and the bodice
assumes the frumpy appearance suggestive of out-
worn styles. As we go down the scale, however,
the outer dresses take even more rigid traditional
form in calico of dark hues, cut straight and very
long, often dragging on the ground. Here the
headgear is the blue reboso, and shoes are worn,
usually without stockings. Corsets and most lin-
gerie have disappeared. The peon women dress in
296
CLOTHING
Various grades from the calico of the workman's
wife down to the rags of the beggars.
In the Indian tribes which still retain their
ancient customs of dress it is sometimes the women
who are more distinctive, as white mania is almost
universal as a dress for the Indian man. The
mountain Indians about Mexico City and Guana-
juato, chiefly of the Otomi race, come down to the
cities and villages to market, the men dressed in
white, the women sometimes in dark-colored woolen
skirts drawn tightly about their waists and ex-
tending a little below the knees, the upper part of
their bodies covered with the ancient type of
jacket, sometimes of wool, sometimes of cotton,
without sleeves, and not fastened to the skirt.
The Indian women of other tribes also have their
typical dress, the most notable being those of the
Tehuantepec, famous for their beauty and for the
beauty and elaborateness of their costume. The
waist is of fine cotton, embroidered in bright colors,
and itself of beautiful shades ranging from rich
purple to pale yellow. This hangs loosely from the
shoulders, and misses the skirt by a wide space of
fair brown flesh. On feast days it is almost covered
by an elaborate headdress, which, when worn to
church or at festivals, surrounds the face with an
oval of starched white rays eight to ten inches long.
The Tehuana women adorn themselves with great
chains made of gold coins ranging from the Ameri-
can double eagle ($20) through the Mexican azteca
(twenty pesos) down to the tiny American one-
dollar gold pieces.
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THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The use of underclothing in Mexico is confined
very largely to the upper classes, but the women
even lower in the scale wear chemises, even though
they do not ordinarily wear stockings. Indeed,
a dark calico chemise is a universal garment of low-
class Mexican women, being used as an undergar-
ment in the daytime, as a nightdress for sleeping,
and as a suit for outdoor bathing, the body and the
chemise being washed together in the streams.
The shoes of Mexico have not a little social im-
portance. It is said that in the formation of an
early Mexico City directory those who wore shoes
were all mentioned, but none others appeared, and
there has always been a very easy distinction be-
tween those who wear sandals and those who wear
shoes, a distinction analogous to that between the
women who wear hats and those who wear only
scarfs over their heads.
Cosmetics and perfumes are in very general use
throughout all classes in Mexico, even peon women
finding great pleasure in the possession and use of
strong-smelling extracts. Perfume is expensive,
the price of the native product being regulated by
the cost of the imported article, on which a heavy
duty has always been levied. Mexican women
have always used a great deal of powder, the tradi-
tion being that powder forms a protection against
the tropical sun and dry winds. Creams and other
cosmetics are used extensively, also in an effort to
counteract this influence. Some rouge is used by
Mexican women, but as a rule the complexion
most esteemed is the pasty white, which is achieved
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CLOTHING
by the use of vast quantities of face powder, often
plastered over a coating of glycerine or cosmetic
cream, to make it stick.
The Mexican woman appreciates adornment, and
jewelry has always been used generously in the
republic. The national desire for show has led
to the importation of second-grade stones, which
are manufactured into elaborate " sunbursts,"
necklaces, earrings, bracelets, etc. Jewelry in
Mexico is bought for display, and the American
conception of it as an investment, which has made
the market for fine stones so much better than that
for second-grade, is seldom considered in Mexico.
Many peculiar styles of adornment, such as the
great Spanish combs of carved tortoise shell and
jeweled work, have always been appreciated in
Mexico. They formed an indispensable part of the
dress typical of an earlier day, and are far from
absent in the elaborate coiffures which many
Mexican ladies and all the women of the upper
middle class assume for festivals and balls.
Mexican children follow, in dress, the garb of
their parents, and the peon boy is a miniature, in
his diminutive peaked hat and his tiny zerape, of
his own father, and the little peon girl, save for the
shortness of her dresses and her frank and obvious
addiction to the one-piece garment, an image of her
mother. In the upper ranks, the boys are dressed
as the French and Spanish youths of then: class,
and the girls are starched and helpless in lace and
frilled and beribboned dresses, topped by coif-
fures as elaborate, if not so high, as those of their
299
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
mothers and grown sisters. Mexican babies of the
upper classes are dressed in long and lacy gowns,
and the panorama of a Mexican family out for a
walk is invariably guarded in the rear by a dusky,
dull-dressed and not always clean nursemaid, her
unwashed reboso swung about the baby, but under-
neath the flowing white gown, so that all the beauties
of the garment are displayed for the admiration of
the passing throng.
IX
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
casual commentator usually overempha-
1 sizes the uncleanliness of the mass of the
Mexican people. So far as uncleanliness is com-
mon, however, it may be traced largely to the very
great proportion of extremely poor people ; poverty
and filth everywhere go hand in hand. The Mex-
ican of the upper classes is quite as clean as the
American or Englishman, and not until we reach
the lower Mexican types do we find the picturesque
group who traditionally and literally bathe their
bodies only on the annual festival of St. John the
Baptist.
By the usually invariable test of odor, most
Mexican crowds average well, excepting in the
case of the low-caste kperos, who wash neither
bodies nor clothes. This is probably due to the
relative cleanliness of the outer raiment, for the
traditions of the Mexican peasantry seem to tend
toward a busy washing of the clothing rather than
to meticulous cleanliness of the body.
The laundry customs of Mexico are picturesque
and far from inefficient. Soap is expensive, and
even the native product, which is almost useless for
301
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
cleansing, commands a high price. The peon
woman will, therefore, scrub for hours in a stream
with little or no soap, and with the sun as her only
aid in bleaching. The typical Mexican laundry is
located on a river bank and consists of a few flat,
smooth stones sloping toward the stream, with a
tin cup or gourd for scooping the water up to splash
over the clothes. Here the women kneel to their
work, and so deep rooted is custom that the usual
modern municipal laundry is a shed by the side of
a stream, with running water diverted into a channel
running between sloping slabs of cement, where
the women kneel at their scrubbing as they have
done for generations. The clothes are not rubbed
over the stones or cement or over anything that
corresponds to the American washboard, the cloth
being pulled together and rolled between the hands
and the stone, with a peculiar motion which only
a Mexican laundress can achieve, and which does
not rasp or wear the fabric. The process, if com-
bined with plenty of soap and the drying under the
sun on the grass, results in a whiteness and sweet-
ness which are always reassuring. Where, how-
ever, the limitations of poverty prevent the use of
soap, the clothing, even when thoroughly washed,
is gray and dingy.
Mexican servants are efficient with the flat iron,
which they heat, evenly and cleanly, over charcoal,
and garments return in beautiful condition. It
may be mentioned, however, that even in a family
of two or three, one woman is assigned to the laun-
dry work alone, and spends the entire week over it.
302
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
The Mexican laundress is a happy soul, and gos-
sips and jokes with her friends while she scrubs and
keeps an eye upon her children paddling in the
stream. Incidentally, she washes her long black
hair, even though she may fail to wash her body.
This has always impressed the visitor from abroad
as a sign of the cleanliness of the Mexican women,
but if they themselves are questioned they are
usually quite frank in saying that they wash their
hair often because it discourages vermin.
For the Mexican peon, male or female, uses
water only "when needed." This carries no
especial reflection on Mexico, but it does classify
the peon with some exactness. The North Ameri-
can Indian has never been a model of cleanliness,
nor has the Chinese coolie, and the Mexican peon
seems to fall into their group. Below the very
highest classes bathing is not a daily, nor even a
weekly, habit. In the tropics, one bathes to keep
cool, and the tropical Indian is, as a rule, much
cleaner than his cousin on the plateau. Habit and
tradition have affected this custom considerably,
however, for the filth among the hot-country con-
tract laborers from the plateau towns is always
in striking contrast to the clean native Indians who
work with them. On the plateau, where the
body seldom sweats except under exertion, the
need of bathing does not force itself through any
bodily discomfort, and it is probably literally true
that in the lower strata no complete baths are
taken at all, excepting on St. John's Day, June
24th. The peon, therefore, goes about in his filthy
20 303
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
rags and with dirt caked on his calloused feet until
that wisely emphasized churchly festival or until
a policeman drags him, protesting loudly, off to a
public bathhouse. This latter function of au-
thority is exercised, from time to tune, during
typhus and other epidemics, when policemen spend
their days picking out the filthiest from groups of
workmen, taking them to public baths, and there
sternly superintending their ablutions and the
washing of their clothes. Public bathhouses
have been established in Mexico City and in other
plateau towns for many years, and under the Diaz
rule the number of these places kept well ahead of
the demand, although on festival days and Sundays
they were often crowded.
While the peon of the plateau may be frankly
dirty, the mestizo Mexican who has risen from
clean mania shirt and pantaloons to woolen rai-
ment which is never washed, is very likely to be
far less attractive from the point of view of cleanli-
ness. The psychology of this type of Mexican
seems to overemphasize the value of the outward
appearance as against the inward virtue, and the
clerk class in Mexico, with their more or less clean
collars, too often wear a very dirty shirt that sug-
gests underclothing that is even less fresh. The
problem of cleanliness in Mexico is rather one of
educating the native to desire it than of making
him clean with the sweet conviction that cleanliness
will lead him closer to godliness.
The private bathroom is yet to achieve the glory
of common use in Mexico. Except for dwellers in
304
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
the most modern houses, it is the " bathhouse" to
which a Mexican repairs daily (or less often) for his
" scrub." These bathhouses (of which there are a
large number in all cities) maintain a certain
standard of cleanliness and sanitation, with con-
siderable luxury where the prices justify it. Music
is often played in the patio, and the bathers the
men and women in separate sections sit hi the
corridors, visiting and taking refreshments. The
baths are of various sorts, tub, shower, and Turk-
ish, with relatively modern equipment. The bath-
house usually furnishes towels, soap, and the little
twist of vegetable fiber which the Mexican has come
to use as a scrub brush. The dressing rooms,
equipped with brush and comb, also furnish a tiny
vial of grease or oil for the hair.
Outside of Mexico City most of the bathhouses
were built many years ago, although there are
some with modern improvements. The really
typical Mexican baths are, however, in towns
where there are natural hot springs. They consist
of many rooms with Roman baths almost large
enough to swim in, and filled with running water of
varying temperatures. The baths at Aguas Cali-
entes, for instance, have a series of rooms with the
degree of temperature marked over the door, the
water coming from hot and cold springs in the im-
mediate vicinity. Here is genuine luxury, and the
water, continually running, is like blue crystal.
Attendants furnish towels, and soap and the twist
of fiber in a tin dish which floats on the water. The
traveler in Mexico who has enjoyed even one of
305
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
these beautifully luxurious baths, with its thought-
ful attendance and the half hour's rest, wrapped
in his sheet in a steamer chair or on a cot, soothed
with a Mexican cigarette and a glass of Spanish
sherry, must go far beyond the dictates of his heart
to enter into any great diatribes upon the bathing
facilities of Mexico.
Household cleanliness is, like bathing, largely a
matter of class, but the conscientious Mexican
housewife, whether she be American, English, or
native, has almost insuperable difficulties in con-
vincing her low-class servants of the value and im-
portance of true cleanliness. As a rule, when it is
attained in any degree it is almost solely through
the exercise of authority, and not through any
successful assault upon the peon philosophy.
Vermin, the inevitable accompaniment and index
of filth, are common in Mexico. Bedbugs are
almost universal, and infest clothing as well as
beds. Cockroaches swarm throughout the Mexican
house of high or low degree cockroaches of every
size and color, from the elephantine type nearly
two inches long, to the smallest and busiest denizen
of the kitchen. There is a tradition that the cock-
roach wages war upon the bedbug, and as the
cockroach does not bite and is easily large enough
to be extracted from the cooking if he falls in, he
is allowed free range of the house in the fond il-
lusion that his presence keeps down the population
of the ubiquitous chinches, or bedbugs. Rats and
mice are comparatively rare, due, perhaps, to the
custom of keeping very little food in the house,
306
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
Fleas are everywhere, especially during the dry
season, when the dusty roads and even the dust of
the churches are infested with them, the Mexican
flea being impersonal in his attentions to animals
and humans. Head lice are almost universal with
the lower classes, body lice infest their garments,
and both species roam the prisons and public places
where the peons forgather. One of the common
sights on the Mexican highways is the pleasant
social scene of a mother, with her children about her,
picking the lice from their heads, for all the world
like a family of monkeys in a zoo.
The age-old battle of the careful housewife
against vermin thus is often a losing one in Mexico.
Sunlight, in the typical Mexican house, almost
never reaches into the rooms, and the traditions of
household sanitation are extremely primitive. The
custom of garbage disposal is either to burn it in
more or less malodorous ovens in the patio or the
rear of the house, or to throw it in heaps, where it
lies for days, and sometimes weeks, until it is
carried away by men hired by the householder, or,
very seldom, by the city. In villages, garbage and
refuse are thrown on the ground, and practically
no care is taken except to have the dump as far as
practicable from the house.
Most Mexican kitchens in the better type of
houses have running water, and there is rimning
water in the patios and in bathrooms when such
exist, but there is seldom, if ever, water in the
bedrooms, and usually no stationary washstands
in the bathrooms. Waterclosets are still com-
307
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
paratively rare in Mexico, and one of the classic
stories has to do with an old-fashioned hacendado
who had a modern watercloset erected in the patio
of his house, where it was shown to visitors as one
of the curiosities of his establishment.
The whole subject of sanitation, in home and
community, is complicated by the dead weight of
ignorance and tradition on the mass of the people.
The only government in Mexico which has ever
taken a firm grip on the problem of sanitation was
that of General Diaz, which accomplished tre-
mendous things in the way of public works and
yet was baffled eternally in its attempt to make
these works useful and to extend their functions
down to the life of the individual. His Federal ex-
penditure totaled about P46,000,000 for major
works of sanitation and water supply in the capital
and ports, this including nearly P30,000,000 for
drainage and water supply of the capital, P4,000,000
for Vera Cruz, etc. All this is exclusive of improve-
ments which had been made b}^ the municipalities
and states outside of the Federal jurisdiction.
As a rule, the water supply of Mexican cities is
now fairly pure. This is due alone to the measures
which were introduced by the Diaz government.
There has also been a very considerable develop-
ment of sewerage systems of a modern type, all of
them works of considerable cost. Usually these
were carried out by foreign contracting companies
and engineers, although many able Mexican sani-
tary engineers took an active and commendable
part in their construction.
308
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
Previous to the modern sanitation introduced by
Diaz, the water of Mexican towns was almost
invariably brought through open gravity aqueducts,
some of which came for considerable distances, the
great arched conduits being landmarks of almost
every Mexican city, and monuments to the en-
gineering enterprise of Aztec and Spaniard. Water
from these gravity aqueducts was usually piped
only to fountains in the centers of the cities, and
from there was carried to the houses by the women
or by public water carriers in great earthen jars or
leather bags. The sewage and refuse disposal was
accomplished through the gutters which ran down
the centers of the cobblestone-paved streets, and
buzzards and pigs were the most important workers
in the Mexican sanitary system. Through the
efficiency of the Diaz government and its able
engineers, both native and foreign, these pic-
turesque features of Mexican community life have
almost disappeared and are to be found to-day only
in the most backward of outlying villages and towns.
Since the fall of Diaz sanitary conditions in
Mexican cities have greatly deteriorated, but the
basic foundation of efficient sewer systems and
water supply remain. The greatest difficulty in
enforcing sanitation in Mexico is the apathy of the
people, who have always found sanitary regulations
irksome, and whose processes of mind and habits
make it difficult to induce them to use the public
conveniences except under the pressure of law and
the police. The closing of public wells in most
Mexican cities has, of course, been possible without
309
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
great difficulty, but it has been less easy to stop
soil contamination.
In the ordinary Indian village there are no toilet
arrangements and the condition of filth even around
the houses and in public squares continues to men-
ace the community health. Even where conveni-
ences are established their drainage is often un-
provided for and there is little or no attempt to keep
the water supply pure, the same streams being used
for both water and drainage, and for bathing into
the bargain. Like most of the problems of Mexico,
the full achievement of municipal sanitation waits
upon education, the training of the Indian up to
desiring the more sanitary and comfortable provi-
sions of modern community organization.
The difficulties of the higher officials of the Diaz
government in bringing their ideas into realization
have been aggravated by their inability to get
efficient personnel in the lower offices, either in
trained men or conscientious workers. In addition,
in the states the commissions of public health have
had little power and less ambition, and, as a rule,
almost no funds. The few really conscientious
and intelligent physicians and sanitary experts who
have worked in Mexico have told of the most
discouraging lack of support from the munici-
palities. Careful regulations are made out in the
capital and distributed throughout the country,
but no one enforces them, and open cesspools,
sewers without disinfection, piles of rubbish, and
pools of dirty water mark every Mexican com-
munity, from the best to the worst,
310
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
All of this has been substantiated by the reports
of the United States Army and American Red
Cross officials of the clean-up which was accom-
plished in the city of Vera Cruz during its occupa-
tion by United States troops in 1914. Under the
direction of American doctors Vera Cruz was
cleaned up in about one month. Defiled wells were
sealed or filled up, stagnant pools drained off or
covered with oil, swamps filled in, etc. The
American soldiers found wagon loads of garbage in
corners and passages of public restaurants, piles of
garbage drying in the patios, and thousands of
breeding places for flies and vermin which had
apparently been untouched for years. These were
carried off and destroyed, three collections of gar-
bage made daily, and a complete inspection of the
city directed toward the maintenance of rigid sani-
tary regulations. The reports on these matters 1
show that when the American troops occupied Vera
Cruz the town was infested with flies, so that, as
one writer put it, "it was difficult to tell which was
food and which was flies," but at the end of a single
month the conditions were so improved that there
were practically no flies in streets, restaurants, or
private houses, and even the market places were
largely relieved of the pests.
The burial methods in Mexican communities
have been the subject of picturesque discussion and
of the diatribes of sanitary experts. The rented
coffin and shroud, the lack of embalming, the open
funeral cars, and the rented graves come in for
1 Charles Jenkinson in The Survey, vol. xxiii, no. 6,
311
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
severe criticism. This is all deserved, for the cus-
toms are but part and parcel of the appalling
absence of the ideals of municipal cleanliness.
The Mexican cemetery is usually located within
the city limits, and although burials in churches
have been prohibited for some years, the ceme-
teries, occupying a comparatively limited section
of ground, are located on hills or slopes, so as to be,
as a rule, a real menace to the public health. This
is increased by the fact that the graves are rented
for periods of from one to seven years, and when
emptied after these burial periods, the space is im-
mediately used again, and the defilement of the
soil is continuous. The custom of renting the
coffin and the shroud is, of course, hopelessly
perilous to public health, but it is continued gener-
ally among the lower classes. Embalming is prac-
ticed to a certain extent, but the Mexican law
requires that a licensed physician perform this
operation, and it is extremely expensive, and in
some cases is most inadequate. The general law
in Mexico is that a body must be buried within
twenty-four hours after death, and this is usually
followed. There is very little shipping of remains
from town to town, for where this is done the law
requires that they be embalmed and that a metal
casket be used.
All this is indicative of the fact (which becomes
more and more emphasized as one goes deeper into
the study of living conditions) that it is the psy-
chological attitude of the people which is the root
of most of the evils of the country. Mexicans are
312
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION
dirty, are careless with sanitation, solely because
they do not consider it worth while to put forward
the effort which a correction of these conditions
demands. In essence there is little in these phases
of Mexican life which is different from what may
be seen in almost any country in the world, but
Mexico's conditions are aggravated by the fact
that the traditions upon which her people act
are deeply rooted in race and confined within the
barriers of extreme poverty. In more enlightened
communities the people can be educated, or can be
stirred by published warnings of epidemics, while
in Mexico the masses cannot read and their apathy
baffles almost all teaching and warning. It is for
this reason, and probably for this reason alone,
that the Mexican uncleanliness, lack of sanitation,
and carelessness in disease have been able to rear
such a wall against improved living conditions.
The problem in this, as in so many other phases
of Mexican life, lies in education, an education
which seems almost hopeless of achievement hi the
present mass of the population, but an education
which brave men in Catholic cloisters, in Protestant
churches, and in government departments are fac-
ing with such courage and understanding as their
own education and training will allow them. The
Mexican plans seem to have failed and failed again,
while American methods, and principally the Ameri-
can police control, were able in a few short months
to accomplish wonders in the single city of Vera
Cruz. How much of a reflection on Mexico this is,
and how much more of a reflection it will prove as
313
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the contrast persists through years to come, is
something which can only be touched on here.
Basically the American methods followed those oi
the Diaz government, differing only in that their
imposition of change came from military control
and was achieved with more persistence and energy
than Diaz was ever able to summon.
The contrast, however, will long remain in the
American mind, as well as in the minds of the
Mexicans who looked on at Vera Cruz and now
look back to the days of Diaz, as perhaps the most
significant demonstration of the potency of the
white man's energy and understanding in working
toward the solution of Mexico's great problems.
THE CONDITIONS OF LABOR
IN many ways all of the chapters of this book
are but discussions of the various conditions
under which the Mexican finds himself a living in
his native land. From another viewpoint, the
labor problem, and the land problem which has so
much to do with its determination, lie completely
outside the scope of this work. The middle ground,
however, sees the conditions under which a nation
works as part of the myriad forces which determine
the way in which its people live.
Of those conditions of work, a round half dozen
seem to bear directly upon the study to which we
have set ourselves, the unwinding of the colorful
threads which form the fabric of Mexico's national
life. Primarily, because Mexico is chiefly an agri-
cultural nation, is the relation of the land question ,.
to the problem of human living.
There has never been any lack of land for the
people of Mexico; the problem has been rather, as
one Mexican has expressed it, "a lack of people for
the land." With a population averaging eighteen
to the square mile, with ten acres of nonmountain-
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
ous land per capita, Mexico stands out among the
countries of the world for her vast tracts of unde-
veloped property and for the paucity of her pro-
duction of the necessities of life.
Opportunity to use the tillable land has never
been lacking. A capitalist, large or small, can
always buy land there is little jealous guarding of
ancestral property or of all the best property, as
foreign companies have proven by their purchases
for many years. Good land has a market value,
however, and a peculiarity of peasants with "land
hunger" seems to be that they do not wish to pay
the value of the real estate which whets their de-
sire, and will not take anything less appetizing.
Even without capital, land is still obtainable in
Mexico. An Indian in his communal group has
from time immemorial to this day been able to
obtain the use of a tract of his native village farming
land for all but a relatively small percentage of the
country Indians still live under village organizations.
But even if he does not live in a communal state,
there is open to the Indian, as to the mestizo peon,
perhaps the most generous farming arrangement in
the world, for he can go to practically any of the
great haciendas in Mexico and arrange with the
proprietor to plant, till, and harvest on shares as
large a tract as he can handle of the best grade of
land, with no risk to himself and with a guaranty
of his livelihood in any case and of a profit in pro-
portion to the quality of his crop.
These are the basic facts of the relationship of the
worker to the land in Mexico. They go back to
316
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
certain early conditions which antedate the present
era by four centuries. Before the conquest in
1521, the Indians had no private ownership, only
tribal ownership, of land. The Spanish govern-
ment, recognizing this system, endowed all the
Indian towns with three sorts of real estate, pre-
serving the communal idea, but giving it some
legal basis. These properties, community owned,
were: (1) a town site (fundo legal); (2) pasturage
(egidos); and (3) commons (tierras communales).
The town site was the square which could be in-
scribed in a circle with a radius of six hundred varas
(about 2,000 feet), the center of the circle being
the center, or plaza, of the town, each family having
its hut and " or chard" in the village. The pas-
turage, or egidos, was a one-league square of grazing
land, so that the natives " could feed their cattle/'
as the law expressed it. The commons, of varying
size, were forest and farm lands owned by the com-
munity, and heads of families were assigned certain
sections which they were to work, and they could
neither sell, mortgage, nor lease it.
These Indian properties remained untouched,
even after the independence from Spain, until in
1856 the Juarez government ordered the allotment
of all real estate pertaining to the villages to the
members of the community. This law excepted
the pasturage land, or egidos, on the ground of public
utility, and also the town sites, in view of the fact
that these were already parceled out to individuals.
Later, the constitution of 1857 legally prohibited
the common ownership of even the egidos, or pas-
317
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
turages, and ordered that these also be partitioned,
although, owing to the frequent revolutions, this
was not carried out. After the decisive triumph of
the republic, ten years passed before any attempt
was made to enforce these divisions, and then,
under Diaz, on account of the rapid development
of the country, the government undertook to sell
all the unpossessed lands which had been declared
national property by the Constitution of 1857.
The effort to divide the egidos and the commons,
which included the farming land, was not for the
purpose of despoiling the Indians, but solely to give
a definite legal basis of land ownership which would
make possible the modern development of the
country. This partition was finally forced by the
decrees of the Diaz government, which opened
these lands to denouncement, much as mining
claims could be denounced, if the Indians, after
/ the ample notice given them, did not comply with
the law. This "law of survey" has been made
the text for many attacks upon the Diaz govern-
ment, but in essence the principle was correct and
it was vitally necessary to the modern development
of Mexico, as without it there would have been no
definite legal basis for land transactions covering
the country. There were undoubtedly many abuses
hi its enforcement, and unscrupulous individuals
took advantage of the ignorance of the Indians to
take their lands from them under this law. But
there were always legal and even extralegal meth-
ods of redress, not the least being the appeals
to "Don Porfirio" which were made time and
318
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
again, and were almost invariably in favor of the
original Indian owners.
The origin of the great landed estates of Mexico
goes back to another form of property, the royal
grants of the Spanish Crown, something entirely
outside the laws creating the Indian land titles
just described. There were oppressions under
these grants, and yet as a general rule the Indian
properties, town sites, pasturages, and commons,
which were inclosed in the larger grants were recog-
nized both by the colonial government and by the
hacendados. It was this condition that brought
about the anomaly of an Indian belonging to an
hacienda, and at the same time owning his own
property within the confines of the hacienda, a dis-
crepancy which was one of the reasons which made
it vitally important for the Mexican government to
place the ownership of the Indian lands upon a
modern legal basis, submission to the laws of survey
being incumbent on the hacendados, miners, and
ranchers as well as upon the Indians.
When we pass beyond the two forms of land
titles established by the Spaniards and as revised
by the Mexicans after 1856, we find that the human
element and not the legal system is the determining
factor. This is demonstrated in the Indians' in-
ability to adapt themselves to modern conceptions
of property, with the resultant sale of their lands,
when they were deprived of their communal system,
to hacendados and to rancheros.
It is also manifested in the effect which Indian
apathy and barbaric communism have had upon
21 319
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the systems of land cultivation. The communal
groups of the Indians raised only enough for them-
selves, and to this day the " ideal" (for such is the
word the revolutionists use) of the Indian is to
revive the communistic system which gives him a
tiny plot of ground where, protected by the com-
mune's food supplies, he can raise only enough corn
for his own personal use. The whole history of
Mexican agriculture is dominated by the virtual
impossibility of inducing the available laborers to
work as part of a large production scheme. The
inevitable result of the refusal of the communistic
Indian and the small farmer to raise a surplus,
combined as the condition is with economic and
transportation conditions outside the scope of this
work, has been that the hacienda has alone pro-
duced food for the market and thus for the support
of the mining and industrial community. Identi-
fied thus with the very life of Mexico, the labor
problem of the hacienda becomes vital. Its de-
pendence on hired help, and its need of making
that help produce, are, in their turn, the economic
background of the so-called peonage system.
The history of peonage goes back to the earliest
days of the conquest. The first Spanish discoverers
of Mexico had sailed from Havana in search of new
lands from which Indian slaves could be obtained
for the Cuban plantations. Some captures had
been made by the earliest voyagers, and Cortez's
primary object on his first trip to Mexico was
undoubtedly to secure more human captives to be
transported back to Cuba. The richness of the
320
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
country, however, tempted the Spaniards in other
directions, and they quickly turned their attention
to the capture of gold, silver, and precious stones,
and the imposition of tributes which would produce
this wealth.
When after the first flush of conquest they found
that their dreams of gold and precious stones were
not realized in any such measure as they had an-
ticipated, their attention returned to the wealth of
the country which had originally called them, that
is, its human labor. In Cuba the system of reparti-
mientos, or distribution of Indian laborers, was
already in full swing, and the soldiers immediately
demanded similar privileges in Mexico. These were
granted by Cortez, and after some difficulties and
correspondence were confirmed by the king of
Spain. Villages and even whole tribes of Indians
were given over bodily to individual Spaniards who
used them as slaves to work the mines and to till
the soil.
A definite distinction was soon made, however,
between the mine workers and the agricultural
workers, the Indians employed in the mines being
first the slaves whom the Aztecs already held, and
later the captives in wars of the Spaniards against
rebellious tribes; native laborers outside of these
classes were not legally used in mining. The term
repartimiento was officially applied only to the
first division of Indians, and all subsequent assign-
ments of workers were known as encomiendas,
literally a "confirmation" of the original grants,
which had been only for the lifetime of the recipient;
321
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
thus the heirs of the original conquerors did not
receive repartimientos, but encomiendas. The word
repartimiento then came to be applied arbitrarily to
the slave gangs which operated the mines. These
latter were augmented, as the number of captives
dwindled and the original slaves died out, by Indian
criminals and those natives whom the Spaniards
could induce into a state of debt which they could
be forced to work out in the mines.
Much of colonial history is the record of the
struggles of the Crown and the Council of the Indies
with the Spaniards of Mexico over the enslavement
of the Indians. The encomiendas were finally
abolished, largely through the efforts of Fray
Bartolome de las Casas, the Dominican priest
who is known as the apostle to the Indians. By
1545 most of the abuses in connection with the
encomiendas had been corrected, and, although the
system itself was allowed to persist, the "new laws"
ultimately abolished all of the encomiendas, as the
owners of the Indians were not allowed to transfer
their rights, and when they died without legitimate
issue these reverted to the Crown. The wide gulf
which had been created in the beginning, and
which was perpetuated by the fact that the Span-
iards had definitely become the landowners and
patrons and the Indians the laborers and wards,
continued on to the days of the independence, and
is the psychological basis of the peonage problem
of to-day.
The system of peonage or enforced labor for
debt, according to the Constitution of 1917, has
322
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
now been abolished. Actually, however, it has not
existed in legal form for sixty years. The Constitu-
tion of 1857 is as explicit as that of 1917 in providing
that no one in Mexico may be forced to labor with-
out his full consent or to work out any debt save
by choice. But neither the Constitution of 1857
nor the Constitution of 1917 was able to destroy
the peonage system at its root that is, in the
Indian and peon mind. Feudal obligations are
comforting and acceptable when they are accom-
panied by feudal protection. Under the genuine
Mexican system the peons had a definite master,
but the master was also the protector of the peons.
Only under the feudal system could the Indian
have all the privileges of a member of the family,
including care when he was sick, education for his
children, the right to hunt and to fish, and the
privilege of tilling a private plot of corn in his own
dooryard. In the attempts to abolish peonage the
Mexican reformers have sought at the same time
to perpetuate these feudal and patriarchal protec-
tions, even though the definite attachment of the
peon to the hacienda is apparently vital to their
functioning.
Historically, peonage and the paternal attitude
of the hacendado toward his workers both go back
to Spanish times, having their roots in the virtual
slavery of the encomienda Indians to the conquerors.
At the time of the independence, however, peonage
had developed into a financial relationship which
sealed the service of the peon by a system of debt
advances a condition dictated more by the
323
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
psychology of the Indian than by the greed of his
master. Under Diaz the abuses of the system of
advancing money had become so great that thou-
sands of laborers were carried on plantation books
with debts as high as PI, 000 each, a sum which
it was utterly impossible for them ever to work out
in their lives, and which led inevitably to attempts
to fasten the debts of fathers upon their sons.
As it exists in these days, there is almost nothing
of personal slavery or economic oppression about
Mexican peonage, save in the small proportion
which takes the form of convict and shanghaied
labor. In the vast majority of peonage cases, only
the money advance holds the worker to his em-
ployer; there is no other claim to his service. Even
this money advance in its original form has nothing
of economic pressure the peon gets it because he
insists on having it before he goes to work, and he
spends it promptly and without formality upon a
wedding feast, the celebration of a national holiday,
a Bacchanalian orgy in honor of his favorite saint,
or on useless finery for his sweetheart. In the old
days, this first sum averaged P50 (often as little
as P10) and it was never over P200. Although the
hacendado usually managed to keep a peon at work
for a year before this advance was worked out,
the anniversaiy of the festival for which he had
formerly sold his liberty was almost invariably
accompanied by a new application and another
advance. Under this system there was practically
no real enslavement of labor, as, if the workman
was unsatisfactory to his employer, or if he was
324
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
dissatisfied with his conditions, the hacendado to
whom he was willing to transfer his allegiance v/as
glad enough to buy his debt at full value.
The much criticized hacienda store, or tienda de
raya (literally, "ration store")* was a corollary of
the system of peon debt. Theoretically, it was a
place where the peons could obtain, on credit, the
food, clothing, and supplies they wanted, but in
practice it was often abused to the point of over-
charging, in order to keep the peon's account so
heavy that he could never hope to work it out
entirely. The raya system certainly kept out com-
petition for the peon's trade, and where, as happened
in some places, even the "free" labor was paid in
paper coupons good only at the tienda de raya, the
situation did become virtual slavery, the credit
system and not the original debt advances being
the means of attaching workers to the haciendas.
Then came the tremendous demand for labor
between 1890 and 1910, when, as new industries
and new plantations opened up, the supply of
workers became more and more inadequate; and
the advances made to peons became of themselves
a more serious source of trouble than the tienda de
raya had ever been. The henequen industry of
Yucatan took a great boom owing to the demand of
American harvesting machines for stout twine, and
also hundreds of American rubber and coffee planta-
tions opened up on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
It was then that the peonage system, and with it the
enganchado, or contract labor system, came into full
flower. The prices paid for henequen made it pos-
325
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
sible to increase the cost of labor tremendously,
and the Yucatecan landlords combed the Gulf
coast and finally secured government aid and the
ultimate transportation of Yaqui Indians from
Sonora to Yucatan to aid them in the solution of
their labor problems. They became active bidders
in the tropical labor market, offering advances up
to P200 and P300, with transportation to the hene-
quen fields.
Then came the American companies which had
guaranteed their stockholders to plant rubber or
coffee or sugar in appalling acreages. They had to
have labor at any cost. They sent to the towns of
the hot country during festivals, piled silver pesos
in great heaps on tables, bid against established
Mexican hacendados and against one another until
their labor cost them up to PI, 000 per head. The
laborers were transferred in batches to the planta-
tions or became part of the entourage of keen con-
tractors, and in addition to the advances, the pay
of labor rose from 25 centavos a day to as much as
P3 a day. Wages at this figure, where clearing,
planting, weeding, and cultivating all had to be
done by hand, with the added losses caused by
laborers who did not fulfill their contracts, piled
the cost of agriculture to proportions impossible
for the crops to sustain.
So valuable did this labor become that bribery
and government coercion, special detectives and
policemen, had to be called in to capture and return
the peons who ran away from their contracts, and
judges 'and the mayors of towns were induced to
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
arrest the runaways. When the free labor of the
tropics was exhausted the American and other
planters had recourse to the enganchado system.
This method of contract labor had had its begin-
nings years before in the Valle Nacional, the great
tobacco-growing section where Cuban planters had
been using and abusing convict labor furnished them
by the state of Vera Cruz and later by the Federal
government. Sanitary and working conditions
were unquestionably frightful in the Valle Nacional,
and when the Yucatan and Tehuantepec plantations
entered into the competition the quality of the
labor began to deteriorate and the abuses to in-
crease. The enganchado (literally the "hooked
one") was generally a man who was practically
shanghaied from the cities of the temperate and
cold zones of Mexico. Often disease-ridden, al-
most inevitably soaked with pulque, captured and
"signed up" for labor when they were intoxicated,
these men were brought down practically in chain
gangs by the contractors and delivered at so many
hundred pesos per head. They were kept in
barbed-wire in closures, often under ghastly sanitary
conditions, their blood vitiated with drink and
tainted with disease, and were easy victims of trop-
ical insects, dirt, and infection. There is no need
here to gloss over the conditions attendant upon the
enganchado system; if excuse there be for its exist-
ence, we must find it in the material advance of the
country beyond the social education which alone
could create the ambition and the industry to turn
Mexico's cheap labor into a truly productive factor.
327
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Basically, however, the system of debt advances,
whether it be in the sunny plaza and with the clean,
if inconsequential, Indian of the Isthmus, or in the
dives of the capital, with the pulque-drinking scum
of the cities, goes deep into the psychological
foundations of the Mexican mind. It belongs with
the desire for paternal care and with the childlike
craving for the enjoyment of the fruits of labor
before the labor is assumed.
The labor problem, in so far as it is a social
problem, depends ultimately upon education and
the advance of the native standard of living. To
achieve these, Mexico must be economically sound,
and to be economically sound she must produce
her own foods and support by her own foods the
industrial and agricultural population which creates
her wealth. In the present state of her develop-
ment, the hacendado alone is capable of furnishing
the nation's food, and to the hacendado, as to the
mine operator and the plantation manager, the
patriarchal organization is the only method yet
devised for harnessing the Indians' need for a liveli-
hood and his desire for such of the good things of
life as he can comprehend to the production of a
surplus food supply to support the mines and
industry which must be Mexico's chief contribution
to the created wealth of the world.
The hacendado may indeed be wrong, but the
fault is the fault of a national psychology and not
of individual wills. At his worst, no hacendado
relishes the idea of tying up his capital in advances
to his labor, but the system of advances is milk to
328
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
the lips of the Indian and peon. The attempt to
abolish peonage in Yucatan under Madero brought
genuine relief to the hacendados, and at the same
time struck consternation to the Indian workers,
who were cut off from the only system of " savings"
which they knew that is, the system of spending
the money first and having the hacendado save it
and repay himself afterward.
The attitude of the Mexican toward his work,
thus expressed, has much to do with his efficiency,
and this, needless to say, is not improved by the
hopelessness of his outlook, whether this is due to
his own shortsightedness or to the oppressions of
his superiors. Mexicans themselves have been the
first to deplore the low production of their people,
and Matias Romero, writing in American news-
papers in 1892, stated that "in the same year when
the United States, using 7,500,000 laborers, pro-
duced $3,000,000,000 worth of agricultural products,
Mexico, using 2,500,000 laborers, produced only
$239,000,000 worth, the American laborer's pro-
duction being $399 and the Mexican laborer
creating only $95."
American observers have noted that in many
phases of mine work it takes two or three Mexicans
to do the work of one American, and where Ameri-
can machinery is imported it often requires expert
supervision to maintain its efficiency, so that often
the upkeep of machinery, including labor costs, in
Mexico is more than in the United States, and in
some cases even more than the cost of hand labor
to achieve similar results. Since the expulsion of
329
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the Americans from Mexico by the revolution, the
Mexicans have maintained in fair working condi-
tion such machinery as has continued in use. The
locomotives of the National Railways are patched
and wheezy, but the Mexicans who are operating
them, including both the enginemen and the me-
chanics in the shops, have displayed much ingenuity
in the maintenance of the equipment. But this
ingenuity has been without appreciation of costs
and at a terrific expense in ruined material and in
wasteful maintenance of almost worn-out engines,
where many in better actual condition have been
allowed to rust away because the problems of their
repair required a greater effort of planning than the
maintenance at low efficiency of the locomotives
still in use.
Observations made by American industrial ex-
perts in the Mexican cotton factories during the
Diaz time were to the effect that the quickest of the
Mexican boys could not manage over 450 or 500
spindles, while a bright girl in the Fall River fac-
tories can handle as many as 700, and one observer
went so far as to say that if the Mexican factory,
with all its advantages in the way of hours and
labor and wages, were transferred to New England,
it would, in place of realizing a profit, sink $100,000
per year. 1
The adaptability of the Mexican and his capacity
for learning new trades which modern industry
has opened to him are, however, uniformly praised.
One of the most remarkable achievements of any
1 David A. Wells, A Study of Mexico, p. 150.
330
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
great industrial corporation was that of the Na-
tional Railways of Mexico in the creation of the
class of mechanics and engineers who made the
industrial development of Mexico possible. In the
twenty-two years from 1890 to 1912 the National
Railways put through systematic training between
15,000 and 18,000 Mexican workmen, most of them
unskilled laborers with a wage of 62^ centavos a
day. In courses lasting one to three years, these
men became skilled mechanics, firemen, and loco-
motive enginemen, who are to-day earning from
P8 to P12 daily on the Mexican railway systems,
or in mines and industries. 1
From a period when it was absolutely impossible
to hire a Mexican who could operate even a simple
American machine to the creation of a class of
mechanics and mine workers who are as a whole
appreciated and praised by their former American
and British employers, is an achievement for which
there cannot be too much praise. Perhaps the
chief deterrent of the full development of the
Mexican as a mechanic is his proverbial carelessness.
In the handling of dynamite in the mines, in the
operation of dangerous machinery, and in the atten-
tion which is required to save delicate tools from
destruction, he often falls below normal standards.
Yet this condition is perhaps due more to his lack
of the intelligence that comes from general edu-
cation and general appreciation of values than to
anything directly related to his trade.
1 Testimony of E. N. Brown before the United States Senate
Subcommittee Investigating Mexican Affairs, 1920, p. 1792.
331
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
In his use of tools the Mexican has had only a
brief inheritance. The universal tool in Mexico is
the machetej a knife about three feet long and two
inches wide which the peon uses for harvesting his
crops, for clearing the jungle, and as his chief side
arm as a soldier. American tools he has learned
to use but slowly, and is only beginning to under-
stand the convenience of American saws, axes,
shovels, and plows, while his personal aversion to
anything in the way of labor-saving machinery is
still the marvel of his white employers. Not least
typical of the anecdotes of an earlier day is the
story of the Mexican workman who, having been
in the United States, returned to report that he
found that "they are very backward in hand work
up there."
The question of Mexican labor efficiency re-
solves itself ultimately into a psychological problem.
The chief failure reported by all employers of labor,
both Mexican and foreign, is the lack of applica-
tion and the low mentality of the laborers. It is
for these reasons that the employers of women in
such industries as the cotton mills find that in
spite of the cigarette smoking and other ways of
wasting tune which are characteristic of the Mexican
male, he will do more work than the average peon
woman, whose mind, untrained either in school or
in the keenness of the street gamin, finds the appli-
cation required for the handling of spindles and
looms too great a mental burden to be sustained
for full working hours. The whole question of
labor efficiency seems inevitably to be carried into
332
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
the question of mental training, and hence again to
education.
In fact, the Mexican in any class of work cannot
be called a steady producer. The climate is un-
doubtedly a factor here, as is the national tendency
to indulge joyously in festivities and recuperate
gloomily by days of idleness after each debauch.
But even in the factories an hour is taken for break-
fast and an hour for lunch, and throughout the
day there are always periods of rest, there are
innumerable smokings of cigarettes, and inevitable
relaxations are required by the mentality or the
physique of the worker.
The hours of labor, moreover, vary with the
climate and with the type of work done. In the
hot country the laborer is up and at his work by
4 A.M., and in many places his day is done at 11,
when the sun has risen so high arid the heat be-
come so intense that continued physical exertion is
impracticable. In the factories of Orizaba, the
workers are often at their looms from 6 in the
morning to 8 at night, a period broken by frequent
rests, but formerly totaling approximately ten hours.
In the farms on the plateau the work is from 6 in
the morning to noon and from 1 or 2 to 6 in the
afternoon. In the mining districts the working
day varies with the local conditions, but used to
average ten hours.
As a general rule the hours of industry under
Diaz totaled from ten to fourteen a day, except in
the hot country. Under the Presidency of Fran-
cisco de la Barra (between President Diaz and Presi-
333
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
dent Madero) a basic eight-hour day was proclaimed
in the cotton industry. Carranza's government ex-
tended this to take in the entire industrial field, a
rule of somewhat questionable wisdom in Mexico,
where the native development of " piecework "
the tarea, or task system has long offered a more
acceptable solution of the human problem of labor.
Since time immemorial the laborer has been
assigned the amount of work which it is believed
that he should do in a day, a task which can usually
be finished in eight hours or in six by an industrious
workman. The origin of the system goes back to
the days of the Spanish hacendados, who found even
then that if their labor was given a definite amount
of work each day it would accomplish that work
in a comparatively brief space, while if it was
worked by the hour it would inevitably loaf and
waste.
The task system has through centuries been
worked out to extreme niceties in Mexico, and the
discussions of Mexican labor by foreigners almost
inevitably reveal in each report the moment of
the foreigner's " discovery'' of the efficiency of the
task system. It is this method as worked out on
the plantations in the hot country that makes it
possible for the laborers to do a day's work in the
hours between 4 and 11 A.M. noted above. In
other sections of the country the task system is
such that industrious laborers have found it pos-
sible to do two tareas, or two days' work, in ten hours
of steady grind. It is to be noted that it is chiefly
in the lines where it is impossible or too expen-
334
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
sive an administrative problem to lay out tareas
that there has been most difficulty with Mexican
labor.
The peonage system and the task method of
handling labor are the most significant factors of
the working conditions, as such, in the agricultural
field. Their influence and the influence of other
changes which have come in recent years have
also been felt in other industries. In mining, the
slow development away from the "rat hole' 7 work-
ings of olden days to the modern methods of the
great foreign companies and a great elaboration of
the task system has brought with it decided changes
in working conditions.
The cotton mills of Mexico, save for their long
hours, have been neither horrible examples of un-
sanitary conditions nor yet models of what such
establishments should be. Many of them are lo-
cated in the cities, but most are in the country, near
water power, where air and light are cheap. There
is practically nothing comparable to "sweat-shop"
working conditions in Mexican industry, though
often both workmen and employer, more unthinking
than grasping, may overlook some of the provisions
which are necessities to the minds of more advanced
industrial experts.
It is probable, indeed, that the worst conditions
in Mexico are to be found in the so-called "home"
and "native" industries, where the workers are
content to live and work in a stifling, crowded
environment, for it is primarily the native lack of
values in the matter of light, air, and cleanliness
22 335
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
that is at the root of all the evils prevalent in
Mexican factories, as in Mexican homes.
The laboring classes of Mexico are naturally
divided by working conditions into three very
distinct groups, which may be taken as the social
classifications of labor:
1. The common laborers, including the field workers and
those employed in building and on the construction of railways,
highways, and public works,
2. The workers dependent upon modern industry, and
3. The workers in primitive industries.
In Mexico, the peon, or common laborer, not only
does the farm work, digs the ditches, carries the
burdens of mine and manufacture upon his back,
but works at such trades as carpentiy, plastering,
stone cutting, the making of adobe bricks, etc., for
as a rule only the chief carpenter or mason con-
siders himself above the peon class. In the census
figures of employees in industry, however, no clear
division is made to distinguish common laborers
engaged in such business as carpentry and masonry,
for instance, and even railroading, from the common
peons, on the one hand, or from the skilled workers in
these industries, on the other. For this reason it is
probable that the 3,130,402 peones del campo (rural
peons) listed in the 1910 census include many
thousands of unskilled laborers in industries other
than agriculture. To the group of common laborers,
we must, however, add the 334,600 members of the
lower class who are engaged in miscellaneous trades
336
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
that are neither modern nor primitive industry, the
total then being 3,489,778.
The workers dependent directly upon modern
industry include the laborers in factories, railway
employees, etc. Mining, the workers in which
number 95,878, may properly be included in this
class, so that, including 30,592 artisans of the new
middle-class, the total workers in mines, modern in-
dustrial plants, and transportation number 293,214.
The third of the social classifications of labor
takes in those engaged in the primitive industries
of an essentially Mexican character. These are
carried on in the homes of the people and are such
crafts as pottery, embroidery, and drawn work,
feather work, home weaving of rebosos, or shawls,
and the makers of zerapes and other products of
the hand loom, of baskets and Mexican hats. The
number thus employed totals 117,858.
These three divisions account for most of the
lower classes and some of the higher, but there are
other groupings essentially connected with the
higher Mexican social scheme, such as government
officials, the military and professional classes, in-
cluding Catholic priests and Protestant mission-
aries, the commercial field, including bankers,
clerks, and bookkeepers, miscellaneous trades and
professions, and domestic servants, including the
large classification of laundresses.
To estimate the totals in these general classifica-
tions the only statistics available are those of the
Mexican census, that of 1910 being used. (The
only other industrial census was in 1895.) Inac-
337
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
curacies, faults of classification, and such arbitrary
divisions as the placing of all day laborers (peones
del campo or jornaleros) under agriculture, must of
necessity be carried into the reclassification. This
new arrangement has been made to show not only
the social divisions into types of employment, but
also the proportions of the workers to the three
social classes, the totals showing 4,554,902 of the
"laboring classes" and 925,036 of the "middle and
upper classes."
LABORING CLASSES
MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES
Agriculture
Farm laborers 3,130,402 Hacendados
Cattlemen 12,869
Herdsmen 164
Shepherds 875
Horticulturists
Factory employees. . ,
Miners ,
Smelter employees. .
Metal refiners ,
Fiber manufacture. . ,
Cigarette makers
Millers
Cotton manufacture.
10,868
3,155,178
Modern
58,840
79,024
15,921
138
5,829
6,893
621
32,209
199,475
834
Ranchers 24,417
Farmers 410,566
Overseers 4,763
Industry
Industrial administra-
tors
Mining administrators
Assayers
Contractors
Building foremen
Mechanics
Machinists
Printers and engravers
Electricians..
Basket makers
Artificial flower mak-
ers
Pulque makers
Reboso weavers . .
Native Industries
2,086
1,689
1,375
7,346
338
440,580
2,099
494
439
68
502
23,383
221
5,577
1,411
34,194
COND
LABORING CLASSES
M
Spinners
ITIONS OF LABOR
MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES
itive Industries (cont.)
486
51
8,606
17,895
22,684
22,654
5,995
655
9,155
6,058
1,042
2,590
1,255
3,237
305
692
2,002
Sandal makers
Lace makers
Hat makers
Mat weavers
Potters
Sweetmeat makers. . .
Adobe-brick makers. .
Charcoal burners. . . .
Wood gatherers
Tamale and biscuit
makers
Chandlers
Lime burners
Fireworks makers ....
Chocolate makers ....
Canoe makers
Water carriers
117,858
Business and
Railway employees. . . 560
Locomotive firemen . 41
Motormen 621
Sailors and shipwork-
ers... 5,931
Sail makers 2,834
Peddlers 8,165
Expressmen and
Freighters 6,008
Muleteers 25,629
Wagoners 6,518
Coachmen 6,470
Chauffeurs.. 369
Transportation
Bankers
Brokers
Shippers
Business agents ....
Merchants
Hotel keepers
Traveling salesmen .
Telegraph operators.
Telephone operators .
Clerks and book-
keepers
Stenographers
Salespeople
63,146
Miscellaneous Trades and Professions
Tanners
Tailors
Butchers
Slaughterhouse em-
ployees
8,312 Architects
25,865 Dentists
10,360 Engineers
Midwives
6,337 Ministers (Protestant).
339
174
1,303
54
1,888
236,278
233
49
2,550
368
19,057
732
83,442
346,128
542
430
4,256
3,027
285
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
LABORING CLASSES
MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES
Miscellaneous Trades and Professions (cont.}
Blacksmiths
22,568 Roman Catholic priests
4,405
Furriers
1,433 Notaries
318
Dyers
Glaziers and gilders
353 Physicians, allopathic .
402 Physicians, homoeo-
3,119
Hunters
375 pathic
602
Salt and gypsum
Veterinarians
234
workers
1,090 Artists
1,773
Pastry cooks
1,782 Writers
559
Soap makers
960 Designers and drafts-
Coopers
372 men
290
Barbers
9,498 Musicians
14,214
Bricklayers
61,762 Sculptors
699
Carpenters
67,346 Decorators
7,576
Plumbers
1,754 Singers
452
Shoe makers
44,114 Archaeologists
1
Brick makers
3,220 Opticians
1
Founders
1,020 Curanderos (herb doc-
Brewers
160 tors)
46
Bookbinders
1,173 Nurses
379
Lumbermen and
Actors, etc
1,485
wood workers
6,415 Bullfighters
272
Tinsmiths
2,252 Photographers
1,206
Coppersmiths
Chicle gatherers
1,173 Lapidaries
790 Silversmiths
369
3,670
Bakers
29,410 Watchmakers
1,078
Harness makers
7,177
Cigar makers
3,474
51,288
Stone cutters
7,526
Fishermen
4,528
Lottery-ticket sellers .
405
Minor occupations. . .
894
334,600
Public Service
Police
6,817 Teachers
21,007
Soldiers
25,814 Army officers
3,703
Navy
603 Civil service employees
27,602
Navy officers
555
33,234 Diplomatic Corps
62
52,929
340
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
LABORING CLASSES MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES
Personal Service
Domestic servants ... 241,306
Laundresses 64,737
Tortilla makers 26,419
Janitors 3,841
Millers (domestic) . . . 253,737
Seamstresses 82,926
Dressmaker 8,452
681,418
No Class Divisions
Housewives 4,138,501
Scholars 843,741
Students 30,646
Without occupation 243,377
Minors 4,302,435
Beggars 96
Mesalinas 2,699
Trade unknown . 65,554
9,627,049
In this classification the work of children and
women is not noted separately. Until the estab-
lishment of the Department of Labor and Industry
under Carranza but few facts were gathered and
little attention given to these important social classi-
fications. A census and study of the question were
begun in Mexico City late in 1919, but only scatter-
ing data were forthcoming. The usual complaint
was made of the desire of employers to hinder rather
than aid the survey, and it is significant of the im-
mutability of conditions in Mexico that, despite the
elaborate laws and provisions of the revolutionary
reformers, for " equal pay for equal work" and for
proper hours of labor, early reports state that "the
341
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
employers do not requite the good qualities of the
women workers with living salaries. Almost all
the women have dependents and one wonders how
they can live on 50, 40, and even 30 centavos a day.
As to the apprentices, they are kept months without
wages or perhaps are paid 10 centavos a day for
nine or ten hours' work." 1
This mention of apprentices is one of the few
available notes regarding the work of children.
Government statistics give only scattering data,
and these in most unexpected places. Thus the
report of accidents in the mining industry for 1903
gives a probably very reliable summary of mining
employees, separating children as well as women,
something which census statistics do not give.
Thus of 78,015 workers in mines, 796 were women
and 4,278 children; of 21,081 employees in reduc-
tion works, 36 were women and 825 children. 2
In factories children have been employed in a
small way for many years, but the legal limit has
always been twelve years, and there has been some
effort to arrange for the education of such workers.
Under Carranza the laws provided for short hours
for children under sixteen, but boys are found in the
mining business and in agriculture well before they
reach the age limit.
The Mexican peon is naturally a laborer, and the
destiny of his children is to the use of their hands
alone for their livelihood, so that with this over-
powering tradition of manual labor it is difficult to
:
l Gazeta Mensual del Dpto. del Trabajo, November, 1919,
*Anuario Estadistico, 1903.
342
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
judge of the ethics toward Mexican child laborers
compared with those in other lands. Personal
observation covering a considerable period of the
normal years of Mexico under Diaz, and including
many states and many industries, bears out the
common opinion that, despite isolated abuses, the
childhood of Mexico is not overworked, that it is
not driven to tasks for which it is not fitted, and
that, above all, it does not wear out its youth on
" soulless machines." Such a child-labor problem
as there is in Mexico is still one where prevention
can be effective, and toward this prevention the
laws, at least, of both Diaz and Carranza have been
adequate.
Of the work of women there are more reliable
data. In this connection a comparison of figures
for 1895, when the first industrial census was made,
and for 1910, is most illuminating, despite the
obvious faults of classification.
In 1895, out of a total of 89,072 workers in mines,
only 812, or less than 1 per cent, were women,
figures which, in 1910, had fallen officially to but
467 women out of 79,024. Interestingly enough
in ore reduction, where it might seem that women's
service could be used more extensively, only 145
out of 24,811 were women in 1895, and there was
only 1 woman out of 16,059 in 1910. The statistics
of agriculture in 1895 listed 110,148 women out of a
total agricultural population of 2,890,991, or less
than 4 per cent. The figures for 1910 were 61,981
women out of 3,570,674, or 1.7 per cent.
In the professions we find that in 1895, 6,463 of
343
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
the 12,583 teachers, or 51.3 per cent, were women,
and in 1910 these figures had grown to 13,532
women, or 64.6 per cent, out of a total of 21,007
teachers. In 1895 there were 2,076 midwives and
20 women dentists, druggists, and physicians re-
ported, and in 1910 these figures had grown to 3,027
midwives and 127 female druggists, 14 dentists, and
64 physicians.
Out of 233,222 brokers, merchants, clerks, and
peddlers in 1805, 55,062, or almost 24 per cent,
were women, although this large proportion may
be accounted for by the more detailed division of
men employees in business. In 1910 the cor-
responding figures were 52,276 women out of
276,638, or 18.9 per cent.
In modern industries and factories the labor of
women has been growing. In 1895 there were
8,930 women cigarette makers as against 1,467
men, the proportion in 1910 being 5,353 women and
1,540 men, an apparent loss, due to the increase in
the use of machinery. On the other hand, men
were used chiefly in the making of cigars in 1895,
the female hands forming less than 8 per cent of the
total. The figures for 1910 were 361 women and
3,113 men, or 11 per cent women. In " industrial
establishments," referring to cotton factories, there
were, in 1895, 9,868 women out of a total of 20,994,
and in 1910 12,565 women out of 32,309. The
classification of " spinners of cotton and wool"
probably refers to native hand industry, there being
30,262 women in this work in 1895 and 13,990 in
1910.
344
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
Of the new opportunities which modern business
has opened to women, the female telegraph opera-
tors numbered 136 in 1895 and 188 in 1910; there
were no women telephone operators in 1895, and
134 in 1910. No typists or stenographers were
reported in 1895, and in 1910 only thirteen typists
and no stenographers, the certainly growing number
of these women employes being lost, probably, in
the total of clerks (949 in 1895 and 1,876 in 1910).
In the chief branches of domestic service the
following changes between the two years are found :
Women servants, 187,864 in 1895, and 181,914 in
1910; laundresses, 48,923 in 1895 and 62,324 in
1910.
The relations of all Mexican laborers to the em-
ployer are basically patriarchal. Practically every
Mexican who has ever worked for another has, as
his traditional background, only the hacienda or
the mine. The hacienda, as we have seen, bases its
efficiency absolutely upon the patriarchal attitude
of the proprietor toward his peons, and the accumu-
lated experiences of foreign as well as Mexican
mine operators supports the early discovery Of
the hacendado, that the most satisfactory way of
handling labor in Mexico is to attach it to the
industry by personal bonds with owner, manager,
or superintendent.
It is chiefly for this reason also that the form of
labor organization which has taken its place in
Mexico in the last decade has been almost entirely
upon the syndicalist or guild plan. The unions in
Mexico are unions of factories rather than unions of
345
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
crafts. The typical Mexican labor organization
includes every employee at day wages of the plant
from which the union takes its name, from the
highest paid skilled mechanic to the most inefficient
of errand boys. This organization is formed on the
principle of dealing directly with the employer and
in bringing the entire power of the plant to bear
upon him in the case of dispute. If there is a
strike it is a strike of all employees and not merely
of the mechanics or the spindle tenders. So deep-
rooted is this system of factory solidarity that labor
organization in Mexico has practically never at-
tempted to take the form of craft unions known in
the United States. Instance after instance could
be cited of the vital significance of this guild and
factory solidarity, for the guild form of organization
is the natural development of the industrial system
of which the hacienda is the parent.
It would profit little here to go into an exposition
of the labor legislation which has sought to trans-
form the industrial system of Mexico in the past
decade. The Carranza revolution, originally a
political upheaval with political nostroms for the
economic and social ills of the people, was changed,
just prior to the writing of the Constitution of 1917,
into a socialistic manifestation linked by artificial
and but poorly understood sympathies with the
radical movements of Europe and the United
States. The result of this control of the brains of
the revolution was the 1917 Constitution with its
radical labor provisions and the laws which fol-
lowed, but at this time it would be unfair both to
346
CONDITIONS OF LABOR
these radical philosophers and to the Mexican
people themselves to conceive that these constitu-
tional provisions and these laws are actually an
expression of the ideals and aspirations of Mexican
labor. As time goes on this labor legislation is
adapting itself more and more to a certain primal
communism which is far more Indian than any
of the modern phases of socialism which are found
in more completely developed industrial nations.
It is still too early to determine whether these
Indian communal ideals will dominate the expres-
sion and the interpretation of the social and in-
dustrial legislation of the country. We return in
the observation of this situation to the tendency
which has been noted again and again in these
pages the tendency toward Indianism. The Mex-
ican radicals, no less than the Mexican conserva-
tives, must keep watch over the tendencies of their
people to guard against the swamping of their
ideas by the tides of that unfathomed sea.
In discussing the labor problem of Mexico, we
note only thus briefly the later developments of the
situation. But again, as throughout this book, the
search is not for the surface indication nor even the
apparent tendency of the moment, but for the deep
underlying forces and the manifestations of those
unchanging facts which have dominated Mexican
history in the past, are dominating even its chaos
of to-day, and will dominate the future, no matter
whether that future be expressed in terms of Spanish
conservatism, Indian communism, or modern Euro-
pean radicalism.
347
XI
INCOME AND THE COST OF LIVING
MEXICO is a country of low wages; normally it
is a country of low living costs. In the years
through which we are now passing, where dollars
and pounds, francs and pesetas, bounce about like
bubbles, blown by economic gales and political
cyclones, all figures of wages and food costs seem
more significant of general world economics than
of a nation's own internal conditions. This is
probably less true in Mexico than elsewhere, how-
ever, because Mexico with her gold coin and her
financial isolation has been and still is almost
unaffected by international exchange. The ele-
ment of error in a true appreciation of the signifi-
cance of income and living costs in Mexico is found
almost alone in the confusion wrought in her fife
by ten years of revolution and by four years, now
happily ended, of a diabolical abuse of fiat money.
In our study of the financial side of living condi-
tions, we seek again the underlying fundamentals,
the unchanging facts which alone can truly clarify
past, present, and future. The chief of these funda-
mentals is the national improvidence. Throughout
348
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
Mexican history, the rich as a class have overspent
their incomes; the middle class has emerged in two
groups, one those whose ambition was to live well
and look prosperous, and the other engaged in the
friendly and profitable "side line 77 of lending money
at usurious rates to its fellows of the middle class;
the poor of Mexico have lived for centuries on the
poverty line.
The improvidence of the upper and middle
classes is largely the result of the social system.
That of the peon, in whom our interest centers
here, has more obvious, and more complicated,
beginnings. His precarious and characteristic po-
sition on the slippery edge of pauperism seems
indeed to be more the result of his own choice than
of the economic faults in the Mexican system. As
pointed out again and again in these pages, the
problem of Mexican uplift is a problem of education
to ambition rather than of producing an economic
situation which will allow the Mexican to satisfy
the alleged cravings of generations. Experience
has taught both the upper-class Mexican and the
intelligent foreigner that the limitation of desires
manifested in the Mexican peon is in his own mental
repression through generations of race and cycles of
climate, and has little or nothing to do with his
economic condition.
The peon works only enough days to support
himself and his family in the most meager fashion.
The evidence on this point is overwhelming, and
large employers of labor throughout the country
have found it necessary to carry a surplus of 25
349
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
per cent or more on their payrolls in order to guar-
antee the daily average of workers necessary for the
prosecution of any piece of work. Therefore the
peon, working only long enough to satisfy his needs,
has been able to increase his hours when food
increased in price, so that where at one tune he
might have satisfied his wants with three days'
work per week, he could, with the price of food
doubled, work six days a week at his old salary
and still live as well as usual. Only in the past
few years has the question of wages had a close
relationship to living expenditures, and this only
because the rising prices of food, due to the destruc-
tion of the revolutions far more than to the in-
creased cost of living the world over, have made it
impossible for the Mexican sufficiently to increase
his efficiency by his own choice to make living
easy, as he has always done in the past.
Moreover, conservative Mexican economists have
long insisted that the country's social problems
have no striking or general economic parallel.
Typical of the reports on this point is one made to
the Segunda Semana Agricola (an agrarian con-
ference held in Mexico City in 1912), which stated
that in the low-wage district of the state of San
Luis Potosi the peons were not addicted to drink,
concubinage was comparatively rare, religion and
education were on a relatively high plane, the
children wore clothes, were usually kept clean, and
the peons themselves were well dressed and gener-
ally free from sickness, and, above all, usury was
practically unknown. By contrast, in the state of
350
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
Morelos, where wages were relatively high (PI to
PI. 50), drunkenness was very common, concubinage
was widespread, there was practically no religious
or school instruction of the peon, hygienic condi-
tions were veiy bad, and usury was rampant,
monthly interests of 3 per cent to 8 per cent being
collected. The parallel was carried through many
sections, with the general conclusion that the scale
of wages had almost no effect on the standard of
living, except where cynical observation found that
vice and not unproved living followed increased
wages.
Much of the confused personal economics of
Mexico is also due to the fact that the sources of
income do not follow conventional divisions. The
national wealth was originally created by mines
and agriculture and concentrated by trade and
revolutionary brigandage, while land, even under
modern conditions, has been almost the sole recog-
nized repository of investment for the national
wealth. Industrial development (including mining
since it became an industry and not a form of
adventure and speculation) has been brought about
almost entirely by foreign capital, for it is an axiom
of those long resident in Mexico that a Mexican
will not invest in industrial and public service
enterprises except on a small scale in conjunction
with quantities of foreign money. Mexico's banks
draw almost none of their capital from savings and
little from the increment of national wealth.
Almost the only method, aside from farms, by
which capital is " produced" may be said to be
23 351
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
usurious interest collected either by banks or by in-
dividuals. The result is that the income of the
upper classes is largely from land and fanning of
various sorts, from definite inheritances, and from
usury. Their only other source of income is from
personal service, in the professions and in govern-
ment posts. These returns have never been high,
and save for the foreign companies which paid well
for their representation by Mexican lawyers, the
salaries and fees obtained by upper-class pro-
fessional men have certainly never been producers
of capital.
In the middle classes there was under the Diaz
peace a growing opportunity in salaried positions
and in the mechanical arts. The largest divisions
of this group were indeed a product of the economic
system nurtured under Diaz, and the reactionary
instincts of this class which could hope to advance
or even to exist only hi an industrial community
have been one of the stabilizing forces acting upon
the new revolution. Their conservatism is, in fact,
largely responsible for the modicum of success which
Carranza obtained during his four years of rule.
The middle class, however, suffered most during the
paper-money* orgies of Carranza, but it gained
something in the advances in salary which, however
inadequate under paper-money conditions, were
usually maintained after a stable currency was
again established. This situation applies to gov-
ernment clerks, even to school teachers, and to the
skilled artisans of railways, shops, smelters, and
mines.
352
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
The lower classes, whose living conditions must
of necessity be taken as the national index, have
but one source of income, their physical efforts.
They live eternally on the poverty line, with their
small needs, their ability to reduce their require-
ments to meet almost any limitation, and their
apathetic lack of interest in anything beyond
that actually required, combining to save them from
starvation.
The history of wages hi Mexico can be traced
through the earnings of the peons from the tune
of the Aztecs down to the present. Under the
Indian theocracies there was no wage system, the
production of food being almost entirely on the
communistic plan, and distribution was carried
on by barter. The Spaniards perpetuated the
features of the Aztec system which were convenient
to them, and labor was practically unpaid through
the early years of the colonial period. This system
was thoroughly well established before the use of
money became general among the lower classes,
and was only gradually broken down. How-
ever, Baron von Humboldt stated (and this is
the earliest record of peon wages which we have)
that the agricultural laborer in 1804 received about
28 centavos per day. During the revolutions
wages fell, reaching the level of 12J/2 centavos per
day in most sections of the republic, although in
certain parts they were as high as 37 centavos.
In 1878 the average of wages for the country was
18 to 37 centavos. In 1884 wages ran from 25 to
37 centavos, fluctuations being very slight over the
353
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
whole country. Up to the 'eighties, Mexican silver
money was practically on a par with American
gold, but from 1890 on the value drops to ap-
proximately half. Wages did not rise, however,
as silver depreciated, and up to 1900 the usual daily
wage was 37 centavos for men, and for women and
children from 10 to 25 centavos. Carpenters,
furniture makers, etc., received 62 centavos, and
the head workmen PI and up. Policemen earned
PI daily, clerks from P15 to P25 monthly, although
in banks and railroads the salaries were somewhat
higher. Government employees earned from PI 00
to P150; judges received P4,000 a year; heads of
Federal departments P8,000, and state governors
P15,000.
The period of prosperity and labor shortage
which marked the last decade of the Diaz rule pro-
duced an upward tendency in wages which placed
the probable minimum at 50 centavos per day in
the crowded agricultural sections of the plateau,
and in the plantation districts caused the rate to
reach 75 centavos to PI, an increase also found
in the mines of the north. During the recent
revolutionary period, and especially during the
paper-money orgies before there was any adjust-
ment of wages, the peon worker on farms and in the
mines would have found life absolutely impossible
except for the fact that his relationship to his
employer provided for the furnishing of most of the
food which he ate. In the cities the conditions
were such that undoubted thousands, particularly
the children, died of starvation. There were,
354
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
however, at that time considerable increases in
salaries for the workers who continued at their
jobs, and to-day the average wage for the peons has
generally risen to PI. 50, the minimum wage under
the new labor laws of many of the states an
increase of 50 per cent to 200 per cent.
In vocations other than that of day laborers, the
increase in wages has been steadier. The following
comparisons in three cotton-mill sections picture
the condition clearly.
YEAR
FEDERAL DISTRICT
JALISCO
PUEBLA
1879
P0.68
P052
P047
1896
091
062
084
1909
1.00
1.00
1.00
1919
2.00-3.00
2.00-3.00
2.00-3.00
There has been a progressive rise in the wages
paid to railroad workers. When construction began
in the 'eighties common laborers received 25 to 50
centavos; foremen, 75 centavos to PI per day. In
1907 the contractors of the Southern Pacific of
Mexico paid their grade laborers PI. 25 to PI. 75 per
day. In the higher ranks of the railway service
no comparison is just, because the majority of con-
ductors and engineers and all of the officials were
Americans who received American wages, and when
they were finally exiled from the country the de-
mands of the Mexican workmen and the national
spirit resulted in the Mexicans who took their
places practically doubling their salaries by getting
the same as had been paid the Americans in similar
355
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
positions. This fact has also had a great deal to
do with the increase in the wages of skilled me-
chanics in the railway and other shops in Mexico.
American conductors and engineers used to receive
P320 to P400 per month, and American mechanics in
the shops received the same union wages that they
would have received in the United States, so that
to-day less competent Mexican conductors, en-
ginemen, and mechanics are receiving wages of from
P8 to P15 per day.
The wage situation in Mexico has been more
generally misunderstood than perhaps any other
phase of Mexican observation. This was due to a
large extent, during the time of Diaz, first to the
broadcast advertising of Mexico's cheap labor
which accompanied the bid for foreign investments
at that time, and, second, to the misinformation
regarding living conditions which was transmitted
to American tourists. The following table of
wages hi Mexico, with two comparisons with Eng-
land and Germany during 1905 (which is taken as
a normal era in all three countries) will be illumin-
ating in this connection:
DAILY WAGES IN PESOS
MEXICO
GER-
MANY
GREAT
BRITAIN
1880
1895
1905
1910
1918
1905
1905
Farm
laborers .
Mechanics
Railway
laborers .
Mill hands
Miners. . . .
.18- .50
1.50
.25- .50
.12- .50
.25- .75
.18- .75
1.00-3.00
.12-1.66
.25-1.00
.25-1.25
2.00-3.00
1.2.5-1.75
.25-2.00
1.00-1.50
.50-1.25
2.50-4.75
1.25-2.00
.25-2.00
2.00-3.00
1.00-2.00
4.00-8.00
2.00-2.50
.50-3.00
2.50-3.50
1.50-1.75
1.30-2. 68
1.50-1.75
2.60-2.92
356
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
The clerk class in Mexico has always been poorly
paid, employees in the dry-goods stores, in the
government departments, and in banks being con-
tented with salaries of from PI 5 to PI 25 a month
under the Diaz regime, and upon this sum main-
taining a social position, wearing European clothes,
and enjoying the comforts of life with a nonchalance
which only Mexico seems able to inspire. As
everywhere, this class has received the smallest
proportional increase during the recent period of
readjustment, the rise being to P200 per month as a
maximum.
The Mexican school-teacher, like so many of his
brethren in other lands, has never been well paid,
the new law of 1919 placing the salaries of teachers
in the Mexican City schools at from P3.09 to
P3.66 a day for normal-school graduates, the latter
figure being the maximum a possible P100 a
month! Previous to the recent law the wages were
higher, temporarily, but this figure is a just indica-
tion of middle-class salaries in the profession of
teaching. Some of the states paid slightly better,
in special instances.
At the basis of the question of how the Mexican
lives upon the wages which he receives lies the
system of perquisites which belongs to the hacienda
system. Peonage is founded upon the support of
the laborer by the hacendado, who, no matter what
the cost of food, always stands between his workers
and starvation. This system does not begin with
the peon, however. In the great farming districts
of Mexico before the present revolution, one could
357
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
find many significant survivals of the Spanish
regime, affecting the hacendado and rancher o as well
as the peon. Beginning at the top, we find that the
hacendado usually worked with practically no
capital except the credit of his hacienda. Where
he needed money for improvements, for the support
of his town establishment, or for travel abroad, he
could obtain it by a mortgage from a bank, the
church, or a wealthy friend. For the actual upkeep
of his hacienda, however, and for the maintenance
of his army of peons between the periods of harvest,
he depended upon the Spanish merchant or whole-
sale dealer, whose own credit enabled him to do this
indirect form of banking for the hacendado. The
latter, by pledging his entire crop to this Spanish
merchant in the nearest commercial center, was
able to buy on credit farm implements, seeds, sup-
plies of cloth and trinkets, and even corn and beans,
for his peons in times of shortage. When the crop
came in, it was all delivered to this local Spanish
merchant, who credited it, sometimes honestly and
sometimes unfairly, and either turned over the
cash balance to the hacendado or kept it against
future drafts, the merchant thus making at least
three profits, one on his sale of goods, one on the
interest he charged for his money, and one on the
handling of the crop.
The hacendado, having got supplies on credit
from the town merchant, in turn sold them on credit
to his peons. The hacienda storekeeper, usually a
young Spaniard, was conversant with the needs of
practically all the peons on the hacienda and kept
358
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
their accounts as well as maintaining the store.
During famine periods and during the paper-money
times when food and all classes of supplies soared
in price, it was this system, reaching from the Span-
ish storekeeper through the hacendado down to the
peon, that made life in interior Mexico possible.
In addition to these food and goods advances, the
farm peon since olden times had made it a custom
to borrow small sums of money for emergencies, for
festivals, and for his annual outfitting. The com-
pany store and the loan system are the chief per-
quisites of the farm peon. Where the wage does
not include free sustenance, corn is sold at a fixed
price, always below the market, and even in times
of shortage, such as famine or revolution, many
hacendados have continued to sell at prices a third
of the market quotations or less, thus sustaining the
purchasing value of the peon's wages and contribut-
ing vitally to the equilibration of the cost of living.
In most haciendas there are other perquisites; in
the ^m^e-producing sections the laborer is given
a daily allowance of pulque which he may either
sell or drink. On practically all haciendas the
house, or at least the land upon which the peon may
build his own hovel, is given him without rent, and
those peons who are regarded as family retainers
are always allowed the small milpa, or corn patch,
which they cultivate for their own account, the
crop being bought by the hacendado or harvested
by the peon for his own use.
All this belongs in any fair estimate of the peon's
income. Thus a typical low-caste peon who a few
359
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
years ago received but 13 centavos a day in the
state of Chiapas may be estimated to be getting in
reality nearly 50 centavos a day, if we count
perquisites and the interest on his debt no heavier
than the hacendado pays the Spanish merchant.
This peon is bound by a P400 debt, but although
his cash wages are at the rate of 13 centavos a day,
his salary, food, and perquisites amount to P14.58
a month. This is given him as follows: 1
Cash P4.00
500 ears of corn 3.31
20 pounds of beans 0.62
Lime for preparation of corn 0.07
House rent 1 .00
Medicines 1.00
Use of land for corn patch 0.33
2 per cent on P200 (half the debt) 4.00
2 bottles of alcohol 0.25
Total P14.58
The mitigating factors which save the economic
situation for the peon on the haciendas are paralleled
to a certain extent in the communal life of the
Indian villages where the workers in the fields
produce the food for the village, and yet at the
same time have leisure, either during the unproduc-
tive months or after working hours, for making the
native specialties of their own village, pottery,
baskets, hats, or hand-woven wool or cotton.
Turning to the living conditions of the city
dweller, we enter a field where perquisites are un-
known and no kindly patron bars the door against
want. The narrow margin on which the city peon
1 Informes y Documentos, no. 4, 'Secretaria de Fomento. 1885,
360
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
lives, and his continued existence, need, indeed,
explanations which no figures can give. For in-
stance, in Mexico City in 1919 the average peon
workman earned P1.50 a day that is, P37.50 a
month, exclusive of Sundays and yet the rent for
the single room in the wretched quarter of the city
where alone he could afford shelter cost him P10, or
27 per cent of his income. His entire income per
day could not possibly buy him meat under the
prices prevailing, and his diet, therefore, had to con-
sist of tortillas, beans, and chile, to which he added
pulque, as alcohol is traditionally the substitute for
energy to underfed humanity. The peon and his
family can buy such food, and the charcoal with
which to cook it, for not one bit less than 50 per
cent of his daily income. Shoes, clothes, and hats
at second-hand for him and his family can be esti-
mated at P5 per month, 13 per cent of his income.
The remaining 10 per cent, or 15 centavos a day,
will hardly pay for soap at P2 a kilo, and leaves no
margin whatever for the loss of pay which he will
suffer if unable or unwilling to work a steady six
days a week. 1
Even going back to happier times in 1910 when
the city laborer received 75 centavos a day and yet
when his living expenses were considerably less, we
might make a more complicated division of his in-
come. If at 75 centavos a day he worked six days a
week for fifty weeks a year, his year's income would
be P225. Fiestas and other interruptions to work
would undoubtedly cut down his average to five
1 Gazeta del Dpto. de Trabajo, November, 1919.
361
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
days a week and to forty-five weeks a year, giving
him an income of P168.75. To this might possibly
be added money brought in by the woman of the
family, at 35 centavos a day for five days a week,
adding P87.50 a year, raising the family income to
P256.25. If the children were working, this might
possibly be raised to P300 annually. In 1910 rent
might have been P5 a month or even as low as P2
in some of the quarters of the cities, or P24 a year;
to cut down the amount spent for clothes to the very
minimum estimate, P25 a year for the entire family,
would, added to the daily ration of pulque, 4 cen-
tavos a day, or P14 a year, and 4 centavos' worth of
cigarettes, another PI 4, give a total for all expenses,
excluding food, of P77, allowing the almost impos-
sible minimum of rent, P2 a month. From the
minimum income of 75 centavos a day there is
thus left P91.75, or about 25 centavos a day, for
food, while if the entire family is working the daily
average for food is 60 centavos, which, divided
among the average family of six people, means 10
centavos a day per individual. It seems, in con-
templating the cold figures of the city peon's
budget, as if it were impossible for him to exist, and
yet exist he does, even though his children die like
flies and his wife grows old at thirty and reaches her
grave by forty and he exists without working all
of the five days a week we have allowed him!
We can carry our view of the Mexican family
budget into ranks of society a little higher. In the
days of Diaz clerks received from P20 to P125 per
month, carpenters from P1.50 to P2.50 a day, or
362
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
from P36 a month to P60 a month. Shelter is
a larger item in this lower middle class. In the
cities where they are found rents ranged, in the old
days, from PS per month for two small rooms, up-
ward. The clothes item likewise is larger because
the nature of their work requires better personal
appearance. If the Mexican clerk at P60 works
twelve months a year he has an income of P720. A
rent expenditure of P12 a month will amount to
PI 50. The clothing for his family cannot conceiv-
ably be less than P100 because he must wear shoes,
he must wear respectable suits and shirts, likewise
the wife will need some slight adornment and their
children must be dressed for school. The food costs
of such a family will run from a peso a day up,
varying according to income.
These necessarily crude estimates indicate two
things : first, that by the standards of the foreigner
the Mexican peon lives actually below the poverty
line; and second, that the middle-class Mexican is
emerging by the help of the low peon standards
which give him an advantage in living costs and
make him approach independence because he
still lives in cheap quarters, his appetite is satisfied
with relatively cheap foods, and his clothing, while
of different cut, is still made according to native
standards and by native workmen.
A glance at the prices for food, shelter, clothing,
and cleanliness will clarify this point. Primarily,
living expense depends on food costs. In the
chapter on Mexico's foods, above, the unity of the
Mexican diet was noted. The middle classes
363
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
follow very closely the diet of the peon, save for
more meats and, of course, greater care in prepara-
tion. Let us study the food prices in Mexico at
different periods:
FOOD PRICES IN MEXICO AND NEW YORK*
(In Mexican Currency)
M
3
w
%
o
U ,_,
Si
o
B
sr
MEXICO
1910
oo
2
X
S J
MONTERRT
Jan., 1919
M
1 s
Beef (best), pound. .
PI 00
P84
Beef (other cuts)
Pork, pound
Lamb (goat in Mexico)
P.14
.12
.16
P.24
.22
.28
P.22
P.42
.50
.60
.36
.70
.80
.64
Black sugar, pound . . .
.08
.28
Sugar, pound
Lard, pound
.10
.20
P.18
.08
30
.32
1 10
.40
80
.20
80
Butter (Mex.), pound .
Butter (Am.), pound. .
Coffee, pound
Eggs, each. .
' '.38'
.52
.76
.44
.02
2.56'
.34
' '.22
' '.26
1.30
2.50
.50
.16
1.22'
.78
10
Milk, quart
.08
.14
.30
.30
Corn, bushel
Wheat flour, pound
1.00
02
2.24
.10
3.00
.10
8.00
30
4.20
16
Corn meal (wet in
Mex., dry in N. Y.),
pound
.03
.08
.10
14
Bread, pound
.16
.40
.20
20
Beans, pound
.06
.04
.06
.20
.20
.24
Rice, pound
Potatoes, pound
.10
.14
06
.16
.08
.24
.24
14
.28
10
Onions, pound . .
.10
.26
1 New York and Mexico prices of 1891, from Matias Romero,
Mexico and the United States, 1895; Mexican prices for 1901, from
U. S. Bulletin of Department of Labor, No. 38, January, 1902;
for 1910 and 1918, from Boletin de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo,
November-December, 1918; for Monterrey, 1919, from the
writer's consular reports; for New York, 1919, from World
Almanac, 1920.
364
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
The relatively small difference between food
prices in Mexico and New York always strikes the
foreign student, but this is of itself proof of the
fact that the Mexican peon, at least, lives on less,
or wastes less of the food that he has, than does the
American. As long ago as 1803 Baron von Hum-
boldt stated that "the Indians, like the inhabitants
of Hindustan, are contented with the smallest
quantity of aliment on which life can be supported,
and increase in number without a proportional
increase in the means of subsistence." 1 Moreover,
the worst of foods are consumed freely, food adul-
teration is universal, and tallow serves many thou-
sands in place of lard in. cooking. In the time of
Diaz, the low-caste peons of Mexico City lived
literally on 10 centavos a day, paying for their
frugality by the shortness of their lives, to be sure,
but living their brief span, nevertheless.
Shelter is actually a small item in Mexico, al-
though where the peon on his tiny wage has a
"home," the cost is disproportional. Previous to
1910, the vile rooms in the Mexican city tenements
cost PI. 50 up per month, while to-day the minimum
is about P5. In the slightly higher classes rents
increase, but little more is given for the money.
At the beginning of the century, little apartments or
houses of three or four rooms could be had for P8 to
P12 per month; in 1910 two rooms cost as much;
in 1920 the cost of two rooms was up to PI 5. And
these had very few of the conveniences which the
1 Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of
New Spain, book ii, chap, v, p. 118.
365
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
American or European workman would consider
necessities, such as light, running water, and good
toilets, and, of course, with no real bathroom.
Other houses of several rooms cost, hi 1910, up to
P100 per month, and in 1918 brought P150 to P200.
Fuel hardly enters into the cost of shelter in Mexico,
because practically none of the houses are heated,
though oil stoves are used by some residents of
the highlands. In 1910 kerosene cost 12 centavos
a liter, and 22 centavos in 1918. Kerosene is
generally used for lighting in the middle classes, but
candles are even more common; paraffin candles
cost, in 1910, 33 centavos a kilogram (about 16
cvos. a pound), and in 1918 were 94 centavos a kilo.
Charcoal, almost universally used for cooking, was
2 centavos a kilo in 1910 and 4 centavos in 1918. 1
The cost of cleanliness in Mexico is difficult to
estimate. Laundries are not common, practically
all of the washing being done by peon women, who
make their charges by time and the cost of soap.
The latter item almost quadrupled in price between
1910 and 1918, having been 25 centavos a kilo in
the former year and 85 in the latter, and was tem-
porarily up to P2 in 1919. The cost of public
baths, of the lower type at least, had advanced but
slightly, the price of one bath in 1910 having been
25 centavos, and 30 in 1918.
The basic item in clothing is the price of un-
bleached muslin, which, hi 1910, was 14 centavos a
meter (thirty-nine inches), 30 centavos in 1918, and
1 Figures from Boletin de Industria, Comerdo y Trabajo, Novem-
ber-December, 1918.
366
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
35 in 1920. Blue duck was 40 centavos a meter in
1910, 87 in June, 1918, and P1.98 in February, 1920.
The prices of clothing have always been regulated
in Mexico by the costs of the imported material,
and during the Great War American prices, plus
increased duties, determined the cost, where nor-
mally the European market, and not the American,
is the chief factor. Prior to the 1910 revolution,
imported European fabrics made clothing of all
sorts far cheaper in Mexico than hi the United
States, the prices comparing favorably with Europe.
A native-made man's suit of the finest English
woolens could be had for P35. Paris dresses of all
sorts, lingerie, and gloves were virtually the same
price in silver as they were in the United States in
gold, making the cost exactly half in Mexico. The
best shoes were always American, and paid a duty
averaging P1.50 per pair, but where native-made
textiles cost only a few cents less than the European
(the Mexican manufacturer takes full advantage of
his "protection"), Mexican-made shoes have always
been cheaper than American, owing to their de-
cidedly inferior quality. In 1910 native shoes sold
for about P5, in 1918 for P7, and in 1920 for P10
per pair.
Even with such wages and prices, however, the
problem of existence in Mexico is decidedly simpler
than in more advanced lands. The food problem
is solved for many millions by the mere fact that
they live upon the soil, and in some sections of the
country there is an abundance of native fruits and
game, although tropical fruits (despite Baron von
24 367
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Humboldt/s enthusiasm for the banana, more than
a century ago), are not alone sufficient to sustain
human life, and corn has to be grown for food.
Shelter in the country costs the worker nothing,
fuel is needed only for cooking, and clothing is
hardly required for warmth, the zerape, or blanket,
handed down from generation to generation, pro-
viding both cloak and bed covering.
The lot of the city dweller is, as everywhere, more
complicated, but even there the most serious prob-
lems seem to have to do with the lack of perquisites
to fill out the gaps of his economic life and the lack
of credit which on the hacienda is alike his "savings"
system and his provision for emergencies. As a
substitute, the city dweller has recourse only to the
pawnshops and to the private money lenders of his
ow r n or the higher classes. From the national
pawnshop or Monte de Piedad (literally "Mount of
Charity") and its many branches, down to the
usurious hovels in the back streets, Mexican pawn-
brokers will advance money on practically any-
thing, literally to the shirt off the peon's back.
The use of pawnshops as a means of raising money
has always been common in all classes of Mexicans.
The Monte de Piedad was founded in 1774 by the
Conde de Regla, and for many years was operated
on a basis of voluntary contributions, no interest
being charged, but after a tune these were found to
be inadequate, and in 1873 interest was placed at
6 per cent a year, and later at 1 per cent a month.
Branches of the national pawnshop are established
all over the city, and loans are made from 25 cen-
368
INCOME AND COST OF LIVING
tavos up to P2,000. In addition to the national
pawnshop, however, there have been innumerable
private establishments. Regulations controlling
usury were enforced more or less consistently
previous to the revolution, although the scarcity of
money and the difficulties of administration under
recent governments and with various currencies
brought many abuses.
There has always been a considerable amount of
usurious money lending on the part of clerks and
middle-class proprietors. Mexican stores are often
hung with relatively new goods which are not for
sale, but which are pledges left by customers or
friends for small loans. The interest collected is
always high, running up to 20 per cent a month, the
loan being upon a valuation of a quarter of the
price of the article pledged.
Custom, climate, and human nature thus com-
bine to perpetuate the condition noted at the be-
ginning of this chapter, that the Mexicans as a
people live always on the poverty line. The
economic system is based in principle on a closeness
to the soil, an intimate, primitive conception that
persists even in the higher classes, despite modern
civilization and the slow encroachment of modern
business. This factor makes such data as are avail-
able seemingly intangible and incomplete, and yet
the very incompleteness, the very confusion of the
material, the very lack of understanding of the
Mexicans who have gathered it, are themselves
indices of how shadowy and primeval is the realm
in which the mass of the population lives. Almost
369
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
nothing in Mexico is so difficult to grasp wholly
as the mere continued existence of the unthinking
millions of the peons in the face of living costs and
the incomes with which they have to meet their
problems. Here, once again, the vast, inert mass
drops its dead weight upon the shoulders of those
who would save and succor. Back into the dim
recesses of dull minds and solemn misery we must
reach, again, to educate, to upraise, some day to
bring about greater production, broader needs,
deeper, finer desires.
T
XII
VICES, CHIME, AND PAUPERISM
HE philosopher's stone which through all his-
tory has transmuted the dross of barbarism
into the gold of civilization is self-control. In the
races and race mixtures and above all hi the climate
of Mexico self-control does not shine as an over-
mastering virtue, so that a perhaps disproportional
place is occupied by the nonsocial phases of her
life her vices, crimes, and pauperism. For what-
ever their original roots, the development of all
of these along characteristically national lines is
certainly traceable to an almost uncontrolled ac-
ceptance of all the temptations which come to the
individual or characterize his environment.
The chief vices of Mexico are three, all the result
of unrestrained impulse: gambling, drunkenness,
and sexual overindulgence. The last, which seems
far more responsible for the Mexican lack of effi-
ciency than any other single factor of the national
life, is probably as much due to the climate and to
overstimulating diet as to any special race ten-
dencies in either Indian or Spaniard. But gambling
and drinking have distinct racial correlations.
371
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The Spaniard has always been the inveterate
gambler of the world and a proverb in Mexico is to
the effect that it is the Spaniard and the mestizo
who gamble, and the Indian who drinks. The
limitation is not literally true, for while probably
the chief abusers on the side of gaming are those
of mixed blood, no Indian, if he has any money, will
miss an opportunity to bet on a cock fight or to risk
a few centavos on a hazard of the open-air roulette
wheel which is a feature of all his festivals. There
were gambling systems in Mexico under the Aztecs,
but it was the Spaniards who introduced gaming
houses and the European gambling devices now in
vogue. These came down through all the revolu-
tionary epochs to that of Diaz, and "the casino"
in Tacubaya, a Mexico City suburb, was as famous
in its way as the smaller gambling palaces of Europe
such as Enghien and Ostend. The Tacubaya casino
was suppressed under Diaz, and the gambling houses
in the city itself followed, so that after 1900 the
capital was thoroughly "cleaned up." Gambling
was openly revived under Huerta and it is said that
in 1913 Huerta himself was the chief proprietor of
the principal gambling houses open to varying
classes of society. After his fall, unofficial gambling
concessions were perquisites of many revolutionary
"generals."
The clubs of Mexico have always been largely
supported by their gambling tables, where roulette
and baccarat were carried on, for the members only,
even in the time of Diaz. This was the upper-class
outlet for the gambling fever and the lower class
372
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
had to content itself with private games of "monte"
and the little wheels at the fiestas, though from
time to time one could find gambling houses running
full blast for brief periods in large cities, and almost
always in connection with popular fairs. Under
the recent revolutionary governments gambling
was allowed and even encouraged as a source of
revenue, and in some of the states long persisted
under government protection.
We cannot estimate the extent of gambling by
figures, but before Diaz and since it has been
rampant in a hundred forms. As this is written, the
new fortunes of the " generals" of the recent revolu-
tions are being dissipated in gambling as much as
in the support of spectacular mistresses of the dance
halls and concert stage, and the example extends on
down through all classes. Great gambling halls
(many of them in tents, to be sure, but elaborate and
animated, nevertheless) fill the suburbs of the
capital, and, although ostensibly under cover, are
quite as open as need be. The gambling conces-
sions of Tijuana (Lower California) and of Juarez,
opposite El Paso, Texas, are known to all the
sporting fraternity of the American continent.
Lotteries have run in Mexico for years, except
for a short period under Carranza, the revival com-
ing long before his fall. Throughout the Diaz
regime two lotteries in the capital had government
protection, for which they paid substantial taxes.
A few state lotteries were also operated and the
tickets for all of these were sold by stores and itiner-
ant venders in every corner of the republic. There
373
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
were two drawings weekly of the national lotteries,
and the prizes ranged from P500,000 down to
Pl,200, tickets for all drawings being sold in sec-
tions, some for a few centavos, and the percentage
of possible gain was very little greater in proportion
to the investment for the large drawings than it was
for the small ones. In addition to the Mexican
lotteries tickets for the Christmas and Easter draw-
ings in Spain, the capital prizes of which were
P500,000, were freely sold in Mexico.
Apparently the lottery filled a public demand for
an opportunity to gain a few thousand per cent
on a small investment. In 1907, when the Mexico
City Tramways Company wished to keep a check
upon its conductors and do away with their con-
tinual petty thievery, it devised a lottery scheme.
In paying his fare the passenger received from the
conductor a numbered ticket indicating the amount
paid, and this was a possible winner in a monthly
lottery in which the holders of lucky numbers were
given prizes as high as P500. It was estimated that
the lottery cost in the neighborhood of P5,000 per
month, but as long as the novelty lasted the com-
pany apparently felt well repaid for this investment,
because at first every Mexican who rode on a tram
demanded his ticket in return for his fare, on the
distant chance that his six centavos might win him
a prize of P10.
In approaching the subject of drinking, it must
be pointed out that most decidedly the upper and
even the middle class Mexicans are in no sense
slaves to liquor. There is, of course, much drinking
374
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
at Mexican festivals and in Mexican homes, but
this is done much as drinking is observed in
Europe that is, a light wine with the meal and
cognac or liqueur following dinner, or a heavier
wine and cakes as a refreshment.
But all who know the Mexican Indian describe
his consumption of alcoholic liquors as the chief
feature of his festivals. In Mexico City the pulque
saloons are the centers of the celebrations and of the
mournings of the Indians and the peons. On holi-
days the drinking begins on the night previous and
continues until the festival is over, as, for instance,
from Saturday night until Monday morning, which
accounts for the proverbial inability of the Mexican
to work on Monday, which is celebrated gloomily
as San Lunes (St. Monday's Day).
The attitude of the educated people in Mexico
toward this overindulgence in liquor is extremely
tolerant, due to custom and also to the fact that
drunkenness is regarded as a form of comfort that
it seems cruel to deny the unhappy Indian. The
attitude of the Mexican toward intoxicating liquors
is, indeed, not complicated by any moral code or
deep appreciation of the laws of hygiene. Even the
higher classes regard the use of stimulants as
natural, and the climate is always the handy excuse
for indulgence. On the plateau one needs a cbpita
to stir one's energy in the lethargic hours of the
day; in the hot country it is perilous to take cooling
drinks unless they contain alcohol "to warm the
stomach after its sudden chill."
The Spaniard is said to have introduced alcohol
375
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
drinking among the Indians, for previous to the
colonial epoch control was theoretically very strict,
only the nobility and old people being allowed to
imbibe even pulque. The native liquors of Mexico
are most of them (excepting rum) made from
various species of the great-leaved agave (the aloe,
or century plant), which also gives Mexico her chief
agricultural product, the henequen fiber. The na-
tive distilled liquors are mezcal and tequila (an
especially esteemed form of mezcal), made from
minor members of the agave family, and aguardiente,
the native name for the rum made from sugar cane.
The chief fermented drink is pulque, manufactured
from the sap which the lordly maguey, the king of
all the agaves, pours forth in endless gallons when,
just before flowering, after seven years of growth,
the root of what would be a fifteen-foot flower-stock
is dug out. This sap, cured by traditional and none
too cleanly processes, is drunk in vast quantities by
the natives of the plateau country. As it has to be
drunk at a certain stage of fermentation, fortunately
for the rest of Mexico it cannot be shipped off the
plateau, and is known only in the Valley of Mexico
and in parts of the plateau states of Puebla, Hidalgo,
Tlaxcala, etc. While pulque is a decided intoxicant,
according to Mexican medical theories the stupor
which results from drinking it is due more to the
continuance of the process of fermentation hi the
stomach and the consequent setting up of a toxic
condition than to the mere presence of alcohol.
The effect of the enormous consumption of pulque
is a byword among all who have had to deal with
376
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
laborers in the highlands of the republic, un-
doubtedly much of their stupidity, inefficiency, and
unreliability being traceable directly to the enor-
mous consumption of this debilitating beverage.
Not least of its accompanying evils, however, is the
devotion of thousands of acres of the finest land of
Mexico to the raising of maguey plants for its manu-
facture. The pulque trains which come into Mexico
City each morning total daily more than 100 cars,
many tunes the milk trains which are puny rivals of
the pulque traffic. More than P20,000 a day passed
over the counters of the 2,000 vilely dirty pulquerias
(or pulque saloons) of the capital during the time of
Diaz, and the government revenue from the business
was nearly PI, 000,000 a year. Under Carranza, the
pulque traffic, like the lotteries, was temporarily
suspended, but was revived, owing to the need of
revenues, heavier taxes raising the retail price
from the three to four centavos a quart which it com-
manded in the time of Diaz to eight and ten cen-
tavos. The total production of pulque in Mexico
under Diaz was about P8, 000, 000 annually.
The production and local consumption of dis-
tilled liquors totaled in 1910 about the same as
that of pulque, some P8,000,000, while importations
of wines and liquors were worth nearly P3,500,000.
There was a growing use of beer, the manufacture
of which the Diaz government encouraged as a
measure against pulque drinking, but the total
consumption was relatively low as compared with
pulque and distilled liquors.
The abuse of alcohol on the part of the low-class
377
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Mexicans can hardly be overstated. One of the
keenest and frankest Mexican analysts of his
people has written of them:
When a Mexican has any trouble he goes to a pulqueria to
talk it over with a friend. In the morning he likes his capita
for a starter. Children taste alcoholic drinks out of their
fathers' glasses. On fete days bloody assaults are frequent,
due to drunkenness. Mexico used to be free of the sight of a
drunken woman up to 1876, but since then, unfortunately, the
increasing proportions are alarming. To-day we have a na-
tional type of psychiatric (men and women). They particu-
larly drink tequila and do not show drunken effects, but their
nerves are shattered, their disposition becomes most irritable,
everyone annoys them, a look from anyone seems insulting
to them. Their eyes are dejected, their hair is thin (men lose
their beards), their color is yellow, the pulse is shaky, they are
nauseated in the mornings, they eat only meat and rice, they
work only in a cloud of smoke and alcohol. 1
A movement toward temperance in Mexico and
even toward the prohibition of the sale of intoxi-
cants gained some headway under Carranza. It
was largely political, but there was surprising lack
of opposition, and Mexican liquor dealers frankly
admit to-day that national prohibition is only a
matter of time. Probably no country would re-
spond so splendidly to such a change, for not only
would the health and spirit of the people benefit,
but enforcement would be easy. The Mexican of
the lower classes is accustomed to taking what is
given him, and if liquor is taken away from him he
would doubtless accept it with the same stoicism
with which he accepts everything else.
1 Julio Guerrero, in La Genesis del Crimen en Mexico.
378
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
Two Mexican states, Sonora and Yucatan, have
tried prohibition, with some success, and Carranza's
propaganda agents used the movement toward pro-
hibition as a proof of his sincerity for social reform.
But Diaz began the temperance movement, en-
deavoring to substitute beer, and beer of an ex-
cellent quality and comparatively low alcoholic
strength, for pulque and for the more violent
drinks which are used in those sections of the coun-
try where pulque could not be procured. As it was,
a great deal was done in the middle classes. In fact,
advocates of beer as a " temperance drink" could
have found extremely interesting material in
Mexico on the function . which beer performed in
aiding the establishment of a new middle class,
for the use of beer working down from above
undoubtedly tended to displace first mezcal and
then pulque in the liquid diet of the regenerated
workman.
While it was enforced, prohibition in Yucatan
was fairly successful, although there was never any
great difficulty in securing liquor if the price was
forthcoming. In Sonora many reports were made
on the reduction of crime following prohibition, the
number of recorded arrests having dropped from
200-300 down to 30-35 per month in Hermosillo.
Some difficulty in enforcement was, of course, ex-
perienced, and the price of liquor increased many
fold, the quotation for a twenty-five-centavo quart
of mezcal reaching three pesos, effectively quashing
the tippling of the proletariat. Carranza was a
stanch adherent of prohibition and when in the rev-
370
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
olutionary field he enforced prohibition as a measure
of pacification and punishment.
The extent of sexual overindulgence in any group
is calculable through knowledge of the people and
also through the secondarily important feature of
the extent of prostitution. The Mexican's exceed-
ing frankness in discussing sexual matters allows a
very fair estimate from knowledge of the people.
Primarily is the evidence of the attitude of the men
toward the women, and, indeed, vice versa. The
Mexican, of whatever class, never trusts his wife,
or his friends with his wife, for the primacy of sex
in the relationship between men and women he
takes for granted, and, indeed, quite freely admits
it as the reason for his seclusion of his wife from
other men. The attitude of virtually all Mexicans
toward women is expressed in the way they appraise
their beauty and in the comments which one and all
make on the women whom they pass on the street or
see in houses, theaters, and ballrooms. The accept-
ance of this attitude by Mexican women is shown
not only in the archness of their flirtation (which
is seldom, if ever, " harmless" in the sense that
the flirtation of an American or English girl may be
almost without sexual significance), but in the care
with which girls are watched over by their knowing
mothers and in the mere fact that not even engaged
couples are left unchaperoned.
Among the men and women of the lower classes,
the sexual instinct is comparable only to that of
animals, and is as frankly and openly yielded to.
In the upper planes of society, the whole affair takes
380
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
hold of the national imagination and virtually
monopolizes it, and the intellectual processes of
most Mexicans, in their early years at least, are
confined largely to the creation of fantastic erotic
interests. Both the position of Mexican wives as
virtual sexual slaves, and the maintenance of mis-
tresses, are, in the first case, the result of the Mexi-
can male's refusal to limit any impulse, and, in the
second, of his search for the intellectual stimulus of
variety and naughtiness.
The Mexican woman is not without her willing
contribution to this devouring passion, and with the
aid of the probably stimulating tropical climate has
had her part not only in her own early wasting away,
but also in the terrific drain on masculine vitality
which has followed.
American life insurance experts in Mexico have
frankly stated that probably the greatest element
working against the " expectation of life " of Mexican
applicants for insurance has been their willingness to
waste their vital energies in sexual overindulgence.
To go no farther into the subject (which is not,
however, to be discounted because it discourages
enlargement), there are statistical phases which bear
out the theory. Statistics on prostitution are not pub-
lished in Mexico, but Judge Julio Guerrero, quoted
previously, has set down his own conclusions on
the basis of the figures available to him, as follows: 1
In one typical year there were registered in the health records
699 new professional prostitutes (of whom 33 were forced to
1 Op. cU., p. 351.
381
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
register according to regulations of the health department) and
there were discovered 2,809 clandestine ones. In this number
are not included those who were discovered for the first time
and warned against a repetition of the infringement of the
law; of these there were about 1,000.
So, in one year there were 3,508 new prostitutes in the City
of Mexico, or 1 per cent of the population. In order that
these women live there must be a clientele of at least two per
day, which means 7,016 youths who daily seek pleasure. And
this does not represent the total, but merely the daily average.
Multiply this by 365; 2,560,840 then would be more nearly
the figure. Now divide this by weeks in one year, and we
have a total of 49,232 persons who lead this sort of We weekly.
The annual profits from this trade are at the least P5,000,000.
In approaching the subject of crime as such, it
seems best to eliminate a discussion of all that may
be called "political," although in that category are
to be included thousands of examples of human
passion and greed which are distinctly the result of
the loosening of social control and are in no sense
political or military. All of this, however, the
Mexican blandly dismisses as " the fortunes of war."
Allowing, then, for all the vast loss of life, the
innumerable outrages on women and children, the
destruction of millions of pesos' worth of foreign and
native property not confined alone to the past
decade on the score of "political crime," there
remain the two divisions of individual crime, those
against property and those against persons.
Normally, the crimes against property are chiefly
of a minor order. In olden days banditry was
common, and during the revolutions it has again
become a recognized profession, either under revo-
382
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
lutionary banners or under none. When Mexico
has had well-ordered government, however, there
has been little housebreaking, there are few holdups,
and almost all thievery is in the form of pilfering
and pocket picking.
The Mexican seems to be honest in larger matters
where he is convinced that it is worth while for him
to be so; but in small affairs this code of honor com-
pletely disappears. The long apprenticeship hi
slavery and servility, the vast differences which at
one time existed between those who had anything
at all and those who had nothing have, of course,
warped that sense of values, and to-day the Mexican
conception of property is a thing so essentially per-
sonal and individual that the sympathetic student
finds himself badly tangled when he endeavors to
place definite limitations upon what belongs to one
man and what to another in the Mexican mind.
Thievery is a recognized institution, and petty
pilfering is almost universal among servants.
Thus those who have lost anything usually demand
of their servants first the return of the property, and,
when the theft is vigorously denied, suddenly call
for the pawn tickets for the goods, a ruse which is
ludicrously successful in nine cases out of ten. The
practice of the clerks who stole a sum about equal
to their wages is significant of this same attitude
in the higher classes, and the storekeeper who did
not raise the wages of these clerks because they
would only steal more was a student of Mexican
psychology.
During the viceregal days theft was punishable
25 383
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
by death even when the amount stolen was very
small, and under Diaz service in the army was the
prompt fate of pickpockets and other petty thieves.
Severe penalties for housebreaking made this crime
uncommon at least in times of peace, though this is
surprising when one considers the ease with which
thefts of this sort could be accomplished, owing to
the flat roofs and the open patios of the houses.
Housebreaking was not entirely unknown during
the Diaz period, but as a custom it was not recog-
nized among the thieving fraternity. This may be
attributed to lack of personal courage, but it prob-
ably goes back to that fixed attitude of the Mexican
toward life in general which prevents him from
doing anything the possible results of which do not
seem worth the risk. Under the revolutionary
regime housebreaking flourished under the guise of
military search. Those who lived through the
various occupations of Mexico City and other
towns discuss feelingly the difficulties which they
faced in opposing the legal " searching" of their
establishments. Among the soldiers the stealing of
automobiles was common, the usual occasion being
the retreat of one army or another, when rapid
transport was in great demand. In the days of
Diaz automobile thefts were uncommon, but the
loss of bicycles and any other small pieces of
property was almost inevitable if they were left
long unattended.
The pilfering which is common in Mexico may
be due to a heritage from the communal life of the
early Indians when all property was held in common,
384
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
but in a nation where political crime is rife, and
where anything can be done by the powerful under
full protection of law, one can hardly expect petty
thievery to be eradicated without some decided
reform of the methods of thought as well as the
methods of administration.
Outside of the field of political crime there is com-
paratively little wanton destruction of property.
However, the wooden and steel shutters which
covered the windows of all shops at night, even in
the time of Diaz, indicate that in boisterous mood
the peon enjoys nothing more than a bit of playful
destruction though usually with the idea of steal-
ing what might be exposed. Not even the seques-
tration of important parts of machinery, which is
common in Mexico, can be ascribed to destructive-
ness. The few centavos which the peon can get
for a bit of brass bearing which is vital to a delicate
machine, or the saving to himself by the sandals he
cuts out of a great transmission belt, is quite suffi-
cient to induce him to destroy the efficiency of
either piece of property. The theft is all that
comes to his mind, and in an analysis of motives
thievery can be considered almost the only form,
or at least the basic form, of all crimes against
property.
Crimes against persons are classified as follows:
Threats, attacks on the police, duels, homicides,
infanticides, injurias y or slight hurts, golpes, or blows
in which no blood is drawn (simple assault), and
lesiones, or blows in which blood flows (assault with
intent). There is a great difference in the serious-
385
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
ness of the latter two offenses. Where blood is
drawn, whether by pistol, knife, or the fists, the law
of Mexico regards the offense potentially as equally
serious, a correlation of the English mahem, or dis-
figurement, which is often interpreted with ridicu-
lous hair splitting by Mexican judges. The result
seems to be that the Mexican uses a knife or a
pistol as freely as Americans or Englishmen would
use their fists. The only escape from the danger
of being accused of making a lesion is to do battle
with the pedal extremities.
Drunkenness is not placed in the official lists of
crimes in Mexico, although under the viceroys it
was subject to severe punishment. During the
time of Diaz it was taken as an index of guilt rather
than a crime itself. This rule, as applied to the
brawls which followed most fiestas, gave the police
the reputation of being more interested in the
amount of liquor consumed than in the crime itself,
an attitude not entirely unjustified on their part,
for a Mexican's bravado as well as his dangerous-
ness is often in proportion to the amount of liquor
he has assimilated.
Criminal statistics for Mexico are hopelessly in-
complete and inadequate. Only in the Federal
District have they ever been of record in any form
which makes comparison possible between different
years. In the following table, prepared from data
obtained from unpublished records of the office of
the prosecuting attorney, the year 1897 is given as
an index of earlier data, and that from 1906 down
year by year. This is for the Federal District
386
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
alone, a section with a population varying from
540,000 in 1900 to 720,000 in 1910. The classifica-
tion of golpes is translated " simple assault" and the
more serious lesiones as "assault with intent,"
although not all lesiones are so serious, and should
not be confused with the more exact definition of the
English law's " assault with intent to kill."
1897
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
Against Persons:
Simple assault ... ....
51
152
222
187
258
163
Assault with intent
5,830
8,563
9,588
9,636
10,423
8,886
6,731
Homicide
102
139
2
127
1
145
1
239
148
106
Against Property :
1,230
3,530
2,680
4,445
3,509
5,318
4,085
5,545
3,263
4,884
3,503
2',598
190
739
815
1,052
1,063
1,339
872
26
111
62
72
93
69
12
39
Attacks on Police
Men
199
273
10,117
269
11,387
314
12,473
388
12,428
383
11,494
310
8,904
Women . .
3.047
3,805
3,537
3,890
3,435
2,364
Total Convictions
8,106
13,164
15,192
16,010
16,318
14,929
11,268
The Diaz government collapsed in May, 1911, but
the rule of Francisco de la Barra, lasting until the
election of Madero in the fall of 1911, continued the
Diaz regime virtually intact, although the falling
off in the number of convictions in 1911 does show
the loosening of the hand of the old system.
After 1911, however, the statistics of crime are
more an index of the growing depravity of the
police and court systems than as showing any such
decrease in crime as the figures seem to indicate.
In 1913, under Huerta, there were no records from
January to June, and with this year also begins a
notation which appears throughout the five years
that follow, "the criminal escaped from prison,"
387
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
meaning that he was taken out (if he was not
originally arrested for the purpose) to be put in the
army which happened to be in control of Mexico
City at the time. The year 1914 was one of military
occupations, and in 1915 the courts were closed and
no records kept. In 1916 the courts were being re-
organized, and in this year and in 1917 and 1918 the
usual Mexican habit of making all statistics appear
for the credit of the government developed the
" no table reduction in criminality in the capital"
which was reported by the Carranza propagandists.
The figures for these later years are as follows :
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
Against Persons:
Simple assault
Assault with intent .
5,330
>,
3
444
1,900
223
2,506
3,482
Homicide
157
1
q
45
71
Infanticide
*c
|
" Injuries"
f
328
215
Against Property:
Robbery
2,694
2,025
a
>>
i,862
1,332
1,903
Abuse of trust
Swindling
608
61
-u
,15
1
"o
219
140
....
Fraud and forgery .
fl
^5
.8
18
4
Attacks on Police . .
303
3
23
25
140
Men
7,203
2,636
2,448
3
3,540
Women
1,836
847
720
1,593
Total Convictions
9,039
3,483
3,168
5,133
5,510
Although the difference in laws, procedure, and
classification make exact comparisons between
Mexico City (which comprises, in population, most
of the Federal District whose crimes are listed
above) and other cities impossible, it will be il-
luminating to make a rough table of Mexico and
cities of about the same size in the United States.
The year 1910 is taken.
388
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
MEXICO 1
SAN
FRANCISCO
DETROIT
BUFFALO
PITTSBURGH
Arrests
Criminal assaults. .
(Assault and battery)
Homicides
8,886
148
4,844
32,914
1,139
94
1,118
17,875
908
17
1,187
22,203
919
21
1,725
39,151
107
6
Against property. . .
On the whole, Mexico under Diaz was a well-
policed city, for Mexican justice was quick and fairly
sure, and the police and penal systems were rela-
tively efficient in the Federal District. Almost the
only difficulty experienced under Diaz in the preser-
vation of order was the failure or refusal of the
public to make complaints, a condition due not
alone to a feeling of class loyalty, but more often
to the complications resulting from the persistence
of the Spanish code. This was as likely to lock up
a witness as the criminal himself, for both were
considered equally important for the purposes of
justice. Aside from the legal code, the provisions
against crime took on chiefly the nature of the
control of the sale of alcohol and the vagrancy laws.
As noted above, complete prohibition of the sale of
liquor has been tried in two Mexican states, with
reported success in the repression of crime. The
control of the liquor traffic under Diaz was largely
confined to the regulation of the hours in which it
was sold, and attempts to enforce the law regarding
its sale to intoxicated persons.
1 Number of arrests is not available. In 1912, 26,471 persons
were tried for various offenses, 9,039 being convicted. The
convictions for 1910 were 14,929, so that by the same proportion
about 39,000 were tried. Arrests were doubtless much higher,
389
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
The vagrancy laws of Mexico have comparatively
little enforcement even to-day, for industry covers
a multitude of occupations, so that in a debate
with a policeman, even if not before a judge, a peon
can call himself employed at honest labor when he
is selling bird seed at one centavo a thimbleful
from a stock which he can hold in one hand. Va-
grancy laws are used, as elsewhere, to simplify the
arrest of drunken peons who have no means of
support and are too intoxicated to invent one.
The penal system in Mexico is largely of Spanish
and French origin. Imprisonment is the usual
punishment, for fines mean only imprisonment to
the indigent peons. In the early days the jails were
usually churches, monasteries, or colonial fortresses,
and many ghastly crimes were committed in the
name of justice. During the time of Diaz, however,
education and labor were introduced into the
prisons and there was a rapid elimination of some
of the abuses which had heretofore been common.
But much that was unworthy remained. The old
prisons, such as Belem in Mexico City (now des-
troyed) and San Juan de Uloa at Vera Cruz, were
famous as much for their unhappy surroundings
and unhealthful environment as for their success in
spreading crime through the nation. The hundreds
of prisoners (the daily average at Belem was 4,000)
were confined in common rooms practically without
any accommodations, and vermin and vile conversa-
tion filled them day and night. The result was the
transmission of disease and the inevitable de-
moralization of young offenders by the hardened
390
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
criminals who were the habitues of the place.
Prison conditions are most deplorable in Mexico,
and the improvement even under Diaz was very
slow. Conditions like those at Belem were common
in all city prisons throughout the republic, and
uncounted harm has undoubtedly been done by the
persistence of this type of jail.
The modern penitentiary at Mexico City (capa-
city 700) is, however, equipped with workshops,
baths, and hospital; each room is provided with
sanitary conveniences and running water, and light
penetrates all the cells. The food is scientific and
ample, and the entire system is so complete that the
architecture of the building and much of the ad-
ministration have been copied in other countries.
Some of the states also have penitentiaries ap-
proaching modern standards.
Prison labor has been common in Mexico since
the colonial period, and during the tune of Diaz
criminals did considerable work on the roads under
guard, and factories within the prison walls turned
out goods of value to the community, although in
many places the energy of the prisoners was still
devoted only to making worthless knickknacks to
be sold to visitors. Some reform schools have been
established, the Correctional School for Boys in
Mexico City housing 400, that for girls 200.
There is a death penalty for murder hi most
Mexican states, but previous to the revolution,
Campeche, Yucatan, Puebla, and Nuevo Leon had
abolished it. In the Federal District in 1906 there
were 139 convictions for murder, but only in 17
391
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
cases was the death penalty ordered, and in only
2 was it carried out. Executions in Mexico are by
shooting and are held privately, as a rule, in the
prison yard.
Deportation for crime was a common method of
punishment during the Spanish days, and Diaz
continued this, the "administrative" handling of
some criminal cases being a recognized part of the
Mexican penal system of the tune. Some criminals
were fined or sentenced to imprisonment and were
then "allowed" to work out their punishment on the
hot-country plantations. The Yaqui deportations
from Sonora to Yucatan were not supposedly in the
form of expiation of crimes, but were excused on
the ground of "military necessity." Pickpockets
were usually sent to the army, this punishment
being effected by administrative order and not by
court sentence, and justice of this sort was quick
and very sure.
Ranking with the national vices and with crime,
pauperism is one of the great sociological realities
of Mexico. It is manifest in the fact that a vast
portion of the population lives out its life in the
direst poverty. It is visibly demonstrated in the
thousands of beggars, in the starving children who
to-day dot the country from the Rio Grande to
Guatemala. It is the one problem which cannot be
hidden and which no statistics of national pros-
perity will cover. Its causes are many, beginning
with the climate, which gives neither stimulus to
energy nor easy living, while yet tempting the na-
tive always with the promise of comfort and the
392
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
invitation to dreamy laziness. The racial mixture
has no tendency to raise the Mexican above the
poverty line, and his inherited disease, his unfor-
tunate diet, and the vices which mark his habits of
life, all drag him down. Illiteracy reduces his pos-
sibilities for advancement, and the political con-
ditions which he pulls down about his ears at
inevitable intervals throughout his history destroy
all that long industry and the rare ambition of his
aristocrats have built for him.
The outward index of the pauperism which this
induces is the beggary which marks all Mexico.
Beggars swarm, blind and halt and sick, all filthy,
some licensed and filling the streets each day, the
majority unlicensed and thus pouring out only on
the Saturdays and feast days when the laws are
relaxed. The chief charities of Mexico are not
hospitals and formal poor farms, but private bread
lines and private asylums for the wretchedly poor,
and the Church has devoted its funds, sometimes
great and sometimes small, to the care, chiefly, of
the poor and the poor in Mexico means the
paupers, the miserable, filthy, half-human waifs of
every age who have been left behind in even the
relatively mild race for sustenance in Mexico.
In the matter of pauperism, however, statistics
fail us again. The occupational census of 1910
showed ninety-six professional beggars in all Mexico.
The total number of defectives reported in 1910 was
31,24s, 1 and there are no adequate figures covering
the number of persons in institutions, owing once
'Seep. 106
393
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
more to the ancient quarrel between Church and
state which makes it necessary for the Church to
conceal its charities as well as its school attendance.
There has, however, been not a little government
charity. The taxes on the lotteries in the tune of
Diaz were devoted to the funds for the poor, the
Federal government's budget for charitable insti-
tutions and succor being slightly over PI, 000,000
annually, the number of persons receiving help, ei-
ther as inmates or as temporary patients, averaging
4,000 a day. Practically all of the Federal govern-
ment's charity was expended in the Federal District
and thus chiefly for the poor and indigent of Mexico
City. The following are the chief government
charitable institutions, all in or about the capital:
General Hospital, opened hi 1905; capacity, 1,000;
average number of patients, 686. Juarez Hospital,
for prisoners and typhus patients; average number
of patients, 684. Morelos Hospital, founded in
1582, now devoted to the care of fallen women;
average number of patients, 349. San Hipolito
Lunatic Asylum for men, founded hi 1567; average
number of patients, 151. Lunatic Asylum for
Women, founded in 1698; average number of pa-
tients, 388. Public Dispensary; average consul-
tations, 225 daily. Hospital for Epileptics, at
Texcoco ; average number of patients, 60.
Children's Home (Hospicio de Ninos), founded in
1763, its modern building being one of the show
places of the capital; capacity, 1,000, boys being
double the number of girls, as the boys are dis-
missed at the age of sixteen, the girls being kept
394
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
until they are thirty-one unless outside opportuni-
ties are offered them. Foundling's Hospital,
founded in 1767; average number of infants, 134.
National School for the Deaf and Dumb, founded
in 1866; average number of students, 66. National
School for the Blind, founded in 1870; average
number of students, 76.
Most of the older institutions listed were origi-
nally founded by the Church, but were taken over
by the government under the Laws of Reform. In
1899 a law authorizing private charities was en-
acted, making their operation completely legal and
making the government the patron of all institu-
tions thus officially recognized. The following are
the chief of these:
Monte de Piedad, known as the national pawn-
shop, although founded in 1775 by the Conde de
Regla. In the time of Diaz the new pledges aver-
aged P500,000 monthly.
Hospital of Jesus of Nazareth, founded by
Hernando Cortez, 1524, and still supported from
his estates; for contagious diseases. Concepci6n
Beistegui Hospital, for sufferers from chronic
diseases; average number of patients, 100. Oph-
thalmic Hospital of Our Lady of Light, free to
sufferers from eye troubles.
Casa Amiga de la Obrera, a day nursery founded
in 1887 by the wife of President Diaz, for the care
of children of workingwomen; average attendance,
300. Private Home for Beggars; the aged receive
a home, the younger are taught trades; founded in
1879, since which date 5,000 have received its care,
395
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
there being, in February, 1908, 180 old people, 91
boys, and 73 girls. Home for Regeneration of In-
fancy, a rescue home for fallen women, where trades
are taught.
There are a number of other private charities, of
many sorts, including the three important Ameri-
can, British, and French hospitals, perhaps the most
modern and efficient in the country. The Spanish
and German hospitals, though without the modern
hospital buildings of the American, British, and
French institutions, are well managed and far above
the usual private Mexican hospital. The Church
hospitals and charitable institutions were fairly
numerous in the time of Diaz, but all were of a
relatively small capacity.
Since the recent revolutions, many of the char-
itable institutions here listed have been emptied
and the buildings used for barracks, the unfortunate
inmates adding their misery to the poverty and
destruction of war. As always, this temporary up-
setting of the slow structure of centuries is only
noted one must look on Mexico as having at least
the potentialities of all that she once gained.
Under Diaz some beginning was made in pro-
viding pensions for aged and injured government
employees, but this had not passed beyond the stage
of special legislation or executive grants. Some of
the foreign companies have begun pension systems
of their own, and the Federal Constitution of 1917
has elaborate provisions for the payment of damage
claims by employers to workers injured or incapaci-
tated in their service. As this is written the pro-
396
VICES, CRIME, AND PAUPERISM
visions of the labor laws in this, as in most other
phases, are being used chiefly as a means of extorting
money from employers either for the corruption of
government officials or in more open blackmail.
Readjustment will doubtless come with the im-
provement of the personnel of the courts and the
law turned to its proper channel of protection of the
honest worker. This should have a truly beneficent
effect, as heretofore such indemnity as employers
paid an injured worker was always spent on a
fiesta or a series of fiestas, and did nothing to relieve
the country of the support of the unfortunate.
Much administration will have to be arranged for
the handling of such benefits as should be given the
workingmen, in order that these may relieve the
state of the burden of pauperism.
Life insurance made considerable headway under
General Diaz, three of the large American companies
having agencies in the country and one of them a
great office building in Mexico City. There were
also two large Mexican companies, established
during the same period. The revolution caused
the withdrawal of all the foreign companies before
1916, and one of the Mexican concerns has recently
closed out its business. Life insurance was never a
national habit, however, and its beneficiaries were
confined almost exclusively to the upper classes,
the smallest policy written by the American com-
panies, for instance, being P4,000. The Mexican
companies tried some of the popular forms of insur-
ance, but created little business among the lower
classes, and little industrial insurance was carried.
397
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
With the sorry pages that record Mexico's crime
and poverty, our survey of the living conditions of
the Mexican people ends. The chasm of her faults
is deeper and muddier than the paths of her normal
life, and yet they seem but little different. Life is
always close to its lowest ebb in Mexico, and what
has been set down in this chapter is probably more
intimately related to the normal conditions of the
country than are such data in other lands. The
faults and defects of Mexico are not swept behind
administrative doors; they have always been
everywhere in her life, for all who would to see.
Figures are often made to lie, much omission seeks
to cover serious faults, but always the misery and
the poverty and the vice are inescapable facts.
They belong to Mexico, to the lethargy of her past
and to her present suffering, but they point clearly
the ways which her regeneration must follow.
Appalling they may be at first sight, but at least
they are all before us, and before those strong,
devoted Mexicans who are ready, in spite of them,
to take up the thankless burden of the nation's
regeneration.
XII
CONCLUSION
THROUGH years of tumult and disaster, through
years of peace and rebuilding, Mexico ever
and forever mixes and restratifies again, oil and
water and ether. The experiment has seemingly
lasted long enough for the realization of this to be
complete, yet she always seems trying again, always
the same stirring, always the same restratification,
but never through it all a recognition of the ultimate
impossibility of the one ideal she clings to racial
amalgamation. As we look on at this physical and
political mingling of races, the hopelessness of a
radical and immediate settlement eternally sends
us wondering back to the questions of whether, had
the Spaniards never come, Mexico might not be
better off to-day, of whether, with greater immigra-
tion, she might not have been a whiter and a better
land, of whether, if we should leave her to herself,
she might not be able to work out her own salvation.
But the elements of the problem are the elements
of the solution, in the forces which are to-day
actually existent. We cannot speculate on a
greater white immigration because it has never come
26 3 "
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
and is at present climatically and economically im-
practicable. Our other speculations are one and
the same Mexico, in her " working out" has been
tending rapidly back toward that very Indianism.
We cannot consider the 'wisdom of letting her go
all the sinister way back to her ancient barbarism,
because the great outstanding fact of the present is
that Mexico belongs to the modern world, and the
modern world has vital need of her. She cannot
be allowed to slip back nor may she confine herself
within jealous borders. No man can choose, for
forces mightier than men have chosen, arid history
and industry have pushed Mexico to a place from
which she can never retire.
To face this truth is Mexico's problem. For the
solution there is but one force within her people,
the mighty element which has ever rescued her from
her great failures her own true aristocracy. The
existence of this group is the one fact of substantial
and reassuring importance in Mexico to-day. This
element, the true social elite, 1 the one vital power
in all human governments, has long existed in
Mexico, surviving revolutions and disaster, re-
building her after each of her social and political
debauches.
Mexico's true aristocracy traces its descent, as
1 This true aristocracy rests upon deeper stratifications than
caste rankings. From modern sociology we may take the names
and character of Mexico's four "true social classes": (1) the
true elite, those who help, inspire, and lead; (2) the nonsocial
classes, marked by narrow individualism; (3) the pseudosocial
classes of parasites and paupers; (4) the antisocial or criminal
classes. Cf. F. H. GIDDINGS, Principles of Sociology.
400
CONCLUSION
surely as does her aristocracy of caste or class, to
the colonial Spaniards. Among the mass of schem-
ing, struggling white men who were the pioneers of
Mexico were many great teachers and many philan-
thropists whose benefactions and foundations sur-
vive to this day. In the laws of the Council of the
Indies and in the rulings of the viceroys are records
of a true attitude of altruistic protection of the
Indians, edicts enforced so thoroughly that to this
day the simple peasant of interior Mexico cannot
conceive of a white man who is not his protector,
or of a priest who is not a devoted missionary to
his welfare.
Deep and well built the Spaniards, and when,
seventy years after the first revolution, Diaz made
opportunity for the true elite to serve again, the
great example of the viceroys was before them;
under Diaz there was a truer expression of altruistic
and conscientious government than Mexico had
known since the viceroys or than she has seen since
Diaz fell.
The true upper class has never yet been the
product of the so-called democracies which are
forever drenching the country in blood. Indeed,
the most sweeping and condemnatory criticism of
the Mexican aristocracy (the true elite as well as
the upper social class) is that it has not taken part,
nor does it take part to-day, in the political activities
of the country. This charge is true, and its
failure to do so is primarily in the fact that Mexican
politics is a politics of the rifle and the machete, so
that the power in Mexico from the exile of the
401
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Spaniards almost continuously has been in the
hands of the mestizo agitators. This condition has
been compared by one of the Creole exiles to the
situation in the southern United States following
the Civil War, when the aristocrats were powerless
under the domination of carpetbaggers with negro
hordes at their back. This Mexican begs us to
remember that "the carpetbaggers of Mexico have
experience and traditions rooted as far back as
colonial times. They have the shrewd and subtle
wit of the Indian combined with the grandiose
words of modern civilization, with which they have
gained the sympathy of uninformed outsiders." l
These "carpetbaggers," the nonsocial leaders,
have dominated Mexico from the fall of Diaz to
this day. The Madero revolution, in its inception,
was the upheaval of a group of intellectuals, and its
primary object was the infusion of new blood into
the aristocracy. But the idealism was short lived,
for to attain his ends Madero had accepted the aid
of the unsocial elements of all Mexico, and when he
became president the carpetbaggers moved into the
departments, into Congress, into the army, and as
officials, deputies, and generals began their long de-
bauch of blood and thievery. To-day, thanks to
this element, the true elite is almost nonexistent
within Mexico's borders. They have been driven
out at the points of guns, and by their own pride
and unwillingness to bow their heads or to prostitute
1 T. Esquivel Obregon, "Factors in the Historical Evolution of
Mexico." in Hispanic-American Historical Review, May, 1919.
p. 171.
403
CONCLUSION
their ideals to the dictatorship of the nonsocial
elements. The narrow individualism of the new
rulers, their concentration upon the momentary
fruits of victory, their sense of their own ineptitude
and therefore of need for immediate and colossal
pecuniary and social success, are dominating present
Mexican history.
We have seen much of them hi the past, and we
shall doubtless see even more of them for yet a little
while, in the future. No Mexican President has
yet climbed to power save by being one of them or
by using their methods. Although the day of Diaz
has passed, the world still seems to cling to the
fond hope of the uprising from within this nonsocial
class of such a man as Diaz was in his youth.
Diaz indeed rose to his power by his manifestation
of the "iron hand/' but those fail dismally in under-
standing Mexico who believe that Diaz maintained
his hold by that means, for Diaz's hold upon Mexico
was in his tolerance and in his conception of the
obligations and duties of the world's true aristoc-
racy. A newer day has yet to dawn, when tolerance
shall not wait upon force, and the miracle of Diaz
shall not be a nation's hope.
While the "carpetbaggers" represent the non-
social class in Mexico at its worst, the mass of the
population, with its apathy, its selfishness, and its
short-sightedness, makes up the great bulk of the
nonsocial, narrowly individualistic group. In all
countries this is true, but in Mexico it seem griev-
ously aggravated. The millions of Indians, the
long-suffering, self-pitying (or grafting) middle
403
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
class which accepts and supports each government
as it rises and rushes to the next when it falls, offer
a problem that none but the most devoted of
aristocracies can even face. No election (save pos-
sibly that of Madero) ever brought out 10,000
voters, no Mexican long engages in revolution for
an ideal, and no social reform was ever achieved
save by the force of the aristocracy or the foresight
of the foreigner. Truly, the mass of Mexico, non-
social, inert, remains a problem even without the
depressing example of the selfish horrors of the
" carpetbaggers."
Under Diaz, as under all previous Mexican
governments, the pseudosocial class of parasites
held an important place. In Mexico these are not
merely paupers; they are parasites of government,
the officeholders, the so-called "bureaucrats," who
have been the nation's scourge since the days when
the illegitimate mestizo sons of Spanish officials
crowded the anterooms of viceroys and bishops.
Every revolution hi Mexico, and increasingly each
uprising of new chieftains, has added to this number
by its destruction of the opportunities for honest
livelihood, and by the destruction of that middle
class of artisans, clerks, and storekeepers which
peace has tended to create.
Thus, too, the antisocial class has been swollen
by each new destruction of the chance for simple
human existence. In the revolutions of the middle
of the last century, peaceful peons learned the ease
of the life of bandit and thief, so that one of the
greatest problems which Diaz faced was the re-
404
CONCLUSION
forming of the Mexican mind to conceptions of life
other than living at the expense of the community.
To-day again, one of the great problems of Mexico
is the winning back of the people from ideas of life
by violence to conceptions of civilization which do
not glorify robbery, murder, and rape as they are
to-day glorified, under revolutionary rule, from the
National palace to the peon's cornfield.
In the chapters which fill these pages we have
watched the unfolding of the life of Mexico as it
has been built and broken, erected again, and
again tumbled to the dust, by the interaction of
these four kinds of Mexicans, separated from one an-
other as are the four winds, yet converging together
to the whirlwind which has been their history. We
have seen their heredity and their environment,
with race as the determining fact of the one, and
climate the outstanding element of the other. The
racial background is the two great elements of
Indian and Spaniard, manifesting themselves in
the making of the mestizo, in the determining of the
population, in the health which makes their attitude
toward life and civilization, in the caste system
which so unerringly records what they think of
themselves. Four great conditions of environment
we have seen : climate, the community, religion, and
education. We have looked at the social matrix of
the family, its homes, its food, its clothing, and its
cleanliness. We have measured the economic en-
vironment of labor, of income, and the cost of
living. We have plumbed the unsocial manifesta-
tions, vices, crime, and pauperism.
405
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
For heredity and environment are the making of
life, and never did a people have a more definite
heredity, and never a more clearly chiseled environ-
ment. He ventures far who dares guess which is
the more important, but he fails miserably who, in
Mexico, at least, would underestimate the mighty
influence of race as reflected in a national life which
responds like a chemist's balance to each drop of
blood, white or red.
The race phase has the most definite relationship
to the world without. In the days of the white
Mexicans, under Spain and under Diaz, the land
was developed and made great by help from out-
side herself; she was part of the white man's world.
In colonial days the Spaniard built her solid
civilization, and under Diaz the foreigner was wel-
comed and made, by his own success, a part of the
success of Mexico. Before Diaz, and since his fall
on down to to-day, the mestizo and Indian have
ruled. In these times there has been manifested a
bitter antiforeignism that is distinctly racial. No
Mexican now speaks as did those of Diaz of a wel-
come to foreigners, of a willingness to let them help
in carrying the white man's burden in Mexico.
To-day that attitude is dead we need seek no
apologies or explanations. Always the mestizo,
jealous, conscious of an inferiority, has opposed
white immigration and white development. He
called the Diaz efforts to bring white colonists
" manifestations of consanguinity," wrecked the
Italian colonies through bureaucratic machinations,
and finally wiped out the great Mormon settlements
406
CONCLUSION
in Chihuahua by giving them to Indian armies for
loot. The mixed bloods and the Indians want no
aid of the white world 1 Mexican or foreign in
working out their problems.
But Mexico lives in the world of to-day. Her
resources, her gold and silver and oil, her henequen
and rubber and coffee and lumber, her great labor
supplies that wait so surely upon education and
uplift, are forces which the white world cannot ig-
nore save to turn them over to the yellow. Mexico
cannot live in isolation, for her lands lie in the very
heart of the world and her raw materials are sorely
needed on all the seven seas. Diaz recognized this,
as did and do the great men who were around him,
and upon it they built a nobler patriotism than
Mexico had ever known, a patriotism that saw
Mexico in its place among the nations, not as a
separate, isolated, ingrowing people eking out an
existence amid barren hills whose wealth they have
not the energy or capital to uncover. The true,
broad patriotism of Mexico will draw the power of
the world to its development, resolute, unafraid,
conscious of its people's possibilities and of her
power to unfold them.
In these days of radicalism and internationalism,
the word patriotism is likely to have an unwelcome
sound, but the idea of patriotism is as mighty as it
has always been. Upon its foundations have been
built all of the Mexico that was permanent; upon
it must be built all the Mexico that is to be. Mex-
ico's last page has not been written, nor will it
be while there are ideas that can revivify it,
407
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
institutions that can rebuild it, and men who can
lead it.
In the mass, the Mexican crowd rejects ideas,
even though its individuals cling to them and weigh
even their supremest moments in the scales of
mind; ideas, then, must become the fabric of the
patriotism of the crowd ideas of service and of co-
operation, ideas of education. In the mass, the
Mexican crowd gazes in dull apathy at institutions
and knows not what they are, and yet because the
Mexican crowd is what it is, because the Mexican
individual is what he is, institutions are a greater
need to Mexico than to any other people in the
world ; institutions, then, must be given her insti-
tutions of honest government, of learning, of man-
ual education, of uplift and clean joy. In the mass,
the Mexican crowd follows a leader, and in the
individual the Mexican loves a master who knows
and understands him. A leader, a master, then!
An aristocracy of those who understand and love
and serve as well; an aristocracy fed deep with
ideas, giving them out, growing with them and with
its people; an aristocracy with institutions, a
great, free institution of honest, devoted govern-
ment, institutions of learning where true leaders,
ever renewing themselves, may be brought up,
schools where hand and heart shall be trained
together, where peon and aristocrat may meet, and
understand each other, always.
Is it too much to ask? Too much to hope?
Well, it may be, but this we know : that never since
the earliest days of pre-Spanish history has Mexico
408
CONCLUSION
failed to be strong and great when her leaders or
her institutions or their ideas were great and strong.
And we know that never in all that history has
Indianism, allowed to tread the measures of
unwonted cultures, been aught save the clown, the
buffoon, the tragic victim of its own incompetence.
It seems, indeed, that the step upon which Mexico
and the world make pause is clear. We know that
the great Mexicans who alone must take up the
burden of their country's regeneration wait, silent
and uncomplaining, as they have waited these ten
years, for the word of understanding and support
which can come only from those in whose hands
rests the scepter of the white man's world, that
world to which they, as we, pay deep allegiance.
INDEX
Acapulco, port of Galleons, 64;
road to, 163.
Adobe, 241.
Adornment, 119.
Agares, used to make liquor, 376.
Agricola, Segunda Semana, re-
port quoted, 350.
Agriculture, producer of wealth^
131.
See also Corn; Crops.
Aguardiente, 376.
Alcohol, climate and, 105.
Indian deaths blamed on,
59.
See also Drinking; Liquor.
Alimony, 223.
Almuerzo, 259.
Altitude, effect on nervous types,
139.
importance of, 134.
Alvarado, Pedro de, 244.
Amalgamation, racial. eeRace.
American Constitution, imi-
tated, 158.
Red Cross, in Vera Cruz,
311; sends coin, 150.
Americans, castes of, 124.
census, 70.
colonies of, 71.
dairy farms, 275.
farmers, 39.
insurance companies, 397.
modern housing, 256.
railway builders, 84.
railway employees, 122.
train natives, 115.
wages of, 356.
Anahuac. See Valley of Mexico.
Anglo-Saxon Constitution, 11.
Animals, blessing of, 179.
Antiforeignism, 6, 16, 26, 50.
See also Foreigners; In-
dianism.
Antisocial class, 404.
Apache Indians, 19.
Apathy, effect on health, 97.
of farmer, 148.
toward work, 350.
Aqueducts, 309.
Arable land, proportion of, 132.
Architecture, Aztec, 243.
Spanish, 244.
under Diaz, 245.
Area of Mexico, 56.
Argentine, immigration to, 70.
Aristocracy, caste of, 126.
destroyed, 127.
Indian. See Indian.
true, 400, 403, 409.
white, 9, 10, 14.
See also Whites.
Army, needed for peace, 165.
Asia, mythical source of Indians,
20,
4U
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Asturians, 28.
Asylums, 394-396.
Atheists, 177.
Atlantis, mythical source of In-
dians, 19.
Authority, respect for, 168.
Autocolonization, 83.
Automobiles, bad roads, 164.
Aztecs, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
architecture, 243.
civilization of, 32.
dress of, 290.
gods still worshiped, 179.
lack of roads, 162.
no classes, 112.
population of, 58.
village organization, 155.
Banana, 368.
Bancroft, H. H., quoted, 22, 63.
Banditry, 404.
Banks, 352.
merchants as, 358.
Baptism, 171.
Barter, 155.
Basques, 28.
Bathhouses, 304, 305.
Bathrooms, 247, 304.
Baths, cost of, 366.
on St. John's Day, 118,
301, 303.
Beans, 261.
Bedbugs, 306.
Beds, 249-250.
Beef, as food, 276.
tapeworm in, 103.
Beer, 379.
Beggars, 341, 392.
Belem prison, 390.
Berbers, mythical ancestors of
Indians, 19.
Birth and death rates, ratios of,
87.
412
comparative, 88.
Birth control, absence of, 97.
Birth rate, 86, 97.
Births. See Children.
Blanket. See Zerape.
Blond race crossings, 42.
Blue eyes, absence of, 42.
Bolshevism, 11.
Boys, place of, 229.
Breakfast, 258.
Bribery, labor problem and,
326.
Brick buildings, 242.
Brides, age of, 218.
British, caste of, 124.
census of, 70.
characteristics in mestizos,
42.
modern housing, 256.
See also English.
Brown, E. N., quoted, 331.
Budget, personal, 361.
Buildings, Aztec, 243.
materials, 241.
permanence of, 243.
See also Architecture.
Bulnes, Francisco, quoted, 51,
145, 148.
Bureaucrats, 114, 404.
casts of, 123.
Burial methods, 311.
Butter, 267, 269.
Buzzards, 309.
Caciques, 35, 153.
Caciquism, 54.
"Calicoes," 124.
California, settled from Mexico,
64.
Capital, sources of, 351.
punishment, 391.
Cargadors, 96.
Carpetbaggers, 402,
INDEX
Carranza, Venustiano, 16, 33,
45, 48, 49, 50, 66, 100, 155,
160, 165, 214, 373, 379, 388.
See also Revolution of 1910-
1920.
Casa, 210.
Casas de Vecindad, 120, 253.
Casas Grandes, Mormons at,
71.
Castes, 48.
created by land, 112.
list of, 111.
"Castes and Classes," Part I,
Chap. VI, 110.
Castizos, 111.
Catholic Church, animals, bless-
ing of, 179.
baptisms, 57, 171.
beautified Mexico, 182.
caste of lower clergy, 122.
church buildings, 173, 174.
churches sacked, 186.
clergy, caste of, 122.
conversion of Indians, 29.
land owned by, 113.
marriage and, 187, 213.
missions, 7.
nationalization of , 185, 186.
Pagan Catholics, 178-180.
Pious fund, 184, 185.
politics and, 183-189.
priesthood, 188.
property nationalized, 185,
186.
Protestants and, 193.
Utilitarian Catholics, 178,
180.
wealth of, 183.
See also Religion; Reform,
laws of.
Catholic Directory, quoted, 172-
174.
Catholics, in United States, 175.
Cellars, absence of, 242.
Cement, first used, 244.
Cemeteries, 312.
Cena, 259.
Census, 56-61.
methods of, 57, 61.
tables of, 60.
Charities, 393-396.
Charles IV, 184.
Charles V, 29.
Charro costume, 286, 287, 292.
Chavacanes, 265.
Chiapas, cultural center, 21.
Chichimecs, 19, 21, 23, 24.
Chihuahua, arable land in, 145.
Children, adoption of, 224.
average to family, 215.
diet of, 284.
dress of, 299.
place in home, 229.
population of, 91, 230.
labor of, 342.
legitimacy, 43, 87, 224, 228.
Chiles, use in food, 257, 265-267,
281.
Chinese, census of, 70.
Chocolate, use of, 271.
recovery from revolutions, Churches, numbers, 173, 174,
187.
- revenues of, 183, 185.
- savior of Indians, 25.
- schools of, 116, 172-174.
- seminaries, 174, 188.
- Spain and, 183.
- statistics, 172-175.
175.
See also Catholic Church;
Protestants; Religion.
Cities, centers of safety, 83.
compared with U. S., 80.
distribution of, 80.
number of, 79.
413
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Citizens, naturalized, 16, 70. Clubs, gambling in, 372.
Civics, education in, 168, 195. Cockroaches, 306.
Clark, Victor S., quoted, 67, 282. Cocoles, 265.
"Classes, Castes and," Part I, Coffee, use of, 271.
Chap. VI, 110. Coiffures, 299.
color distinctions in, 116. Cold country, 134.
divisions, 117-127. "Colds," 138.
dress of, 117. Color line. See Race.
See also Creoles; Mestizos; Columbus, 152.
Middle class; Upper class. Combs, Spanish, 299.
"Cleanliness and Sanitation," Comida, 259.
Part II, Chap. IX, 301.
Cleanliness, cost of, 366.
household, 248, 306.
middle class, 304.
Clergy, lower, caste of, 122.
See also Catholic Church;
Communes, Indian basis of land
system, 157.
Indian, number of, in 1910,
155.
Communal lands, Indians and,
317, 318, 320.
Priests; Protestants; Re- Communism, bribe to Indians,
ligion. 155.
Clerks, caste of, 122. Indian ideal, 320.
salaries of, 354, 357. land and, 316, 319.
"Climate," Part II, Chap. I, Communications, 162-164.
131.
Climate, alcohol and, 105.
causes of, 139.
contrasts of, 140.
effect on diet, 258, 284.
effect on races, 32.
effect on roads, 164.
effect on Spaniards, 30.
factors of, 133.
land question and, 144.
pauperism and, 392.
population and, 74.
relation to progress, 133.
vigor and, 103.
zones of, 133.
"Community and Government,"
Part II, Chap. II, 152.
Community life, Indianism in,
153.
Compadre, 212.
"Conclusion," Part II, Chap.
XIII, 399.
Concubinage, 351.
See also Mistresses.
"Conditions of Labor," Part II,
Chap. X, 315.
Congress, in government system,
152.
Conquerors, 27.
See also Spaniards.
Climatic efficiency, "optima" of, Conquest, objects of, 8, 320.
133. Conservatives, 184, 185.
"Clothing," Part II, Chap. VIII, Constitution, of 1857, ignored by
286. Diaz, 160.
Clothing, cleanliness of, 301. peonage under, 322.
cost of, 366. of 1917, 26, 49, 346, 396.
414
INDEX
Constitution, of 1917, ignored by theft, 383.
Carranza, 160.
peonage under, 322.
Cooks, 272.
Corn, chief food, 258.
foods from, 262-264.
ninety-day, 148.
prices of, 279, 364.
production of, 145-146.
Cornish miners, descendants of, Cuetil, 290.
"Crime, Vices, and Pauperism,"
Part II, Chap. XII, 371.
Criminals, colonists, 28.
Crops, 146, 147.
See also Agriculture.
Crowding, 253.
Cuba, conquerors from, 27.
slaves for, 320, 321.
42.
Corsets, caste and, 122.
Cortez, Hernando, 6, 22, 28, 46,
56, 139, 236, 320.
Cosmetics, 298.
Culture, Indian, 8.
white, 37.
Dams, 143.
Deaf mutes, 106.
"Cost of Living, Income and," De la Barra regime, 125.
Part II, Chap. XI, 348. De las Casas, Fray Bartolome,
Cotton, used by Aztecs, 290. 322.
factories, conditions in, 335. Death, penalty, 391.
factories, labor efficiency rates, 86, 94.
in, 330.
factories, wages in, 355.
Council of the Indies, 401. .
Courts, closing of, 387.
Credit, hacienda system, 358.
rates, compared to United
States, 94.
rates, Mexico City, 86.
rates, Vera Cruz, 86.
Debt system, 323.
Creoles, caste system, 111, 112. Decoration, house, 247.
contribution of, 38.
definition of, 10.
excitability of, 104.
exiles, 16.
expulsion of, 45, 48.
Defectives, 106, 393.
Degeneracy, 41, 118.
Democracy, aristocracy vs., 401.
mestizo imitations of. 158.
no fine, 30.
government code of, 158, Desayuno, 258.
159.
revolution of 1823, 46, 48.
settlers abroad, 64.
See also Whites.
Crime, against persons, 385.
against property, 383.
deportation for, 392.
penal system, 390.
political, 382.
prohibition and, 379, 389.
statistics of, 387-389.
27
415
Desert, cause of, 139.
location of, 141.
proportion, 132.
Development, foreigners and,
351.
Diaz, Porfirio, 6, 9, 54, 159, 160,
225, 318, 403, 404, 406.
political motto of, 161.
regime, 6, 10, 15, 38, 39,
45, 46, 48, 70, 84, 125, 149,
165, 201, 204, 286, 308, 314,
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
322, 333, 372, 379, 387, 401, caste system and, 112.
407.
Diet, intemperance in, 99.
nutritive value, 280, 283.
Digestion, effect of chiles on, 281.
Dinner, 259.
Disease, attitude toward, 101.
care of sick, 101.
doctors and, 102.
matlalzahuatl, 57, 101.
pulmonary, 100.
smallpox, 57, 102.
typhus, 57, 101.
venereal, 105.
vitality and, 100.
weather and, 102.
Divorce, 220.
Doheny Research Foundation,
files, quoted, 179, 215.
Domestic relations, law of, 213,
220, 223.
See also Family; Marriage;
Divorce.
Drainage works, 308.
Dress. See Clothing.
Drinking, 371.
beer, 379.
customs of, 374-380.
effects of, 378.
philosophy of, 375.
prohibition, 378.
regulation of, 389.
Drunkenness, 371, 374-380.
as crime, 386.
Ducks, wild, 278.
Durango, temperatures of, 135.
Economics, personal, 351.
Eden, garden of, 20.
"Education," Part II, Chap.
IV, 195.
Education, budgets, 204.
Carranza and, 205.
416
Catholic Church and, 182.
class division on, 116.
distribution, 203.
growth of schools, 203.
history of, 196-198.
ideals of, 195.
illiteracy, 195, 199, 200.
Lancaster system, 196.
mestizo, 117.
negro in United States, 207.
Protestant schools, 192.
religious, 198, 205.
"rudimentary," 197, 207.
school statistics, 200-203.
solution of, 206.
teachers' strike, 205.
Efficiency, climatic "optima,"
133.
food and, 282.
labor, 329.
Effidos, 317.
Eight-hour day, 334.
Elections, 159.
Emigration, 64-68.
Enchiladas, 264.
Encomiendas, 321, 323.
Enganchados, 325, 327.
England, crops in, 147.
death rates, 94.
English, in American colonies, 7.
caste of, 124.
in colonial Mexico, 15.
in United States, 30.
Environment, 405.
Epidemics, danger of, 313.
early, 57.
weather stops, 102.
See also Disease.
Espanoles, caste of, 111.
Esquivel Obregon, T., quoted,
7, 402.
Eyes, blue, 42.
INDEX
Factories. See Industrial work-
ers; Labor.
Fair gods, 27.
"Family, The," Part II. Chap.
V, 210.
Famine, 148-151.
in 1917, 150.
under Aztecs, 149.
Farming, extensive, 145
intensive, 147.
philosophy of, 147
Farms, yield of, 145.
Fashions, 296.
See also Parisian fashions.
Father, rule of, 211.
Fats, use of, 267, 283.
Ferdinand VII invited to rule
Mexico, 158.
Feudal system, peonage and, 323.
transplanted, 112, 152.
Fiat money, 348, 352.
Fire-fighting, 167.
Fish, use of, 277.
Fleas, 307.
Floors, 247.
Florida, mythical source of
Indians, 24.
Food, carried in hat, 291.
distribution, 273, 279, 280.
inspection of, 103.
lack of, 282.
overeating, 280.
prices of, 364.
speculation in, 279.
tinned, 268.
"Foods, Mexico's," Part II,
Chap. VII, 257.
Foreigners, caste of, 123-125.
census of, 70.
Diaz and, 15, 406.
excluded under Spain, 15.
industrial development by,
351,
417
in priesthood, 188.
residents, 14.
success, 406.
Freedom, conception of, 10.
Free Thinkers, 177.
Frenchmen, caste grouping, 124.
census of, 70.
Fresh-air habits, 137.
FrijoUs, 257, 260.
Frosts, 137, 151.
Fruit, lack of, in diet, 281.
tropical food value of, 368.
usfe of, 269.
varieties, 269.
Fueros, 113.
Furniture, 248-250.
Gambling, 371-374.
Gamio, Manuel, quoted, 178.
"Garbage, removal of, 167, 307.
Garbanzos, 268.
Garcia Calderon, F., quoted,
52.
Generals, in bourgeois class, 123.
Generals, predatory, 54, 160.
Germans, caste grouping, 124.
census of, 70.
found by Humboldt, 15.
Germany, crops in, 147.
Girls, position, of, 229.
God, name of, 177.
Goiter, 106.
Gold, coins as necklaces, 297.
conquerors* search for, 321.
currency and living, 348.
Gomez Farias, 185.
Gordas (food), 265.
"Government, Community
and," Part II, Chap. II,
152.
Government, spirit of Spanish,
153.
state, 161,
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Graft, government problem, 160.
Grant, Madison, quoted, 17,
44.
Greek Catholics, 171, 177.
Guadalajara, saved from In-
dians, 27.
Guadalupe, Virgin of, 179.
Guaraches. See Sandals.
Guatemalans, census of, 70.
Guerrero, Julio, quoted, 117,
378, 381.
Guilds, colonial, 113.
Hacendados, caste of, 126.
debt system and, 329.
Haciendas, basis of land system,
154.
caste system and, 113.
credit system, 358.
definition of, 154.
food producers, 320, 328.
housing on, 256.
labor's background, 345.
labor's perquisites, 357.
land on, for peons, 316.
number of, 114.
origin of, 319.
peonage and, 323.
Spanish merchants and,
358.
stores on, 325.
Hair, washing of, 303.
Hammocks, 250.
Hampton Institute, 207, 208.
Handkerchiefs, 122.
Harbors, 81.
Harvester twine, 325.
Hasheesh, 104.
Hats, 291, 295.
See also Sombrero.
Health, ill, achievement and,
108.
> apathy and, 97.
prevalence of, 95, 96.
See also Disease; Epidem-
ics; Vitality.
Henequen, 325, 326.
Heredity, 406.
mendelian laws of, 41, 43,
44,
Hidalgo, Miguel, 82.
History, race correspondences,
35.
pre-Spanish, 18.
racial interpretation, 44-50.
Hogar, 210.
Home, 210.
Homogeneity of Mexico, 164.
Horses introduced by Span-
iards, 162.
Hospitals, list of, 394-396.
Hot country, 133.
cleanliness in, 303.
Hotels, cheap, 255.
Households, statistics of, 252-
253.
Houses, description, 238.
rent, 365.
"Houses, Mexican," Part II,
Chap. VI, 235.
Housing, modern, 255.
statistics of, 251-256.
Huerta, Victoriano, 49, 372,
387.
Huipil, 290.
Humboldt, Alexander von,
quoted, 15, 36, 60, 63, 87,
88, 145, 147, 149, 353, 365,
368.
Humidity, 133, 138.
Huntington, Ellsworth, quoted,
96, 133, 138, 139.
Husband, infidelity of, 225.
power of, 223, 224.
Huts, materials for, 230.
proportion of. 251-253.
INDEX
Hydro-electric developments,
143.
Hygiene, lack of, 100.
Ignorance. See Education.
Illegitimacy, 87.
Illegitimate children, 43.
Illiteracy, in castes, 120.
pauperism and, 393.
See Education.
Immigrants, colonies, 70, 71.
Immigration, white, 69, 71, 399,
406.
Improvidence, 348.
" Income and Cost of Living,"
Part II, Chap. XI, 348.
Income, sources of, 352, 353.
Incompetents. See Defectives.
Independence, wars of, 9.
Indianism, 7, 12, 13, 14, 26, 32,
38,46,48,400,409.
Danger to radicals, 346.
disintegrating government,
170.
in community life, 153.
ic town life, 157.
mestizo leadership, 27.
Indians, amalgamation with.
See Race; Amalgamation.
aristocracy of, 25.
baptisms of, 57.
bathing, 303.
blind followers, 160.
capture of wild ducks,
278.
caste system, 111.
Catholic Church and, 25.
contribution of, 38.
conversion of, 29, 180.
culture of, 8.
debt system, 323.
destruction after conquest,
distributed to conquerors,
321.
docility, 159.
dress of, 289-291, 296.
endurance of, 95, 139.
four strains, 19.
higher classes of, 120.
increase in, 39.
intellectual traits, 30.
land holdings, 317.
language, 17.
low caste, 118.
mestizo leadership of, 27.
migrations of, 18, 20.
misfortunes of, 9.
mythical origins, 19.
on haciendas, 319.
oppressors of, 25.
philosophy of labor, 156.
physical characteristics,
24.
reduced, 16.
resurgence of, 49.
sanitation, 59.
slavery under Aztecs, 25,
321.
social organization, 54.
sought as slaves, 320.
teachability of, 195.
tribes, 17.
truck farmers, 120.
type unchanged, 18.
use of land, 316.
wards of church, 9.
white protection of, 401.
workers, 39.
working philosophy, 328.
See also Aztecs; Chichi-
mecs; Otomis; Toltecs;
Yaquis; Zapotecs.
60.
Indies, Council of the, 401.
Industrial workers, caste of, 120,
121.
419
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Industries, native labor in, 337,
338.
village, 155.
Infantile mortality, 88, 89, 94,
287.
Insanity, 107.
Insurance, life, 397.
Intellectuals, caste of, 125.
educational theories, 208.
improves in United States,
69.
industrial, 337, 338.
money advances to, 324.
organizations of, 345.
perquisites, 357.
prison, 391.
salaries. See Wages.
scarcity in 1890-1900, 325.
Intelligence, efficiency and, 331, social classifications, 336.
332.
Iron hand, 403.
Irrigation, by Indians, 143.
franchises under Diaz,
144.
Italians, colonies of, 70.
Itzintzuntzan, 58.
Jefes Politicos, 161.
Jenkinson, Charles, quoted, 311.
Jewelry, 299.
Jews, 177.
Joseph, none in Mexico, 150.
Journadet, quoted, 63.
Juarez, Benito, 29, 113.
land laws of, 317.
Juarez, Ciudad, gambling at,
373.
Kansas, corn crop of, 146.
Kelley, Mons. Francis J., quoted,
172, 173, 175, 177.
Kitchen, 247, 307.
Labor, advances to, 324, 326.
carelessness of, 331.
castes of, 119.
contract, 325, 327.
department of, 341.
efficiency of, 329.
enganchados, 325, 327.
haciendas, 320.
hours of, 333.
statistics of, 338.
study of, 341.
task system, 334.
unions, 346.
unreliability of, 349.
unskilled, 336, 338.
wages of, 326.
workingmen's compensa-
tion, 397.
See also Peonage.
"Labor, Conditions of," Part
II, Chap. X, 315.
Land, arable, 132, 145.
arid, 145.
castes and, 113.
Indian holdings, 317.
irrigated, 144.
''Law of Survey," 318.
population and, 74.
problem, 315.
redistribution of, 144.
use of, 316.
water rights, 143.
Land laws, rancher m and, 319.
under Diaz, 318.
under Juarez, 317.
under Spaniards, 317, 319.
Latin-American race, 48.
See also Mestizos.
Latitude, importance of, 134.
Laundry customs, 301, 302, 366.
Lawyers, caste of, 125.
Leather, clothing of, 290.
420
INDEX
Legal procedure in criminal
cases, 389.
Leperos, 116, 117, 301.
Liberals, 184, 185.
Life insurance, 381, 397.
Lighting, caste and, 120.
street, 166.
Liquor, prohibition, 378.
use of, 270, 371, 374-380.
Liquors, native, 376.
Living, cost of, 3GO.
"Living, Income and Cost of,"
Part II, Chap. IX, 348.
Longevity, average, 90.
Lotteries, 373.
Louisiana, settlers from Mexico,
64.
Lozada, 27.
Luncheon, 259.
MacGregor family, 42.
Machinery, Mexican labor and,
329.
labor-saving, 332.
Madero, Francisco I, 45, 50,
64, 68, 125, 160, 165, 199,
208.
quoted, 64, 208.
Maguey. See Pulque.
Maize. . See Corn.
Manila, galleons from, 64.
Manta (muslin), clothes of , 289.
Mantilla, 295.
Marihuana, 105.
Market, Viga, 274.
Marketing, 272.
Marriage, age of, 99, 214, 218.
Church control of, 213.
Church quarrel over, 188.
cost of, 215.
demanded by Protestants,
192.
disrepute of, 188, 216.
divorce laws, 220.
festivals, 215.
in lower castes, 119, 121.
legal, 216, 218.
Mexican idea of, 212, 221,
224, 225.
number of, 216, 217, 218.
objects of, 225.
rates, 88.
Matamoras, temperatures, 135.
Matriarchy, 231.
Maximilian, 158, 186.
Maxtli, 290.
Maya Indians, 19, 81.
Mayo-Smith, Richmond, quoted,
218.
Meals, typical, 258.
Meat, distribution of, 275-277.
use of, 258, 275.
"Melting Pot," Part I, Chap.
Ill, 35.
Melting pot, 31, 51.
Mendelian law, 41, 43, 44.
Merida, temperatures at, 135.
Mesones, 254.
Mestizos, agitators, 402.
caste system, 111.
contribution of, 38, 51 .
definition, 4.
domination of, 45, 48.
first crossings, 40.
government, 11, 12, 158.
increase, 98.
intellectual traits, 5, 31.
leadership, 27, 53.
middle class, 116.
"new race," 8, 40.
physical characteristics, 4,
31.
political activity, 404.
preponderance of, 37.
problem of government,
159.
421
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Mestizos, racial instability, 41. Mosquito bars, 250.
racial place, 40. Mountains, distribution of, 141.
revolutionaries, 11. rainfall and, 142.
white culture, 37. Mulattos, 111.
See also Indianism; Middle Municipalities, government of,
class. 161.
" Mexican Type, The," Part I,
Chap. I, 1. Nahua Indians, 19, 21, 23.
Mexico City, crowding in, 253. Nationality, idea of, 51.
temperatures of, 135.
Mezcal, 376.
Michoacan, 57.
Middle class, budgets, 362.
cleanliness, 304.
economic condition, 352.
origin of, 114, 115.
stability of, 128.
upper, 123.
Migrations of Indians, 18, 20.
Military search, 384.
Milk, handling of, 275.
trains, 377.
Milpa, 156.
Mineral water, 272.
Mining, Indian slaves in, 322.
methods of, 335.
Mistresses, 227.
Mohammedans, 171, 602.
Mohler, J. C., quoted, 146.
Molina Enriquez, Andres,
quoted, 117.
Money, paper, 348, 352.
Monkeys as food, 284.
Montando, Captain, 57.
Monte de Piedad, 368.
Naturalized citizens, 70.
Necaxa, 143.
Necklaces of Tehuanas, 297.
Negroes, 41, 111.
Nervous types suffer from alti-
tude, 139.
Night air, 100, 137.
Nonsocial elements, 402.
"Northers," 136, 137.
effect on climate, 140.
Nuns, 172, 174.
Oaxaca, temperatures at, 135.
Obregon, Alvaro, 165.
Order, public, 159.
Orphan asylums, 394.
O'Shaughnessy, Nelson, quoted,
49.
Otomi Indians, 19, 24.
dress of, 290.
"P," signifying peso, 184.
Pacheco, Gen. Carlos, quoted,
58.
Pacification, transportation and,
165.
Monterrey, corn crop about, 145. Paganism, 178-179.
famine in 1917, 150.
temperatures of, 135.
Montezuma, 29, 95.
Mormons, 71, 406.
Mortality. See Death rates.
Infantile.
mortality.
See also Religion.
Palenque, 21, 59.
Palm, as building material, 240.
Panuco, landing of Nahuas, 21,
22.
See Infantile Paris fashions, 123, 296.
Patios, 236, 238, 245,
422
INDEX
Patria, 165.
Patriarchy, 211, 224.
Patriotism, 165, 407.
Pauperism, 392-397.
asylums, 393-396.
defectives, 106, 393.
pensions, 396.
See also Poverty.
"Pauperism, Vices, Crime, and,"
Part II, Chap. XII, 371.
Pawnshops, 368.
Pemol, 265.
Penal system, 390.
Peninsulares, 110.
Pennsylvania, death rates, 94.
Pensions, 396.
Peonage, 320-328.
constitution and, 322.
foundations of, 357.
hacienda store system, 325.
Peons, bathing, 303.
budget of, 362.
debt system, 324.
destructiveness of, 385.
dress of, 289, 291.
food of, 260.
in revolutions, 404.
land, use of, 316.
population of, 336, 338.
system of work, 349.
Peppers. See Chiles.
"Personalism," 6.
Peso, 184.
Petates, 250.
Philippines, settled from Mexico,
64.
Physicians, sanitary activities,
310.
Pigs, as scavengers, 309.
sleeping with, 251.
Plantations, American labor on,
325, 326.
Plateaus, population and, 77.
Plazas, 236, 237.
Plumbing, 307.
Police, 165.
crimes against, 387-388.
Policemen, caste of, 121.
Politics, conservatives and liber-
als, 184-185.
in revolution, 159.
nature of, 401.
"Personalism" in, 6.
race correspondences, 35.
rifle and machete, 401.
"Population," Part I, Chap.
IV, 56.
Population, 56-61.
age groups, 91.
autocolonization, 83.
Aztec, 58.
changes in, 73.
density of, 71-73.
distribution of, 72-73.
in 1920, 62.
rate of growth, 62, 63.
rural, 74.
rural, by states, 78.
town dwellers, 74.
urban, by states, 78.
Pork, trichina in, 103.
Posole, 265.
Potatoes, use of, 268.
Poultry, use of, 277.
Poverty, food and, 365.
of peons, 349.
uncleanliness and, 301. '
See also Pauperism.
Priests. See Catholic Church.
Prison reform, 391.
Prisons, 390.
Production, low standards of,
333.
Productivity of labor, 329.
Professional men, caste of, 125,
Prohibition, 378,
423
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Prohibition and crime, 379, 389.
See also Drinking.
Property, crimes against, 382,
387, 389.
increase in rural, 154.
of Indians, 317.
of married persons, 222.
Spanish conception of, 153.
Prostitution, 381.
Protestants, comment on pagan-
ism, 178.
difficulties of, 190, 193.
first missionaries, 191.
in United States, 175.
lack of funds, 193.
objects of work, 189, 190.
political activities, 189.
schools, 192.
statistics, 175-176.
untouched by revolution,
177.
See also Religion.
Provincialism, poor roads and,
163.
Pseudosocial class, 404.
Pulque, 376-377.
an autointoxicant, 105.
labor and, 327.
Punishment, capital, 391.
for crime, 390.
Race amalgamation, 8, 29, 34,
42.
blonds in crossings, 42.
caste parallels, 127.
class and, 110.
color line, 54, 111, 116.
correspondences, 35.
elements, 15.
history and, 44-50.
importance of, 405, 406.
inheritances, 41, 43.
instability of mixtures, 41.
isolation, 14.
"Latin-American," 48.
mestizo, 8.
mixtures, 42.
purity of, 24.
social values of, 38.
struggle, 7, 8, 26, 47.
See also Castes; Indians;
Mestizos; Whites.
"Race Origins," Part I, Chap.
II, 14.
Radicalism, 346.
Railway men, caste of, 122.
Railways, autocolonization and,
84.
built by Americans, 84.
cities and, 81.
merger of, 122.
Mexicanization of, 115.
national of Mexico, Ameri-
cans in, 122.
training schools, 115, 330,
331.
Rainfall, amount of, 141.
causes of, 139.
Humboldt's statistics, 147.
mountains and, 142.
population and, 75-77.
roads and, 164.
Rainstorms, from Gulf of Mex-
ico, 141.
Rainy season, 137, 140.
length of, 139.
Ranches, number of, 114.
Rancheros, 115, 154.
Rankin, Miss Matilda, 191.
Ratzel, quoted, 28.
Reboso, 119, 288, 295.
as sign of caste, 122.
Red Cross, American, sanitation
of Vera Cruz, 311.
sends corn, 150.
Reform, laws of. See Religion,
424
INDEX
Reform schools, 391. Roads, 162-164.
Regla, Conde de, 368. Rockefeller Institute, 109.
"Religion," Part II, Chap. Ill, Roman Catholic Church. See
170. Catholic Church.
Religion, American Bible Soci- Romero, Matias, quoted, 329,
ety, 191. 364.
Aztec, 180. Roofs, 242.
Catholic missions, 181. Rooms of Mexican houses, 246.
cemetery services, 187. Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted,
church buildings, 173, 174, 177.
175.
Root, Elihu, 177.
conversion of Indians, 180. Rubber, American plantations,
Jesuits, 180. 325.
marriage. See Marriage. Ruins, population indicated by,
nature of, 178.
outrages, 177.
Pious fund, 184, 185.
population, 171, 174-177.
Protestants, 171, 175, 176.
reform laws, 113, 186, 187, Rurales, 166.
188, 191, 213, 214.
reform, wars of, 35.
59.
rivers and, 81.
Rural, property, increase in, 154.
population. See Popula-
tion.
Spanish fanaticism, 180.
zeal of Spaniards, 7.
Sahara desert, causes of, 140.
Salaries. See Wages.
Salina Cruz, temperatures, of,
135.
Saltillo, temperatures of, 135.
Salto Air as, 41.
See also Catholic Church;
Protestants.
Rents, 365.
Repartimientos, 321. Sandals, 294, 298.
Republic, federalized, 152. "Sanitation." Part II, Chap.
Revillagigedo, Conde de, census IX, 301.
Sanitation, difficulties of, 309.
Indian lack of, 59.
police and, 166.
under Diaz, 308.
Vera Cruz, 311.
San Luis Potosi, temperatures
of, 135.
San Lunes, 375.
of, 60.
Revolution, of 1810, 46, 50.
of 1823, 46, 48.
of 1910-20, 48, 70, 177,
346.
Revolutions, number of, 159.
start of, 165.
Rice, preparation of, 268.
Rivas Palacio, Vicente, quoted, Scavengers, 309.
51. Schools. See Education.
Rivers, 81. Self-made men, caste of, 125.
absence of, 142. Senoritas, place of, 232.
"Hidden," 142. Servants, caste of, 120.
425
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
Servants, food of, 273.
position in home, 212.
Sesto, Julio, quoted, 225.
Sevillana, 295.
Sewage disposal, 309.
Sexual overindulgence, 99, 380.
Shawls. See Reboso; Zerape.
Shelter, cost of, 365.
Shoes, 294.
as class distinction, 298.
cost of, 367.
Shopkeepers, caste of, 122.
Sick, care of, 101.
Sickness. See also Disease;
Health, ill.
Stilar, 241.
Slave labor, caste of, 119.
Slavery, hacienda store system,
325.
Indians sought for, 320.
of Indians, 321.
under Aztecs, 25.
See also Peonage.
Sleeping habits, 250.
Slums, 253.
Soap, cost of, 366.
scarcity of, 301.
Social question, untouched by
Diaz, 10.
Social values of races, 38.
Socialism, 11, 49, 121, 346.
Soil contamination, 310.
Soldadera, 96, 233.
Soldiers, average march of, 96.
caste of, 118.
Sombrero, 287, 288, 291.
as mark of caste, 119.
Spain, death rates, 94.
king of Church and, 183.
See also Charles IV; Charles
V; Ferdinand VII.
Spaniards, census of, 70.
climate and, 30.
426
colonists, 28.
crossings with negroes, 41.
expulsion of, 9, 45.
grocery clerks, 123.
land laws of, 317, 319.
numbers, 15.
religious zeal, 7.
social structure, 110.
See also Asturians; Basques.
Spanish language, 15, 17, 18.
Starr, Frederick, quoted, 98, 107.
Starvation, 392.
Statistics, Mexican, unreliability
of, 36, 37, 67, 92, 107, 199.
St. John's Day, baths on, 118,
301, 303.
Streets, care of, 167.
description of, 237-239.
Styles. See Clothing.
Survey, laws of, 318.
Sweat-shops, 335.
Syphilis, 105.
Tacubaya, casino of, 372.
Tailors, 293.
Tamales, 264.
Tampico, American colonies at,
71.
Tareas, 334.
Task system, 334.
Taxes, collection of, 161.
Tea, use of, 272.
Tehuanas, dress of, 297.
Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, Amer-
ican colonies on, 71.
American plantations, 325.
crossed by Nahuas, 22.
dress of women of, 297.
Temperate country, 134.
Temperature, monotony of, 136.
seasonal range of, 135.
Temperatures, ideal, 133.
night, 137.
INDEX
Tenements, 253.
Teotihuacan, 23, 32, 59.
Tepetate, 241.
Tequila, 376.
Texontle, 241.
Theaters, town control of, 162.
Tienda de raya, 325.
Tierra, love of, 162, 164.
Caliente, 133.
Fria, 134.
Templada, 134.
Tijuana, gambling at, 373.
Tile, floors, 247.
roofs, 243.
Timatli, 290.
Tinsel on clothes, 287.
Toltec Indians, 19, 21, 23, 24.
Tools, use of, 332.
Tortillas, 257, 260, 262, 263.
Town dwellers, 74.
plan, 237.
spirit, 162.
Traditions, sanitation and, 313.
Tramways, lottery scheme of,
374.
Trousers, 293.
True lite, 400, 402.
Vagrancy laws, 390.
Valle Nacional, 327.
Valley of Mexico, 19.
Indian population of, 57,
58.
Indians in, 19, 20, 22, 23.
population's cradle, 82.
Vegetables, use of, 267-268.
Venereal diseases, 105.
Vera Cruz, sanitation of, 311.
temperatures at, 135.
United States army doctors
in, 109.
Vermin, 100, 306.
"Vices, Crime, and Pauperism,"
Part II, Chap. XII, 371.
Viga Canal, 274.
Villages preferred by Indians,
156.
"Vitality," Part I, Chap. V, 86.
Wages, agricultural, 354, 356.
Americans, 356.
Aztecs, 353.
clerk class, 357.
comparative, 356.
general, 326, 331.
history of, 353.
Tuskeegee Institute, 207.
"Type, the Mexican," Part I, living habits and, 350.
Chap. I, 1. peon, 360.
perquisites, 357.
Underclothing, 298. railway, 355.
Undernourishment, 104, 282, school-teachers, 357.
285. women, 342-345.
Unions, labor. See Labor. War, population and, 59, 100.
United States, army, sanitation Water power, 143.
of Vera Cruz, 109, 311.
death rates, 94.
emigration to, 65-68.
Mexicans in, 65-68.
population, growth, 62.
Usumacinta River, 82.
Usury, 351, 352, 369.
supply, 308.
uses of streams, 310.
Waterclosets, 307.
Weather epidemics stopped by,
102.
See also Climate.
Wells, David A., quoted, 330,
427
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO
White man's burden, 406.
Whites, civilization of, 34.
control by, 49.
domination of, 45.
education, 200.
expulsion of, 48.
government, 159.
immigration of, 399, 406.
labor of, 39.
reduction in numbers, 47.
sanitary measures of, 314.
savior of lower races, 25.
See also Aristocracy;. Race.
White world, 12, 407.
Wine, use of, 270, 370.
See also Drinking.
Wives, influence of, 226.
position of, 222, 224, 226.
Women, attitude' to ward, 380.
child-bearing, 219.
education of, 232.
fecundity of, 97, 98.
home work, 233.
in army, 233.
labor of, 225, 232, 234, 341-
345.
sex, 380.
social life, 231.
virtues of, 225, 226, 227.
Workingmen's compensation,
396.
World atlas of foreign missions,
quoted, 175.
Worms as food, 284.
Yaqui Indians, 19, 392.
Yellow world, 407.
Yucatan, colonial slave trade,
64.
criminal labor in, 392.
invaded by Nahuas, 21.
labor question, 329.
Maya Indians, 19.
peonage in, 325, 326.
prohibition in, 379.
Zacatecas, Nahuas in, 21, 23.
temperatures of, 135.
Zambos, 111.
Zapata, Emiliano, 26.
Zempoala, 59.
Zerape, 286, 289, 290, 292, 368.
THE END
