// Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/mexicotodaysociaOOwint FORWARD MISSION STUDY COURSES EDITED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS (N. B.— Special helps and denominational missionary litera- ture for this course can be obtained by correspondence with the Secretary of your mission board or society.) BENITO JUAREZ MEXICO TO-DAY SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS BY GEORGE B. WINTON SMITH & LAMAR, AGTS. NASHVILLE, TENN. DALLAS, TEX. RICHMOND, VA. (ps a MAR 2 3 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA NEW YORK CONTENTS CHAPTBE PAGE Preface ....... ix I The Country and People .... 3^ II Political Evolution 33 III Religions, Ancient and Modern . . 75 IV Social and Moral Inheritances . . .115 V The Intellectual Awakening During the Nineteenth Century .... 143 VI The Protestant Movement . . .175 APPENDIXES A Constitution and Government . B Area and Population C Religion, Instruction, and Justice D Production and Industry . E Bibliography ..... F Statistics of Protestant Missions in Mexico 1913 Index . . . . . . 209 211 212- 213 216 223 227 ILLUSTRATIONS Benito Juarez . . . . . Frontispiece Relief Map ...... Page 4 Where Strawberries Ripen Every Day in the Year ......" 8 Where 100 Bananas Sell for Eight Cents " 8 Natives of Chihuahua . . . . " 20 Prehistoric Remains: Calendar Stone Discovered 1790 . " 34 Hall of Mosaics "34 Porfirio Diaz "54 Cathedral, Mexico City . . . . " 98 Homes of the Poor . . . . . " 120 Interior of Home of a Wealthy Gentleman " 120 Street Gambling "132 Group of Women and Children . . "132 Woman Who Walked 100 Miles to Find a Protestant Church . . . . . " 136 Children of Mexico " 150 Studying English in Y. M. C. A., Chihua- hua "164 Graduating Class, Normal School, Saltillo " 188 Sarah L. Keen College for Girls, Mexico City "188 Faculty and Students, Theological Semi- nary, Coyoacan ....." 192 Faculty and Students, Queretaro Institute " 192 Trinity Church, Chihuahua . . . " 198 vii viii Illustrations McMurtrie Chapel and Manse, Coyoacan Page 198 A Christian Family . . ... . " 200 Typical Rural Home of a Christian Family *' 200 Map ........ End PREFACE Mexico and its affairs have of late taken much space in the press dispatches. For about a generation that country has been well policed and has prospered. A general shock of surprise and disappointment has there- fore been felt at recent events. Many have been ready to charge the renewal of insur- rection and war to racial defects in the Mexi- can people. A good deal of superficial writ- ing has appeared in the papers, — the remarks of observers ignorant of the country's history and failing in consequence to enter into the deeper currents of its national life. The Mexican people are engaged in a strug- gle for freedom. Political independence has been achieved ; liberty of conscience is at last realized; a liberal constitution guarantees human rights. But the burden of popular ignorance and of industrial helplessness has not yet been lifted. That load must be taken off. It has grown insufferable. The paroxysms that are now shaking the country to its center are but blind struggles after this liberty. Mexico needs help, especially the ix X Peeface help of her nearest neighbors on the north. To know her condition, to sympathize, to lend a hand in the work of education and in the spread of true religion, is far better than to criticise and to threaten her with armed inter- vention. This book has been written wholly in the interest of a better understanding between neighbors. G. B. WiNTON. Nashville, Tenn., May 20, 1913. THE COUNTEY AND PEOPLE The most famous group of mines, historically, is that in the districts of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Catone in the states of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi respectively. These districts, covering an area of some thirteen thousand square miles, are practically within the tropics, for the northern boundary is only 24 degrees and 30 minutes north of the equator. The Veta Madre lode of Guanajuato alone produced $252,000,000 between 1556 and 1803.— Joseph King Goodrich. Now with regard to the character of the people. They are as Oriental in type, in thought, and in habits as the Orientals themselves. It is true they have a veneer of European civilization; but underneath this, veneer, on studying the people and becoming better acquainted with them, we find that they are genuine Asiatics. They have some of the fatalism, the same tendency for speculation on the unpractical side of life and religion, the same oppo- sition to the building up of industries, the same tradition- alism and respect for the usages of antiquity. The lan- guage spoken is the Spanish, which is universally used by the Indian tribes. — William Wallace. Land holdings are concentrated to a greater degree in Mexico to-day than they were in France in 1789. Seven thousand families hold practically all the arable land. If the distribution were proportionately the same as it is in the United States, one million Mexican families would be in possession of titles to landed property. In the state of Morelos, the center of the Zapatist revolt, tw'elve hacendados (proprietors) own nine tenths of the farming property. In Chihuahua, the center of the agrarian revo- lution in^ the north, the Terrazas family holds nearly twenty million acres, which comprise nearly all the tillable soil of that state. The greater portion of the state of Yucatan is held by thirty men, kings of sisal hemp. The territory of Quintana Roo, which is double the size of Massachusetts, is divided among eight companies. When I visited Madero on January 27, he unrolled a map of Lower California showing the land gifts of General Diaz. That territory, equal in area to Alabama, had been sold in five vast tracts for about three fifths of a cent an acre. — John Kenneth Turner. CHAPTER I THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE A Pleasant land. Mexico is a picture book for the study of geography. Nowhere can mountain and plain, valley and foothill, river, lake, forest, and field be seen in sharper out- line or examined on a more beautiful map of gray and green and gold. Travelers will find that country well worth a visit. The trip is convenient and inexpensive ; and it is well to remember — strange as the statement may sound — that it is as pleasant in summer as in winter. ** But is not Mexico in the tropics? '^ To be sure. But most of it is from five to nine thousand feet above sea- level, and an altitude of five thousand feet or over guarantees pleasant summer weather, no matter what the latitude is. The Mountains. Glance at the map. Down either side of the curving triangle runs a rib of mountains — the Sierra Madre (Mother Eange) each is called, one of the east, the other of the west. They are continuations in a rough way of the Rockies and Sierra Ne- 3 4 Mexico To-Day vada. (Nevada means *' snow-capped.'')" These main ranges are mostly quite near the sea — the Gulf of Mexico on the east, the Pa- cific Ocean on the west. The region between each range and its corresponding coast is everywhere a broken tangle of deep gorges, vast cliffs, terraced foothills, and open val- leys, of varying elevations, with here and there a strip of hot, seacoast plain. The de- scent from the summit of the ranges to sea- level may be anything from six to twelve thousand feet, and as this huge drop of two miles is often made in fifty miles or less of distance, one reason at once appears why so few railways have made their way out to the coast. Along the Coast. The coastal strips and ad- joining foothills have never been thickly in- habited. Along the coast the climate is dry and very hot. On the mountainsides there is more rainfall, and verdure is abundant. But the hills and the gorges are usually so rough as to be almost uninhabitable, and, besides, terrible malarial fevers prevail. A plague of insect pests interferes with agriculture and stock-raising, to say nothing of making life burdensome to the human animal. To these disadvantages of life in the coast re- gion is to be added the singular fact that on The Country and People 5 the whole huge coast-line of Mexico (about 6,000 miles) on the east and west together, there is scarcely a single good harbor. Vera Cruz has only a roadstead, Tampico but the narrow and tortuous channel of a river. On the west the harbors at Acapulco and Mazat- lan are a little better, but the Pacific Ocean is very wide, and there has never been much traffic with the Orient. So it comes about that up to the present the coast cities are in- significant, the coast region sparsely inhab- ited, and all of Mexico that is worth while is on the great central plateau. Central Plateau. This plateau is a curving triangle, shaped like the country, highest at its southern apex where the two great ranges draw together and sloping gradually to the valley of the Eio Grande on the north. Mon- terey is the only city of importance situated outside the plateau. It lies north of a fold in the great range of the east, and is itself about two thousand feet above sea-level. Climate of Central Eegion. This outline of topography will account for the surprising statement that Mexico is a good summer re- sort. The general level of the country be- tween the great ranges, the country which is really Mexico, is more than five thousand feet above sea-level. This guarantees cool, sweet 6 Mexico To-Day air even in midsummer. This interior pla- teau is not a perfectly flat table-land, but is itself broken up into smaller ranges, hills, and plains. Much of it is considerably above the average altitude, and several of the cities ■ — Mexico, Zacatecas, Toluca, and others — are more than seven thousand feet above sea- level. Toluca is nearly nine thousand, and is overshadowed by a snow-capped mountain. Its air is chill and bracing during the hottest months, yet it suffers from no severe cold even in winter. Tonic Yet Trying Temperattire. This absence of winter is one of the marked features of life in Mexico. Over the wide reaches of the plateau it often forms frosts during the win- ter months, but seldom freezes. Those are months of sunshine; the bright sun each day warms up the air and the earth, while the warm winds that roll up from the tropic seas on either side of the narrow continent keep real winter well at bay. As will be seen, with winters that are so mild and sunny and with summers tempered by cool mountain breezes, high altitudes, and frequent showers, Mexico offers for mere human comfort an almost ideal climate. High altitudes make insidious inroads on the nerves, however, and the sharp changes from heat by day to frost by The Country and People 7 night may be disastrous to health if not guarded against. The water supply is usually defective and the sanitation of the cities, most of which are very old, leaves much to be desired. Lack of Eainfall. This remark about the' water brings up the most noteworthy aspect of the Mexican climate, next to the even tem- perature. Mexico is an arid country. It is so situated with reference to the trade-winds that even along its coasts the rainfall is scant. In the interior it is even lighter. The two mountain ranges, east and west, act as fences against moisture. They comb the clouds out of the breezes that flow up from the ocean and the Gulf. There is, nevertheless, a rainy season — from May to October — throughout the plateau. In some years the rains are sufficient to produce fair crops of corn and beans and barley. These rains are usually more abundant toward the southern end of the plateau. In some of the northern and central sections the rainfall is so light that no crops can be counted on without irriga- tion. But water for irrigation is itself un- certain, depending on the rainfall. None of the mountain ranges have snow on them. A few volcanic peaks near the junction of the two ranges south of Mexico City reach up 8 Mexico To-Day into the region of perpetual snow. The snow-line is, of course, higher there than in northern latitudes. But the long sierras east and west are without the treasures of ice and snow to melt under the summer sun and send down a gush of permanent water when the plains need it most. Eecourse is therefore had to dams and reservoirs, which catch the overflow when the summer rains fall and store it up against the drouth of planting time the next spring. Such enterprises are expensive, but as the lands are fertile and the sun warm and constant, the returns are enor- mous. Wherever there are streams that are at all permanent they are tapped and drawn off into cultivated fields. Many of them thus never make their way out to the sea, and most of them are often dry and desolate looking. Mexico's Products. The products of the in- terior of the country are those of the tem- perate rather than of the tropic zone. Corn, wheat, barley, beans, cotton, peppers, toma- toes, oranges, berries, and similar products are staples. Potatoes, tomatoes, corn, and tobacco are indigenous to the New World. Mexico subsists largely on corn. Before the days of the Europeans its people had learned to soak the grain in limewater, pound it Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. WHERE STRAWBEREIES RIPEN EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR WHERE 100 BANANAS SELL FOR EIGHT CENTS The Country and People 9 while damp into dough and bake the cakes of this on hot stones. These little cakes or tor- tillas are still the staple bread of the country. The Spaniards brought over beans or fri- joles. These, boiled in water and afterward, if the family can afford it, fried in lard, sup- plement the corn cakes. These two ingre- dients make up nine tenths of the fare of nine tenths of the people of Mexico. If there is no lard in which to fry the beans, they are eaten boiled ; if there are no beans, the tortil- las are eaten alone — with perhaps a few raw peppercorns to flavor them. The fondness of the people for hot red and green peppers or chillies is well known. With them they season about everything which they cook, often too strongly for unaccustomed palates. Scenery and Flora. Mexico is a picturesque land. The air is astonishingly clear. Dis- tant objects appear near. The mountains are bare and rugged, their bones sticking out harshly. The country has few forests, and they mostly of small trees. The scantiness of moisture is everywhere apparent. Many of the plains appear to be nothing more than sandy deserts. As for that, much depends on the season. In the time of the rains these plains break out with the green and gold of flowering plants. The stiff yuccas and cac- 10 Mexico To-Day tuses which one sees weathering even the dry seasons — the time of year when most people visit Mexico — have more life in them than they seem to have, and all of them are nseful. The yuccas produce a valuable fiber, and the flat-leaved cactus a fruit that is highly esteemed. The maguey or cen- tury plant is tapped for a sweet juice that ferments into a kind of beer; it is crushed and the juice distilled into a fiery brandy; its leaves make food for cattle; its stalk is preserved and eaten for sweetmeat; a fiber from it makes ropes, cloth, or paper; and in a dozen other homely ways this strange plant is made to minister to the needs of man. It is called, for example, the thread-and-needle plant. The pointed tip of its great leaves may be broken off in such a manner that by pulling on it a long and strong fiber is drawn from the leaf. One has thus in his hand a needle and a thread for such repairs of his clothes as moving through the thorny thickets may have made urgent. Animal life. The thickets of short vegeta- tion, on foothills and mountains that at a little distance seem utterly bare, are often surprisingly dense. They furnish hiding- places and browse for wild deer and domestic goats and cattle. Through them swarm The Country and People 11 quail and hares and coyotes; hundreds of cactus wrens, fly-catchers, and mocking-birds nest among them, and cheer the lonely reaches with their song. The whole plateau region is largely free of obnoxious insects. The smaller mountain ranges are often crowned with oaks and pines, and with their wide views, bracing air, and tonic nights, free from frost and rain, offer ideal conditions for camping. Minerals. From the beginning Mexico has been famous for the abundance of the pre- cious metals. These strange, bare-looking mountains often conceal great treasures of silver and gold. The output of silver from the mountains of Mexico has been, and still is, enormous. There are single mines that have been producing for over a hundred years and are still not exhausted. The ex- ports of silver during the Spanish regime have to be counted in ship-loads, and the total is so enormous that it is quite incom- prehensible. Gold has been found in many places, and is produced in paying quantities. Quicksilver abounds in some parts of the republic, and is immensely valuable. There are also one or two copper-producing re- gions, especially in the northwest. But it is for lead and silver that Mexico is best known. 12 Mexico To-Day Great smelting plants have been set up in several principal cities — Monterey, Aguas- calientes, San Luis Potosi, and elsewhere, — and even in many isolated mining regions. Eailways have been driven through the roughest mountain sections to bring out the products of the mines, and the additions from this source to the wealth of the country have been on a grand scale. Geology. Geologically much of Mexico is of recent formation, and even the ranges that are of ancient rock have most of them been jostled and tilted out of their level by later volcanic action. Much of the limestone has been metamorphosed into marble, of which there are inexhaustible supplies. In many places beautiful and valuable onyx is found. One volcano, Colima, is still active occasion- ally, and throughout the whole country, in the south and west especially, earthquake shocks are not infrequent. Other Products. Besides minerals, Mexico exports manila hemp, ixtle ^ fiber, bananas, coffee, tobacco, vanilla, chocolate, and vari- ous other articles of commerce. Of staple farm products she scarcely produces enough for her own people, especially in years of 1 Ixtle or istle fiber comes from several plants growing in Mexico. The Country and People 13 light rainfall. The progress of the country has been impeded by the holding of its land in large tracts, much of it unimproved, and the reduction of the small farmer to the cate- gory of renter or hired man. Stock-raising is an important part of the rural interests of the country. There are large exportations of hides, and in recent years, of cattle, while the interior traffic in horses, cattle, goats, and sheep is always heavy. The People. The people of Mexico are, in their way, as picturesque as their country. Something over half of them are of mixed blood, Indian and Spanish. Of the remain- der a good deal more than half are pure- blood natives — Indians, we call them, for lack of a better name. The rest are Euro- peans, mostly Spaniards. For a good while after the coming of the Spaniards (in 1521) a careful distinction was kept up between natives or indigenas, the Spaniards, and the mixed bloods or mestizos. There were dis- tinctions even in the grades of these, such as half-breeds, quadroons, octoroons, and other gradations; and the Mexican-born children of Spaniards or Creoles (criollos) were also distinguished from people born in Europe. In a general way these distinctions were so- cial, and tended to lower the standing of all 14 Mexico To-Day others below the level of the Spanish hidalgo^ whether soldier, priest, or governor. The rulers in Chnrch and state and the large land and mine owners — often the same people — formed a sort of aristocracy to which the rest of the world looked up. They were usually proud of their Spanish blood and took pains to keep it from intermixture. Spaniards of a lower class, however, mingled freely with the natives. The Creoles, already somewhat otfcaste because Creoles, were even readier to adopt the social level of the people with whom they had associated from childhood.^ The Mixing: of Kaces. For three hundred years the process of amalgamation went on. Comparatively speaking, not many women came from old Spain to New Spain, as Mex- ico was then called. On the other hand, the Indians found in Mexico were sufficiently ad- vanced in agricultural and industrial arts to hold their own in competition. They had social institutions and were of a high order of intelligence. Physically they were not inferior to the Spaniards, not even a great deal darker in complexion than the Andalu- 1 One result of this came to be a confusion in the minds of many as to the meaning of the word " Creole," a word which was often applied to mestizos. Properly it means American- born children of European parents. The Countky and People 15 sians. The Mexican women especially were petite, modest, attractive. Intermarriage therefore became common. It was indeed inevitable. There were no grave barriers. Social lines were drawn, but for other rea- sons. The people of mixed blood multiplied. They came to be nearly half of the popula- tion. Any attempt to ostracize them as a class was more and more absurd. In 1821, three hundred years after the arrival of the Spaniards, Mexico was freed from Spain. After that there was — theoretically, at least ■ — equal opportunity for all. The old mori- bund distinctions died at last. Now all are Mexicans, and proud of it. They take about as little interest in the question of how much or little of Spanish blood an individual has as we do in the United States in the question whether a man's grandfather was Scottish, English, or Irish, German, French, or Ameri- can. A few families keep to the " blue '' Spanish blood in their marriages, and pri- vately make some boast of it. But they too are none the less enthusiastic Mexicans. To be a gachupin (nickname for Spaniard) is by no means popular in Mexico. The Native Races. Eesearches into the his- tory of the Mexican tribes prior to the com- ing of the Europeans are more interesting 16 Mexico To-Day than satisfactory. The tribes that had suc- cessively inhabited the Valley of Mexico — Toltec, Aztec, and others, — had developed a fairly intelligible picture-writing. They had invented a process for making excellent paper out of certain fibrous plants, and on this pa- per, in the hieroglyphics of which they made use, they had many valuable records and memoranda. Unfortunately a perfect ma- nia for destroying everything connected with the priests and worship of the Indians pos- sessed the Spanish conquerors. These Spaniards were mostly illiterate and super- stitious men, the priests who were with them being not much better than the soldiers. Since the sacrifice of prisoners before the god of war was one of the desperate resorts that marked the resistance of the Indians to the invaders, the Spanish naturally con- ceived a great horror for all their religion. They sincerely believed it devil worship. Hence they ruthlessly destroyed the invalu- able records laid up in the temples, and so rendered abortive any attempt to trace back the history of the interesting and more than half-civilized peoples whom they were striving to conquer. Within a very few years the folly of this wholesale destructive- ness began to be seen. Persons of scholarly The Countky and People 17 taste did all they could to remedy it. A young Spanish priest, Padre Sahagun, came to Mexico in 1829 as a missionary to the In- dians. He was a gentle, amiable man, of humanitarian temper, who soon came to sympathize thoroughly with the people among whom he labored. He had the schol- ar's instinct for what is valuable and inter- esting, and set himself to learn the native language. In the course of a few years he produced a valuable lexicon, written in three columns, one giving the Indian, the next the Spanish, and the third the Latin word. It will be recalled that at the time the lexicon was prepared the Spanish language itself had scarcely crystallized into its classical mold, so that Latin had to be resorted to for scholarly definition. An Early Spanish Scholar. Sahagun passed from the study of the native language to the study of the people themselves and their history. Encouraged for a time by his eccle- siastical superiors, who allowed him leisure and financial help, he surrounded himself with Indian scholars who were able to inter- pret and to write the picture symbols in use before the Spanish came. These men col- lected such annals as had been fortunately left over from the universal devastation of 18 Mexico To-Day the conquest, and when these were lacking they made new ones. In this way, by the interpretations given by Sahagun and oth- ers, something of the story of the Indians may be learned. This good man devoted sixty years to these studies, much of the time in poverty, the object of jealousy and suspicion. His work has been of immense value to students. The Aztec Kingdom. It was only recently, comparatively speaking, that the records had been kept. The Aztec Kingdom of Monte- zuma had been built on the ruins of a Toltec civilization that in everything but warlike vigor had been superior to it. Its capital, which we now call Mexico City, was lo- cated on a rocky island in a great shallow lake. The place was selected because it was easy to defend. Its location had been desig- nated by the medicine-men of the tribe when they had found there a small eagle sitting on a cactus devouring a snake. This device is now the coat of arms of the Mexican repub- lic. Here the Aztecs, who were a tribe of warriors that had drifted in from the west, soon built up a hostile city over against the capital of the Toltecs, situated across Lake Texcoco, overcame their more civilized neighbors, and by the time of the Spanish The Countey and People 19 invasion were the dominating force in all that part of Mexico. Toltecs and Others. The Toltecs, whom they subjugated, had, like themselves, come from the west. The place names which still re- main indicate that they came up from the Pacific coast in the neighborhood of San Bias, tarrying more or less in what is now the state of Jalisco, and gradually moving on to the beautiful region about Mexico City, where they seem to have displaced still ear- lier inhabitants. These remote tribes moved down east and south leaving striking remains in the stone buildings of ruined cities still to be found. These buildings exhibit much skill and taste in stone work, and some of them are covered with inscriptions which have never yet been deciphered. Early Migrations. How these successive mi- grations had originally reached the west coast of Mexico is not known. The tradi- tions of the Indians themselves mostly point to a land migration down the coast from the north. It is believed by some that these were the people who left behind them the great cliff dwellings and the remains of an elaborate irrigation system in Arizona and New Mexico. They seem to have been driven out of that region by the inroads of 20 Mexico To-Day warlike desert tribes, possibly the Apaches, They were not themselves warlike but agri- cultural and pacific in their tastes. Kinship to Japanese. Both the Mexican In- dians and the Pueblo tribes, the Mohaves, Zuhi, Navajos, and others of our own south- west, are a small brown type of men, quite different from the tall, copper-colored Ameri- cans of the east and north. Many things suggest their kinship with the Japanese. The ocean current which strikes our west coast, flowing almost directly east, might have brought over in some remote past immigrants, willing or unwilling, from the Sunrise King- dom. But, as the Mexicans are fond of say- ing, Quien sahel (Who knows?) People Now Homogeneous. In spite of the fact that the people of Mexico vary thus in their origin they show to-day a marked and homogeneous national type. There are some sharp variations, it is true, among the native Indians — those tribes which, remaining in retired mountain regions, have kept from in- termingling with the Europeans. The Ta- rasco varies from the Huasteco and both from the Aztec or Mixtec. These variations are not radical, however, and result in part from differences in habitat and surround- ings. The same physical type prevails gen- NATIVES OF CIIinUAHUA The Countey and People - 21 erally. The native Mexican is short and sturdy. His face and head are large, his feet and hands small, his palm long and fin- gers short, his body muscular. He can carry enormous loads, and as a runner in high alti- tudes is incomparable. His lung power is immense and his endurance a wonder. An Indian will hire himself to a traveler to carry his valise over the mountain trails, the trav- eler proceeding on Horseback. In such a case the Indian with the valise on his back is always more than a match for the horse. Tlie Indians To-day. These remaining native tribes keep timidly to the wild mountain re- gions that have not been taken away from them for farming or other purposes. They hold tenaciously to their lands and are jeal- ous of any inroads by ^' white folks," whether for mining, lumbering, or trade. They have been cheated, tricked, and im- posed upon for four hundred years and have reason to be on their guard. Yet no people in the world are more amiable and cordial with those who merit and have won their con- fidence. Their hospitality is untiring and their good-will unfeigned. They are all nominally converted to the Catholic faith, just as they all yield obedience to the consti- tuted government. There was in fact no 22 Mexico To-Day great difference in tlie way they were bronglit into subjection to the one and the other. Capacity of Indians. While at the time of the Spanish conquest some of the tribes ex- hibited more advance in civilization than others, and while since that time there have been more conspicuous individuals arising from one tribe than from another, it seems a fact that the Indians of practically all the tribes are intelligent and capable of great development. The theory which seems to get lodged in the minds of many, that the civilized Mexicans are all Europeans or of European blood, does not at all square with the facts. Padre Sahagun speaks of the men who were associated with him in reduc- ing the Indian language and history to writ- ing as '' very intelligent men," and he deals with them and their work quite as deferen- tially as though they had shared with him the best culture of the Europe of his day. Famous Indians. And in spite of the fact that from the very beginning the natives were forced into a position of subjection and inferiority, were denied intellectual training and many civil and social rights, there has never been a period in Mexico 's history with- out its distinguished men of Indian stock — The Countey and People 23 poets, painters, statesmen, warriors, — wlio rose by sheer ability against the vast handi- cap that bore them back, and took their places among the great ones of their country. The famous patriot, constitutionalist, and President, Benito Juarez, probably Mexico's very greatest man, was a full-blood Mix- tec Indian, a shepherd boy who did not learn Spanish till he was fourteen years old. Many other illustrious names stand with his on the roll of fame. And in addition the common experience of everyday life has shown over and over again that in essential human worth the native, so long despised, is not a whit inferior to those who by the acci- dent of better arms once subjugated him. Long ago, therefore, it came about that no Mexican is ashamed of Indian blood; rather, he is proud of it. A notion common in the United States, that you compliment a Mexi- can by calling him a Spaniard, provokes south of the Rio Grande only a broad smile. The Mestizos. The people of mixed blood, about half of the total population, are the farmers, the artisans, the traders, servants, miners, laborers, and too often loafers, of the villages, farms, cities, and towns of the great central plateau. It is mostly they, rather than the real Indians, who are the 24 Mexico To-Day peons of whom we have heard so much. This word, in ordinary usage in Mexico, sim- ply means an unskilled laborer. Its technical meaning is due to certain industrial laws and customs long prevailing in that country, but now, thanks to President Diaz, largely abolished. Moral Tendencies. No railing accusation is to be brought against a whole nation nor even against a whole class in a nation. It is unfortunately true, nevertheless, that the law that people of mixed blood tend to in- herit the vices of both sides of their ancestry, rather than the virtues, has operated in Mex- ico. Deprived of any fixed social standing, with no certain avenues of development open to them, their wits sharpened by contact with civilizing conditions but lacking the correc- tion of formal education, their religion a mat- ter of form and show, their morbid taste for gambling and dissipating amusements given free rein, it is not surprising that the mesti- zos of Mexico have often been a turbulent and unruly element in the body politic. They have differed from the Indian largely in be- ing without the pressure of his conservative social and domestic traditions. A Middle Class. The mestizos or mixed bloods are the typical Mexicans of to-day. The Country and People 25 The chances are pretty nearly ten to one that any chance Mexican encountered is a man who is neither all Indian nor all Spaniard. The question of blood matters little to them, and should matter little to us. They are the great body of the people of their country, that should be, and that doubtless soon will be, the great middle class. For a long time Mexico had no middle class: only the rich and the poor — very rich and very poor. To- day is changing that. Freedom, public schools, modern industrialism, better wages, open fields of opportunity, the stirring of a new intellectual awakening, the leaven of the gospel are elements that are swiftly building up a middle class, independent, self-support- ing, self-respecting, intelligent, moral. If only the ambitions of politicians would allow the country to remain at peace, in another generation the work could largely be done and the future of Mexico assured. No demo- j cratic government can persist unless it rests ion a great body of such middle class people. And once such a people conjes to feel its strength, no government but a democratic government will be permitted by it. The Spanish Stock. The pure-blood Spanish stock, in so far as it now forms anything like a class, is confined to the very wealthy fami- 26 Mexico To-Day lies. The men of this class are usually edu- cated, cultured, agreeable. They have trav- eled widely and they exhibit the fine traits bred by an affluent civilization. When they have so chosen they have usually been the governing class in Mexico. Under republi- can institutions this state of things is rapidly ceasing. The public schools during thirty- five years of peace have already turned out a whole generation of young fellows, many of them representing nothing at all of family prestige, who are taking their places beside the men of the old ruling class and sharply competing with them in leadership. And be- sides, in these descendants of the hidalgos, three centuries of luxury has bred a good deal of distaste for the moil of politics, and sapped in some measure that physical vi- tality which is still so ample in the sons of the people. Thus there is in the modern political and social life of Mexico a leveling down as well as a leveling up. And in so far as this concerns privilege and power, none need of course regret it. The day of gov- ernment by the people, the plain people, the common people, is dawning in all the world. Spaniard and Indian. The relations between the Spanish conquerors and their successors and the natives of Mexico make an interest- The Country and People 27 ing study. At times one smiles at it, more often he grieves. The attitude of mind of the early Spanish colonists comes out in a curious phrase which they employed to dis- tinguish themselves from the natives. They and their children were spoken of as " gente de razon/' to distinguish them from the In- dians, mere " indigenas.'' The phrase prob- ably came into use as the equivalent of '^ educated " or " cultured '' people. But it literally means '^ people of reason," the im- plication being that the Indians were without reason. Indeed some of the early military governors, who did not like the way the mis- sionaries stood up for the natives, argued against all missionary work among them on the ground that they had no souls. Such ob- jections were once made in our own country against religious work among the Negroes. A Great Indian. Judge Ignacio Altamirano, one of Mexico's greatest literary leaders, a lover of Shakespeare and fond of English literature generally, died a few years ago in Paris, where he was consul-general for Mex- ico. He was a full-blood Indian, and thor- oughly typical physically, — dark, slight, with a large face and dainty hands and feet. He used to tell with considerable humor how he came to get his start educationally. In the 28 Mexico To-Day school of the village where he lived a strict distinction was kept up between Indians and ^^ people of reason/' and only the children of the latter were admitted. But in the course of time his father, a sturdy Indian, was elected alcalde or mayor of the town. His mother, who had already prepared for her little boy an ahecedario — the let- ters of the alphabet on a shingle — put in a claim at once that since his father was now a public official, Ignacio had become '^ gente de razon.'' The teacher of the school was somewhat nonplussed at this new argument, but concluded that it would be wise to decide the matter in the way that would compliment the alcalde. So Ignacio got into the primary school, was recognized as ^' gente de razon,'' and amply proved it by becoming, so far as the record shows, the school's one distinguished pupil. Peonage. In spite of this lordly and some- times contemptuous attitude, the Spaniard was often a kind master. On the great plan- tations conditions prevailed almost identical with those in the South of our own country during slavery days. The peons of a hacienda were enslaved in a somewhat worse way than if they had been bought as chattels. Chattel slaves are always well cared for be- The Countey and People 29 cause they are actual property. Peonage was a kind of industrial slavery in which it was the man's labor that was pawned and not his person. Hence the master, unless he was a man of heart, felt no responsibility for the well-being, physical or moral, of the hands on his place. This manner of life went on, let it not be forgotten, for three hundred years. No wonder that it scored furrows in the social fabric of Mexico so deep that a hundred years of freedom and of industrial improvement have not yet wiped them all out. Summary, Such is Mexico and such are her people. It is a land of contrasts, of warm valleys lush with orchid and palm and of chill reaches of rocky and pine-clad mountains ; of smiling skies and of forbidding desert lands ; of rugged, sawlike mountain ranges and wide and shimmering plain; of snow-crowned peaks that look down eighteen thousand feet to tropic seas — a contrast found nowhere else in the world; of careless, boundless wealth beside hopeless penury; of culture, complete and modern, in contact with piteous ignorance. It is a land of long past; yester- days but also of a bright to-morrow. It has one school which was founded a hundred years before Harvard. Its prehistoric re- 30 Mexico To-Day mains rival Egypt. Yet it is a playground and a field of exploitation for tlie restless spirits of the twentieth centnry. It is the Old World in the New. It is the Egypt of the Occident. It is a land of dreams and of gracious realities. It needs the gospel, it loves the gospel, it must have the gospel. And since it is so near to us, who better than we can be good Samaritans to this wounded and needy neighbor lying beside our way! POLITICAL EVOLUTION Looking back over nearly four hundred years, we find it difficult morally to justify the Conquest of Mexico, and yet we must, in fairness, give to the conquerors what little credit is their due. Cortes showed a measure of wisdom and policy at the first encounter with the natives. When he reached Cozumel, he learnt that one of his captains, Pedro de Alvarado, had entered the temples and stripped them of their ornaments and all things of value. Alva- rado's violent conduct had so terrified the simple people that they fled into the interior of the island. Cortes was exceedingly angry, for the act of his sub- ordinate was so contrary to the course he had determined upon. He reprimanded the captain publicly, made a care- ful explanation to the prisoners whom Alvarado had seized, gave them many presents, and sent them to explain matters to their friends. This humane policy succeeded ; the natives returned and amicable relations were established. Mexican civilization is known to be one of great antiquity. It was, too, of a high order even when the Spaniards first came in touch with it; although there are irrefutable evidences that it had been lowered from the higher plane it had attained in previous times. But of the earliest in- habitants of that country, practically nothing is known. The ruins which are scattered all over the land indicate conclusively, both by their size and by their character, that the work of those who precede by ages the Aztecs of Spanish days, was of an order which connotes high civilization. The unsolvable mystery which surrounds the prehistoric builders of those monuments is, even now, in- creased by the discovery, from time to time, of strange relics. — Joseph King Goodrich. CHAPTEE II POLITICAL EVOLUTION Three Periods. The romantic tinge which seems inseparable from all things Mexican throws its haze especially npon the history of the country. That history is divided into three great sections, the Indian or pre-Span- ish epoch, the colonial or viceregal period, lasting three centuries, and the period of in- dependence, measuring now practically a century. The Aztec-Toltec days belong rather to the sphere of romance than to that of history; the hundred years of political freedom have been a perfect kaleidoscope of change; and even the long and somnolent days of the viceroys have an atmosphere about them that is strangely fascinating. 1. Early Indian Period Montezuma's Empire. A melancholy interest attaches to the ' ' empire ' ' of Montezuma. It was doubtless a much less complete and for- midable matter than some of the Spanish 33 34 Mexico To-Day chroniclers would have us believe. Other- wise it could scarcely have vanished so sud- denly and so completely. Yet it evidently was a fairly well-organized government, with a standing army, a system of revenue, and some of the elements of a civil service. Swift runners carried news over the moun- tains to and from the capital and kept the king in touch with the affairs of his realm. The capital itself was, for its time, a sub- stantially built city and fortress, with its temples, its palaces, and its barracks, much after the manner of well-ordered civiliza- tions. Government Centers. Besides the Aztec king- dom with Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) for its capital, there was a center of government in Tlascala and another in the west among the Tarasco Indians. The Spaniards struck boldly at the heads of all these, reduced their chiefs to vassalage, swept their fragile or- ganization into oblivion, substituting the iron rule of the Spanish monarchy, and even ob- literated many of their thatched adobe ^^ cities," scattering the inhabitants to moun- tain fastnesses or gathering them into other centers established by themselves. Conquest of Mexico. The story of the con- quest has been often told. Hernando Cor- Oopyriglit by Underwood and Underwood. N. Y. PREHISTOKIC REMAINS Calendar Stone Discovered 1790 Hall of Mosaics Political Evolution 35 tez, a Spanish soldier of fortune, effected a landing at Vera Cruz with a small body of troops. Cutting himself loose from superior officers in Cuba and Spain and with a com- mission granted by the municipality of Vera Cruz, a ^' city " lately founded by himself, he set out with four hundred infantry, fifteen cavalry and six small cannon, to take toll of the immense wealth which he had heard was stored up in the Aztec kingdom. The driv- ing force of all the Spanish expeditions in the sixteenth century was what the Latin poet calls the auri sacra fames, the accursed hunger for gold. The Indians could not un- derstand why the invaders set such stock by this metal. For them it was only one of sev- eral, useful for some things and rather pretty but of no special value. One of their chiefs once questioned a Spanish soldier about this. The grim old warrior said, * ^ Well, the truth is, all of us Europeans suf- fer from a secret and deadly disease for which gold is the only known remedy! '' How Victory Came. After heavy fighting in and about Mexico City (then surrounded by the waters of Lake Texcoco) Montezuma, who had fallen largely under the influence of the Spaniards, was killed, probably by his own people, if not by his own kin. His nephew, 36 Mexico To-Day the youthful warrior Cuauhtemoc, later be- came the eleventh and last Aztec emperor. He was a brave and patriotic young man who drove the Spaniards out of the city and made the outcome of the invasion doubtful. But Cortez, reenforced from Vera Cruz and Cuba and taking advantage of the waters of the lake on which he placed several small ves- sels, completed the work of capturing the city in 1521. Cuauhtemoc was made pris- oner, cruelly tormented by having his feet tied over a fire to make him give up fan- cied treasures, and later put to death. So came to an end the first period of the coun- try's history. Nobody knows how or when it began. 2. Period of Spain Viceregal Period Begins. After a few years of military government, under Cortez and others, a representative of the Spanish crown was sent out as viceroy, — the first one, Antonio de Mendoza, arriving in the fall of 1535. In the two hundred and eighty-six years from that date to the establishment of independence, in 1821, there were sixty-four viceroys — some good, some bad. The term of office was irregular, usually from three to six years. The viceroys had practically un- Political. Evolution 37 limited power, but tliey were subject to the whim of the Spanish king, who could depose and recall them at will. There was in Spain also a royal council called El Consejo de las Indias, and in Mexico an Audiencia or royal auditing committee. Both these bodies su- pervised the administration of the viceroys and served to ]f)ut a check on any exceptional tyranny or avarice. Nevertheless it seemed to be considered one of the perquisites of the position that the viceroy should enrich him- self. He was master of the financial admin- istration of a large and productive province. His salary, eighteen thousand dollars a year at first, was later placed at forty thousand dollars. By farming out the taxation, sell- ing special grants and privileges, and, in spite of constant surveillance, occasionally tampering with the bookkeeping, most of the viceroys managed, even after a brief term, to return rich to Spain. Bays of the Viceroys. There were of course developments in the national life of Mexico during the three centuries of the viceregal period, despite the overpowering monotony of it. Social and industrial relations gradu- ally adjusted themselves, the monastic and other religious organizations flourished im- mensely, a steady stream of wealth from 38 Mexico To-Day mine and farm was poured into the lap of the mother country; cities and haciendas were established and mines opened; social lines were drawn and hardened into traditions; generations were born, flourished, and passed away. Yet through it all there was an as- tonishing dead level of uneventfulness. And this all went on for three full centuries. It scored some deep lines in the national character. It made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It bred a profound fatalism in the minds of the downtrodden natives. Their helplessness was so manifest and the power of their overlords so absolute that resistance was unthought of and submissive- ness became a habit of mind as well as of life. It will be well to keep this in mind when considering the third and most recent great period in Mexico's political develop- ment, a period which has not yet reached its final culmination. Influence of American and French Revolutions. The breaking away of the American colonies from England, followed by the profound up- heaval of the French revolution, infused even into the contented and submissive peoples of Spanish America a sense of unrest. The doctrine of the rights of man as against the divine right of kings gradually made its way Political Evolution 39 throughout the world. In a general way no peoples are readier to be governed than those of Spanish America — for a certain similarity of national type pervades them all. They are inherently docile, and they have had long and rigorous training in obedience. Even yet, after a hundred years of independence, they prefer a government that is stern and unbending. It was not against the king as such, nor against monarchical forms of gov- ernment only, that they felt impelled to rise up. Religious and industrial conditions had become quite as intolerable as foreign po- litical domination. A Eepnblic the Ideal. Nothing in the history of Mexico is finer than the stubborn deter- mination with which, against inconceivable odds of discouragement, the people of that country have held on to their shining ideal of a popular government. Twice since get- ting clear of the Spanish throne they have had to throw down other thrones, set up on their own soil. Over and over their military leaders have arbitrarily set aside constitu- tion and law, and even their properly chosen presidents have again and again transformed themselves into dictators. Constitutional government has repeatedly been interrupted by revolutionary uprisings, putting soldiers 40 Mexico To-Day instead of civilians in supreme command. Once foreign troops were sent to bolster np an imperial throne. Three separate consti- tutions have been promulgated. The educa- tion and training of the common people for the exercise of their citizenship have gone forward with excruciating slowness. Yet in all this long and weary struggle, measuring now a full century, the heart of Mexico has beat true to its ideal — a government of the people, for the people, by the people. And the friends of that country are glad to be- lieve that the ideal is nearer its realization now than ever before. How the Kevolution Began. When revolu- tionary groups began to be formed in Mex- ico, in the dawning years of the nineteenth century, not a few priests became members of them. To one that had its headquarters in the city of Queretaro belonged Miguel Hi- dalgo, parish priest of the village of Dolores, state of Guanajuato. Hidalgo had been edu- cated at the Colegio de San Nicolas, in Valladolid (now Morelia), the oldest college in America. He was a progressive and phil- anthropic man. As parish priest he had been much annoyed by the interference of the government with his efforts to teach his people horticulture. He found the restric- Political Evolutio:^' 41 tions on raising grapes especially vexatious, having already taught his people silk-worm and bee culture, besides establishing an earthenware factory and otherwise advanc- ing their worldly interests while ministering to them in spiritual things. These experi- ences made him all the more active as an agi- tator against the government. The "Uprising of 1810. By the autumn of 1810 the plans of the Queretaro group to which Hidalgo belonged had gone to the length of setting a date for an uprising against the Spanish government. But in Sep- tember one or two members of the band of conspirators, through motives which history does not disclose, gave information to the government of what was going on, together with the names of all concerned. The Famous Grito. Hearing of this rumor, the priest's loyal friends and supporters in the village were hastily sent for, and in the cool September dawn a group of men, humble laborers and farmers, whose names Mexican history proudly preserves, soon gathered about the curato or priest's house. The vil- lage prison was forced and the political prisoners set free. It was Sunday morning, and when the parish bell called to mass it rang out a call to liberty which echoes yet. 42 Mexico To-Day For, when the people came, they learned what was going on, and the patriot-priest lifted up his ever-memorable '' grito " (cry) of" Viva la Independencia/ ' In a few weeks his fel- lows were dissipated and he a prisoner. Within less than a year he was tried, con- demned, and executed. Thus dramatically was launched the movement which, though it seemed soon to be blotted out in blood, never stopped till Mexico was free. 3. Period of the Republic Freedom and Its Eesponsibilities. For ten years the revolutionary movement thus be- gun struggled on. At last it was successful more by the inefficiency of the Spanish gov- ernment, which had been shaken to its center by the Napoleonic intervention, than by any inherent force of its own. The story is too long to follow here, but by 1821, exactly three hundred years after the victory of Cortez, Mexico was once more free from Spain. A so-called empire under Iturbide was set up only to be thrown down by a storm of ad- verse public sentiment. In 1824 the first constitution, modeled largely upon that of the United States, was proclaimed. That it did not ^^ march '' was due chiefly to two Political Evolution 43 fundamental difficulties: the ignorance and illiteracy of the people, and the persistent hostility of the Catholic Church to popular government. To these one is forced to add a third, namely, the unregulated ambitions of leading soldiers and politicians. During about fifty years, only two or three of over twenty changes of administration were made peaceably and in regular course by the ex- piration of terms of service. The rest were all more or less violent '^ revolutions." Republic of Texas. The one noteworthy in- cident of that period, breaking the long mo- notony of rather sordid revolutions and counter-revolutions, was the secession of Texas and the resulting war with the United States. The fertile plains of Texas, then a part of the Mexican state of Coahuila, had attracted many American settlers. The fre- quent changes in the Mexican government and the lax and often offensively military ad- ministration of public affairs, added to race antagonisms which were augmented by mu- tual ignorance of languages and customs, caused these colonists in Texas to chafe at their subjection to Mexico. In 1835 they or- ganized to assist the Mexican Liberals against Santa Anna, who had proclaimed himself dictator. The dictator himself led 44 Mexico To-Day in the attempt to subdue this uprising. After a good deal of stubborn fighting the Mexican troops were defeated and driven out. The Texans then declared their independence, which was recognized by the United States. They organized a republic, and about ten years later the request of that republic to be admitted as a state of the American Union was granted. War Brought On. This was displeasing to Mexico, since some hope had still been cher- ished there of reconquering the rebellious province. In the meantime serious disagree- ment with Mexico had come up in connection with the settlement of American citizens in California. A boundary dispute, inherited along with the State of Texas, added to the irritation, Mexico claiming that the Nueces river was the agreed boundary between that country and Texas, and Texas claiming that it was the Rio Grande. There were Ameri- can troops in the disputed territory on ac- count of Indian depredations, and a clash be- tween them and the Mexican soldiers was the natural outcome. Thereupon war was for- mally declared by the American Government (1845). Result of the Fighting. The American ar- mies rapidly occupied Monterey, Vera Cruz, Political Evolution 45 and the capital itself. There a treaty was concluded adverse to Mexico in most re- spects. By it California, New Mexico, and Arizona were added to the territory of the United States. Another Constitution. The liberal constitu- tion of 1824 had later, in a period of reaction, been abrogated by one more favorable to the conservative interests. But the long ascend- ancy of Santa Anna, lasting about twenty years, had served to set aside about all pre- tense of constitutional government. Lead- ing patriots were beginning to plan for a revival of government by the people. The popular general was finally discredited and banished. A constitutional convention was called, and a new constitution framed. It was again modeled largely upon that of th^ United States. Liberty of worship, the sep- aration of Church and state, and equality be- fore the law were guaranteed. About the same time a vigorous mortmain law, aimed at the immense real estate holdings of the Catholic orders, and a law abolishing special courts for ecclesiastics and soldiers were en- acted. The Church saw herself about to lose at a single blow the special legal privileges of her clergy and the great properties that enabled her to defy the popular will. 46 Mexico To-Day A War for Eeforms. The outcome of the proclamation of the new constitution (Feb- ruary 5, 1857), and of the " Reform Laws ^' which followed it, was consequently a ter- rible civil war, between the Church party on the one side and the determined patriot lead- ers on the other. Benito Juarez, a full-blood Mixtec Indian, was at the time president of the Supreme Court. This was then an elect- ive position, carrying with it the succession to the presidency, there being no Vice Presi- dent. Ignacio Comonfort was President. His sympathies were with the liberal party, but in the disturbances which arose by reason of the promulgation of the liberal constitu- tion he was gradually drawn into an equivo- cal position. He tried to harmonize the dis- cordant elements and soon found himself abandoned by both. His position as Presi- dent became so difficult that he presently gave up the struggle, and, without the for- mality of resigning, left Mexico for the United States. The Conservatives had ** pronounced,'^ adhering to General Zuloaga as President. The Liberals recognized Juarez as succeeding to the vacant post, un- der the constitution. The French Intervention. Following this war, which was terminated after lasting Political Evolutioit 47 three years by a decisive victory for the Juarez government, came the episode of the French Intervention, as it is commonly described. Certain leaders of the Church party, whose tastes were for monarchy rather than republicanism, succeeded, with the help of Louis Napoleon of France, in per- suading Archduke Maximilian of Austria, a younger brother of Emperor Francis Joseph, that the people of Mexico desired him to come and set up there a ^' Catholic mon- archy." He was an intelligent and high- minded young man, happily married to the beautiful princess, Charlotte (Carlotta) of Belgium. He was naturally doubtful and even reluctant in regard to the strange pro- posal. His brother and his mother dis- suaded him. But the French king had in the meantime become embroiled with Mexico over a question concerning certain debts due French creditors by the Mexican govern- ment. Yv^ith no sufficient reason, and disre- garding terms of settlement satisfactory to both England and Spain, which governments had had similar claims. Napoleon landed troops in Mexico and began an attempt to humiliate the people and government there. Under the direction of his armies a so-called popular vote in favor of the coming of Maxi- 48 Mexico To-Day milian was secured, and by means of tMs and by tbe promise on Napoleon's part of Frencb troops to sustain Ms throne, Maximilian was at last persuaded. Y/bat the motive of Na- poleon was is not clear, though as he made large loans to Maximilian for the setting up of his throne, it seems fair to suppose that he counted on getting control of the wealth of Mexico, a source of income which he prob- ably overestimated. Empire or Eepublic? So at length (June, 1864) the new king and queen came to Mex- ico in great state. The French troops, aided by the rebellious conservatives, had driven President Juarez and his cabinet from his capital. In the north of the republic, how- ever, defended by the ragged, ill-fed patriot soldiers and sustained by the sturdy adher- ence of the members of his official family — ^' los Inmaculados " ('^ the Spotless ") they came to be called — the little Indian President held out stubbornly, perpetuating the duly chosen government of the people. The in- troduction of a foreign ruler really worked to the strengthening of the patriot party. There were some people in Mexico who were pleased at the idea of having a king, and the capital was very gay. But the heart of the Mexicans at large rebelled at the thought of Political Evolution 49 a monarcliy, especially under a foreign prince. Another War. The tide of war rolled back and forth. Gradually the resolute patriots evolved an army — an army of seasoned vet- erans it became. Meantime Napoleon had nearly got into trouble with the United States over his infringement upon the Monroe Doc- trine. While the American Civil War had been in progress it had so absorbed the atten- tion of the government at Washington that little notice had been given to the French king's course in Mexico. But after peace had been established at home, pressure be- gan to be brought at once for the retirement of the French soldiers from American soil. By this time, also, Napoleon was apparently glad of a pretext for taking this step. Mex- ico was not proving the treasure-house which he had anticipated. On the contrary, it was absorbing huge sums of money with but a poor prospect of returning even inter- est on the outlay. In brutal neglect of his promise to Maximilian the French king withdrew all his troops. The mercenaries which the Prince had provided, together with such Mexican soldiers as would espouse his cause, were all that he had left with which to resist the rising tide of armed pa- 50 Mexico To-Day triotism, flomng in upon his infant throne from every side. After not a little vacilla- tion, going once so far as to write out Ms letter of abdication and start for Vera Cruz, Maximilian at last decided to remain and take his chances with his armies. Carlotta had gone to Europe to intercede with Napo- leon and had become there — in part by rea- son of his rough reception of her — a raving maniac. Unliappy Maximilian. Leaving Mexico City Maximihan joined his generals, who with the principal body of royal troops were in Quere- taro. There they made their last stand. The city was taken by the Liberals under General Escobedo, May, 1867, and Maxi- milian was captured. After a military trial he was executed, along with two Mexican generals who had led his armies, June 19, 1867. Eeconstruction. So came to its close this strange and tragical episode of American history. Within a few weeks. President Juarez, acclaimed by the people, quietly re- entered the capital of the nation, and once more set up in due form republican govern- ment under the constitution. The proper time for a national election having already passed, one was held as soon as possible, and Political Evolution 51 Juarez was again chosen President. That term, beginning with 1868, was a rather stormy one. The country was impoverished, brigands were everywhere, there was a large element of dissatisfied royalists among the people, and other ambitious liberal leaders were jealous and suspicious. This dissatis- faction was about to break out into open re- bellion after Juarez, as it was alleged, had rather forced his election for another term. But early in that period he died (July 18, 1872), and the coming into the presidency of another, Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, the president of the Supreme Court, quieted things down for the time. But when in 1875 he also stood for election and, making rather free use of the federal machinery, was de- clared winner, the patience of some of the other liberal leaders was exhausted and there were ^' pronouncements " on every side. > The Coming of Diaz. The most notable of the opponents of Lerdo was a young general who had attained to much prominence be- cause of his prowess in the war with the French. He was a native of the same state with Juarez, and had in his youth read law in the office of that great man. But the logic of events, as well as his own tastes, had made a soldier rather than a lawyer of Porfirio 52 Mexico To-Day Diaz. Not quite old enough to participate actively in the conflict with the United States in 1847, he was nevertheless as a boy of sev- enteen greatly stirred by that episode. Very soon afterward he somehow incurred the hos- tility of Santa Anna, then dictator, and was driven from his home to begin a career so incredibly adventurous that the plain narra- tive of it seems like a product of the imagina- tion. A little later, the war over the reform laws broke out, Diaz, of course, espousing the cause of his great countryman, Juarez, then President. This war was barely over when the French invasion made another de- mand on the patriotism of Mexican soldiers. Diaz plunged into this conflict with burning energy, and by his boldness, his military skill, and his personal daring soon became one of the trusted leaders of the Mexican ar- mies. He was a subordinate commander under General Zaragoza at Puebia on the famous Fifth of May (1862) when the French veterans were for the first time met by the ragged patriots of Mexico and de- cisively checked. Not quite five years later, April 2, 1867, as general in command he him- self captured this same city of Puebia, anni- hilating one of the armies of Maximilian and bringing the capital of the republic once Political EvoLUTioisr 53 more into the power of the republican gov- ernment. A Successful TTprising. Diaz felt no such re- gard for Lerdo as had restrained him in the case of Juarez, and so, in 1875, with the prin- ciple of ^^ no reelection " as his motto, he raised the standard of revolt. His old com- rades flocked to him. Lerdo, who was not a soldier, was swept from his feet by the sud- den uprising and soon abandoned his post and took refuge in the United States. Diaz proclaimed an election and was made Presi- dent. His first term began with the year 1876. He quickly proved himself as able as a ruler as he had been successful and bril- liant as a soldier. A Long Administration. The administration of President Diaz covered what may be called the modern period of Mexico's history. As an advocate of the principle of no reelection. General Diaz declined to be a candidate at the end of his first term. For the succeeding period, 1880-1884, accordingly. General Man- uel Gonzales was made President. The con- trast between his administration and that of ^' Don Porfirio " was so sharp that before his stormy administration came to a close the demand for the return to office of his popular predecessor was general. To this 54 Mexico To-Day demand Diaz acceded. In justification of Ms course it was urged that the ^' no reelec- tion '' declaration bore only on immediate succession, and was meant chiefly to correct the abuse of employing the federal ma- chinery to influence elections. But the four year term, from 1884 to 1888, proved alto- gether too short for the carrying out of all the beneficent and popular policies inaugu- rated by President Diaz. The feeling was practically universal at its end that he ought to continue in office. Diaz Policies. After some hesitation he con- sented. Four years later the situation was identical, and the doctrine of ^^ no reelec- tion ^' was finally set aside. Among the most vigorous and outspoken advocates of this were the foreign investors — merchants, manu- facturers, railway managers, and others — then resident in Mexico. Even during his first administration, General Diaz had openly bid for the investment in Mexico of foreign capital. To those of his people who were opposed to such a course he argued that the country was so impoverished by its long struggles, and its little remaining capi- tal was held so largely by people opposed to progress and in love with the old, reac- tionary order of things, that if Mexico's PORFIIIIO DIAZ Political Evolution 55 vast resources were to be developed and her people made industrially comfortable and independent, it would have to be done largely by foreign money. And lie went right forward with his policy, opening wide the doors for capital. Subsidies were given for the building of railway lines — which was a military as well as an economic measure, — exemption from import duties was offered for factory machinery, relief from taxation during specified periods was guaranteed to productive industries, and foreigners were given ample protection for life and property throughout the entire republic. The President and Foreigners. The President was soon found to be especially sensitive in regard to religious persecution and anti-for- eign demonstrations of any kind. He felt that such things compromised the standing of his country in the eyes of the civilized world. He therefore insisted on perfect freedom of worship everywhere and on the proper protection of all foreigners. The mobs which here and there attacked Protes- tants were promptly and sternly suppressed. It is not amiss to recall this now, since much sentiment against General Diaz was exhibited in the United States and elsewhere, toward the end of his long tenure of power. The sup- 56 Mexico To-Day pression of brigandage, the development of industries, especially by the introduction of foreign capital, the improvement of commu- nication, the abolishment of peonage, the standardizing of the currency, the encourage- ment of education, and the maintenance of liberty and of equality before the law are some of the things for which the administra- tion of Porfirio Diaz should receive credit. Not Yet a Republic. Nevertheless, many things remained undone. The constitution of 1857 was not formally set aside. It provides for a government similar to that of the states and union of the United States, resting presumably upon an intelligent and compe- tent popular electorate. But where were the voters to be found in Mexico ? From sixty to eighty per cent, of the people were illiterate. An even larger proportion had been trained for four hundrd years to let others think and act for them. They knew nothing and cared nothing for public affairs. The state gov- ernments were incapable even of policing their respective territories. If allowed to be organized by local influences — elections, so- called, which usually meant the domination of a small coterie of rich landowners or un- scrupulous soldiers — they speedily became a menace to the central government or an en- Political Evolution- 57 gine for the oppression of the people. Little by little, therefore, the stern military atmos- phere which pervaded the federal adminis- tration extended itself to the state govern- ments, and these became gradually no more than departments of the central administra- tion. Taxation and Land Question. The federal government found itself unable to solve the problems of taxation and land ten- ure. Efforts were repeatedly made to put a rate of taxation upon the immense hold- ings of land that would make them un- profitable and thus open them up for settle- ment by small farmers. But these efforts failed. The federal constitution proved an obstacle here, for it puts matters of taxation into the hands of the state governments, and these were invariably in the hands of the large landowners. Taxation has in conse- quence continued to be inequitable and the land is still held in huge haciendas, many of them nothing like so well improved as they should be. Growing Dissatisfaction. Some of the men in the later cabinets of President Diaz, and a number of those acting as state governors under his patronage, have been men of great wealth. They are landholders on a large 58 Mexico To-Day scale, and many of them have aroused resent- ment by their management of the labor prob- lem. In the case of one or two, peonage, in its old barbarous form, has been alleged, along with the charge that they have used the machinery of the federal government — soldiers, railways, and other agencies — for securing and holding the unwilling and un- happy laborers who toil on their immense haciendas. Favoritism was also shown to corporations and enterprises in which these members of the Diaz government or their friends were directly interested. The People Restless. The very improvement in the economic condition of the laboring classes made the people restless. For cen- turies they had expected nothing and had been resigned in a dull way to their hard lot. Now at last better things began to seem pos- sible. Wages had risen. Their children had schools to attend. Their wants com- menced to multiply. They began to question and to investigate. It seemed to them espe- cially inexplicable that a few men should have a great deal more land than they needed or could improve, while others by the score were at hand, wanting land, ready to till it, l)nt unable to get hold of it. Equally puz- zling was the difference which they began to Political Evolution 59 note between the proportionate burden of taxation boTne by the rich and the poor. The poor man was taxed heavily, the rich man lightly. This, as we have seen, was largely a matter of state legislation, not fed- eral; but the people, who knew no ruler ex- cept '' Don Porfirio, " looked to him for everything and blamed him for what went wrong or failed to go right. Hostility to Chnrcli Influence. Another source of irritation, more profound and widespread than any outsider could suspect or discover, because it operated so secretly, was the grow- ing power, during the last decade especially, of the Catholic Church. The leaders of that Church, secular clergy ^ and Jesuits working together, made a special point of keeping in touch with Mrs. Diaz, a devout and sprightly woman, many years younger than her hus- band. The old General's antagonism to ecclesiastical influence in politics was well known. He knew who had caused the bloody war over the Laws of Reform and who had later brought on the French Intervention with its long list of woes. He had fought his way through both those wars. He under- stood better than his own countrymen of a 1 Secular clergy are those not separated from the world by monastic vows or rules ; for example, parish priests. 60 Mexico To-Day later generation the ambitions designs of the clergy in regard to matters of civil govern- ment. When asked on one occasion not many years ago by a company of Protestant missionaries whether the rigid laws as to the holding of real estate by chnrches would not some time be relaxed, he shook his head. ^ ' It would be all well enough as concerns you gentlemen," he replied, ^' but we have to be thinking of the clergy {el clero) ; we have had experience with them — they are not sat- isfied to manage their Church; they want to run the government too." Disregard of Keform Laws. But either be- cause he himself relaxed somewhat in his attitude as old age came on, or taking advan- tage of him by acting without his knowledge, some who were of his official family began to show great deference to the Church authori- ties. These, of course, promptly took ad- vantage of it. Convents and monasteries were conducted in defiance of the law. Church schools were subsidized from public funds, public processions were brought out, unmo- lested by the police, who when taxed with their neglect shrugged their shoulders and hinted of orders from ^' higher up." Widespread Uneasiness. The sense of un- easiness which all this inspired can only be^ Political Evolution" 61 comprehended by one who has entered inti- mately into the life of the Mexican people, and has come to understand how deeply dis- trustful they are of Catholic influence in pub- lic affairs. The men of the country are a unit in resenting such interference and almost equally unanimous in pronouncing adversely on the moral character and standing of the priests. The sense of apprehension lest through the inattention of an old man whom personally they still loved and admired, the nightmare of ecclesiastical oppression should once more be fastened upon their country, became so acute that they were willing to de- mand that this same honored and venerable ruler go into exile rather than run the risk. Madero Revolution. Such were the elements that led up to and entered into the revolution of 1911. It was not in any proper sense a military rebellion. The federal army had dwindled down to a shell — thanks to dis- honest officers and the long peace which had made an army superfluous. The insurgents, on the other hand, mustered but a few hun- dred poorly armed and inexperienced re- cruits, and not a single battle worthy the name was fought. Diaz was not driven from the presidency and from the country at the point of the bayonet. But finding to his as- 62 Mexico To-Day tonishment that popular dissatisfaction with his administration and demand for his retire- ment were general, in considerable aniioy- ance, bnt relieved to be rid of the burdens of his office — which had never been for him a sinecure — he resigned the presidency, and, upon the insistence of Madero, who was still afraid of him, left the country. A Successor to Diaz. It had been evident to any student of Mexico during the Diaz re- gime, and to none more clearly than to Diaz himself, who knows that country and its peo- ple better than any other living man, that the great problem of that administration was the providing of a competent successor. The next president should not be so autocratic as Diaz had been — it would not be necessary. Neither must he go too far in the other direc- tion. The moment the people felt that the central government had a weak hand, brig- andage and insurrection would break out everywhere. It was especially doubted whether a civilian would be equal to the situation. On the other hand, no soldier was at hand who was able to work harmoni- ously with the President. His old compan- ions in arms against the French, of nearly fifty years before, were gone. One or two men of a younger generation were tested, but Political Evolution" 63 proved intractable. The most influential man in the cabinet of Diaz was Mr. Liman- tour, Secretary of the Treasury. He was solicited more than once to allow his name to be put before the people for the presi- dency, but knowing too well how thorny a road it would be for a civilian, declined. Madero's Troubles. The disastrous experi- ence of Mr. Madero supplies melancholy proof of the prudence of Mr. Limantour. Not himself a soldier, Madero failed com- pletely to secure a military establishment capable of inspiring respect. The army of President Diaz had, as we have seen, largely disintegrated. Toward the end of his ad- ministration and when the final emergency arose, the venerable President had nomi- nally an establishment totaling some 36,000 soldiers. Of these only about 13,000 could be accounted for. In place of the rest there were only padded rolls. After the sudden overturning of his government there was, of course, mutual distrust between those who had been his soldiers and the man who had been most active in opposing him and who later succeeded him in office. As a conse- quence of this distrust the old military or- ganization — in the matter of its personnel, at least — practically disappeared. A few 64 Mexico To-Day officers continued on tlie active list, but mostly the subordinates of General Diaz went out with him. Without an Army. On the other hand there was virtually no army resulting from the in- surgent movement under Madero. A con- siderable collection of volunteers remained, but their officers were mostly without mili- tary experience or training, and the cam- paigns through which they and the men had passed were so largely bloodless that they had not greatly helped to make them soldiers. And allowing all that may be asked for that army as an army, it was lost to Madero by the defection of Orozco. Practically all of the efficient troops followed this popular leader into insurrection against the duly elected head of the republic. This large body of insurgents, who soon overran the northern part of the country, gave encour- agement to the dissatisfied groups in the south, especially those under Zapata, and the position of the Madero government at once became precarious. The fact that there were two large areas of the country in rebel- lion and that the government was powerless to suppress disorder soon filtered through even the remote and mountainous sections where men can always be found who would Political Evolution- 65 rather live by pillage than by work. The re- sult was a widespread outbreak of brigandage. The Mexican Bandit. Highway robbery has been a persistent phenomenon of Mexican life throughout the entire history of the country. There is doubtless a very small percentage of the population which is predis- posed to this manner of life — not more, per- haps, than would be found in other lands. But circumstances have greatly favored the' operations of these few. The country itself, by reason of its topography and its peculiar products, offers much encouragement. The wide dry plains and the rugged and almost equally dry mountain fastnesses are the de- spair of officers of the law, the more so as such officers are usually strangers to the locality, representing the distant central gov- ernment. Local police regulations have never been developed in Mexico to a state of real efficiency. And as for the products of the country, the wealth of the farming opera- tions is gathered and stored in great hacien- das, where robbers, if successful in breaking in, can usually make rich hauls. Then there are the mines. Many of these, because of their remoteness, have to refine their prod- ucts before transporting them out, and all require the shipment in of much cash for 66 Mexico To-Day their payrolls. This precious metal and cash in transport offer a constant temptation to the freebooter. Calls Out Sympathy. The highwayman is, moreover, the object of widespread sympa- thy and admiration. He deals out his easy wealth with a lavish hand among the poor peasants who provide him occasional shelter and food. He conciliates even the Church, till he is by it reproved but gently. All this has tended to a sort of easy tolerance of the business and the men who engage in it. Then there is a profound and growing dis- satisfaction with their hard lot among the poor of Mexico. So when they see one of their own class break over by force and begin to prey on the rich, who have long preyed on them, they are apt secretly to rejoice in it. Ever-present Land Question. To this criminal brigandage, which soon became the pest of the Madero government, as it had been of many a previous administration, was added a great volume of genuine discontent, a discon- tent which sent out many armed peasants to stand against the- government for what they conceived to be their rights. The well- founded dissatisfaction of these people arose from Mexico's greatest problem, already mentioned, the land question. All the land Political Evolution" 67 of that country is held by a very few people and nearly all of it in very large bodies. It has been estimated that not over a thousand families own all the land in the entire repub- lic. Some of these holdings are enormous. They are measured in sitios, an old Spanish unit of a league square, that is, nine square miles. One man owns enough of these sitios to cover practically half of the largest state in Mexico. One may travel for hours on the railway train without crossing the boundary of one of these huge haciendas. And the worst feature of the situation is that so large a proportion of these great holdings remains unimproved. These lands are also taxed at a very low rate, especially the unimproved sections. Indian Lands. In recent years lumber and mining syndicates, many of them involving foreign capital, have sought, and by various means have obtained, possession of much land which had been community holdings of Indian villages. The Indians have always preferred to retain the system of village communes in existence before the advent of the Spaniards, a preference which the Span- ish government wisely respected. These communal lands, lying mostly in the moun- tains — for the white man long ago crowded 68 Mexico To-Day Ms red brother out of the arable plains — are largely unfit for cultivation, and are kept for common pasturage and a fuel supply. But their wealth of timber, and in some instances of minerals, has not escaped the eye of the prospector and lumber ^^ cruiser." In many cases and in many places the poor Indians have been cheated and exploited. This form of abuse greatly discredited the later years of the Diaz administration. The venerable President himself was doubtless kept in ig- norance of what was going on, but men con- nected with Ms government trafficked in con- cessions and bargains, and the power of that government was employed to evict and cow the helpless villagers. Question of Subdivision. Mr. Madero, in the course of his idealistic discussions of Mex- ico's situation, often declared that the land belonged to the people and that they ought to have it. After he was triumphantly elected President, the people, in their simple way, expected that lands would immediately be turned over to them. The Indians, espe- cially, counted on the adjustment of all their claims, both just and imaginary. The situa- tion was most unhappy for the new Presi- dent. In Mexico, as elsewhere, property rights are strongly intrenched behind the Political Evolutioi^ 69 law. The large land holders had no thought of yielding to idealistic considerations and dividing up their property. The same thing was true of the mining and lumber corpora- tions. Madero has been sharply criticized because he at least did not carry out his theories and divide up his own extensive lands. As a younger member of a large and somewhat patriarchal family it was probably not possible for him to do this, and in any event, the final solution of the difficulty is not to be sought in voluntary philanthropy of this kind. Mr. Madero probably never expected his statements of abstract consid- erations to be taken as promises. It was characteristic of the childlike thinking of the untutored Indians, however, that they should assume that all their troubles would end as soon as they had for President a man who wished to see them ended. When noth- ing was done to restore their lands, there- fore, they became infuriated and broke into wild disorders. The farm laborers on the great estates s^nnpathized with them, and the agitation against the Madero govern- ment became general. The President soon lost the popularity that had swept him into office. In connection with the previous revo- lution, as well as in consequence of the long 70 Mexico To-Day period of quiet and public confidence, fire- arms had come to be more generally owned than ever before in Mexico. Every man who could get hold of a rifle set out to right his own wrongs, and the country was filled with '' revolutionists." The People Not Military. Yet at this very time it proved impossible for President Ma- dero to organize an efficient army. The chief reason was the disinclination of the Mexicans to engage in military service. The President doubled the wages of the common soldier, making them more than those of the common laborer, but the lists did not fill up. Such battalions as he took over from the revolutionary organizations already existing continually proved disloyal, while, as a mat- ter of course, he dared not avail himself of the fragments that remained of the old Diaz army. His situation was really tragic. The night that the insurrection broke out in Mex- ico City (February 9, 1913), he traveled in an automobile, over a road that had been for some time almost abandoned because of high- waymen, seventy-five miles to Cuernavaca, to bring up personally a small body of only twelve hundred soldiers — state militia, most of them — in whom he had confidence. And after all, in less than ten days from that time Political. Evolution* 71 lie had been betrayed by his own generals and was a prisoner in his own capital. Huerta Administration. At the time of this writing (April, 1913) the government of President Huerta is in serious straits be- cause of this same peculiarity of the Mexi- can. The people of that country are not warlike in their tastes. They do not like military service. It is hard to provide an army. They were dissatisfied with the gov- ernment of Madero because it did not have a strong hand for robbers and because their troubles about land and taxation were not remedied. They will band together for up- risings, as they are now doing again, but they do not like to settle down to the busi- ness of fighting. President Huerta gave the friends of Madero an excellent pretext by his alleged cruelty in permitting or ordering the death of Madero and of Suarez. That was indeed an inexcusable blunder. The fact also that he seized the government by a mili- tary coup now weakens his hold upon it. The rebellion against him led by Governor Carranza, of Coahuila, ably seconded by strong leaders in the far northwest and abet- ted by the intransigent attitude of Zapata in the south, has placed him in a most precari- ous situation. In addition to his difficulty of 72 Mexico To-Day recruiting soldiers at home is the even more serious one of borrowing money abroad. His coffers are empty, and the failure of foreign governments to recognize him as legitimately the head of the Mexican government makes it practically impossible for him to secure a loan in any of the money markets of the world. It seems improbable that he will be able to hold his seat much longer. EELIGIONS, ANCIENT AND MODERN A few of the Aztec gods blossomed out as Christian saints soon after the Conquest through the ingenious schemes of the early priests, who adopted this method to make the new religion accepted. They brought with them into the Koman Church the particular characteristics and powers Mdiich they were credited with as pagan gods. For ex- ample, the goddess of the rains, who was much worshiped in the regions of little rain, may be recognized in Our Lady of the Mists, of the Mexican Church, who is appealed to for the much-needed rain, and is believed to have the same power that the old Aztec or Toltec gods were sup- posed to have. In many places there are shrines erected to these saints of the Church, and it has been proven that, in most instances, in Aztec times, temples existed on the same spots dedicated to the goddess of the rains or mists. — Nevin 0. Winter. A daily paper of Mexico City contained on March 30, 1913, a "story" by one of its reporters, which illustrates the superstition of the poorer people. Following a throng of men and women who were saying to each other, " Have you seen it ? " " They say it is wonderful," etc., the re- porter found his way to the open court of a cheap tene- ment-house, which was packed with people. They were chattering and crowding and calling to each other, and those inside seemed to be praying. After much vigorous pushing and elbowing, he at last got past the doorway and into the court itself. The eyes of all were fastened on a large eucalyptus tree growing in the court (a sort of gum tree from Australia which flourishes amazingly in Mexico ) . On the side of the tree was a white spot which all declared was an apparition of the " Divine Face " ( El Divino Rostro) , that is, the face of Christ wearing the crown of thorns, as usually represented on crucifixes. Many were crossing themselves and muttering prayers. The reporter took the trouble to look up and interview the owner of the house. He was found in a state of con- siderable annoyance. " I was making some repairs and had to cut off a large branch of this tree. Now these idiotic people are mobbing the house because they fancy that that white scar is a miracle." The next day he made an end to the " miracle " by tying a cloth around the trunk in such a way as to conceal the scar. The people after that let him and his house ^lone. CHAPTER III RELIGIONS, ANCIENT AND MODEEN 1. Ancient Religions Early Eeligious Ideas. Mexicans may be de- scribed in the words of Panl concerning tbe Athenians as ^^ in all things very religious." In the confused turmoil of tradition and his- tory upon which we must depend for our knowledge of their life before the coming of the Spanish soldiers, the gods, the priests, the temples, and the worship stand out more distinctly than any other phase of life. And this has been characteristic of the people ever since. The Mayas had their peculiar deities, the Toltecs theirs; while the Chichi- mecs, Aztecs, Tarascos, and the rest were not less liberally provided. In most of the tribes there seem to have been vague intima- tions of a spiritual creator and supreme god, ideas always overlaid in practise by the at- tention paid to special gods and goddesses. An equally vague nature-worship, in which the sun and the fertile earth were adored, had its influence among the more strictly 75 76 Mexico To-Day agricultural tribes. The Tarascos liad a goddess whom they worshiped with offerings of the produce of their lands. They also looked upon the clouds as divine, and placed offerings to them in the warm springs, which from their vapors they believed to be parents of the clouds. Competent authorities iden- tify their goddess of fertility with the rain. Such a conception might easily arise in a country where the difference between a fam- ine year and one of plenty is a question of a little more or less of rainfall. Heligion of the Toltecs. The deities of the Mayas are found sculptured among the ruins of the ancient cities of Yucatan and the Isth- mus of Tehuantepec. The Maya occupancy of the Valley of Mexico and adjacent re- gions — if there was such an occupancy — w^as followed by that of the Toltecs. This was the name later given to a people of uncertain origin from one of their cities, Tollan or Tula. Their huge temple pyra- mids remain to this day at Cholula, Teoti- huacan, and elsewhere. The Chichimecs and Aztecs who came after them doubt- less owed much of their civilization, includ- ing no little of their religious beliefs, to this earlier people. Quetzalcoatl, the '' Fair God,'' was a Toltec deity, described as hav- EeLIGIONS, AlTCIENT AND MODERN 77 ing blue eyes, fair hair, and a beard. The Toltecs themselves may have been blondes, at least fair skins and hair were not unknown among them. Individuals with light hair and eyes are still found among the Mayas. The l^oltecs called one of their gods Teocall, and from that their temples were teocailis. This name, some believe, was applied to the supreme god. At any rate, the word for temple, teocalli, was still in use at the time of the conquest. Temples and Pyramids. Various writers of that period give us verbal accounts of the teocalli, especially the great one in the city of Mexico. There remain a few rude draw- ings of it, but no correct plan or picture. The old pyramids of the Toltecs were then already discarded and overgrown with plants. Two of the most remarkable of these may yet be seen at San Juan Teotihua- can, about an hour eastward by train from Mexico City. Until recently they had the appearance of ordinary hills sparsely cov- ered with cactus and thorny shrubs. But a few years ago the government of Mexico had a good deal of work done in exploring and restoring them. One is supposed to have been dedicated to the sun, the other to the moon. Both are immense piles of stone and 78 Mexico To-Day adobe, and between and about them was an elaborate system of walks and courts and shrines carefully laid out and much of it paved with cement, of which many traces yet remain. The pyramid of the sun is about the same size at the base as Cheops, the great pyramid of Egypt, — two hundred and thirty- two by two hundred and twenty-four meters, or about seven hundred and sixty by seven hundred and thirty feet. The pyramid of the moon is a little smaller. Both are astro- nomically adjusted. Even a casual exam- ination of them will impress the visitor that the people who built them set much store by their religion. Bestrnctiveness of the Conquerors. The indus- try of the early Spanish priests and govern- ors in destroying all records of the history and religion of the native Mexicans has be- queathed to later students many difficult problems. As much as possible must be made out of architectural remains, sculp- tures, and the scanty records which escaped the destroying hands of the zealous priests. There were so many successive migrations of peoples, each with religious peculiarities of its own, and the remains of the homes and shrines of these successive tribes are now so heaped one upon the other that, in the ab- EeLIGIONS, AlTCIENT AlTD MODEKN 79 sence of writing, tiiey are extremely hard to make out. Two or three conclusions seem to be pretty well established. First, the teocal- lis, built of stone or adobe, were the lineal de- scendants of mounds and pyramids and pre- served the pyramidal form. Secondly, there was a great inclination to make use of human sacrifices, the heart of a living victim being thought especially pleasing as an offering to the gods. Thirdly, whatever of spiritual il- lumination the native religion may have had at an earlier time was largely lost by the time of the invasion. At that time Coaberi, Coaxalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli were the favo- rite gods, the first a Tarascan deity, the sec- ond a Toltec, the third an Aztec or Chichimec. To each of these human sacrifices were of- fered, to all in practically the same manner. But this kind of offering was thought espe- cially pleasing to the god of war, Huitzilo- pochtli. In connection with these sacrifices there was a measure of cannibalism, more apparently as a religious rite than because the Mexicans cared for human flesh as food. Their worship was also celebrated with dances, chants, garlands of flowers, and occa- sionally heavy drinking. Human Sacrifice an Exception. One of the huge stones on which human beings were sac- 80 Mexico To-Day riiiced is still preserved in the National Mu- seum of Mexico. The victims were placed face upward on the stone, their heads strained back by a heavy stone yoke placed around the neck, and the chest laid open by a sharp flint or obsidian knife. The heart was torn out warm and palpitating and oifered before the bloody and ugly god, and the dead body was thrown over the parapet of the high temple. In spite of this barbarous phase of it, the religion of the Mexicans was not a savage or cruel religion. They argued with the Span- iards that it really made no difference how they killed their enemies, whether on the field of battle or on the altar of their god. This reasoning is not very sound, but the conten- tion was pertinent as applied to the Span- iards, who with their superior arms made vast slaughter of the poor, half-naked Indians. Crucifix Forms Explained. The figures of the cross found in various ruins of jjrehistoric Mexico occasioned for a long time much speculation. They seem to be due to two circumstances. A few of them are efforts to reproduce the favorite symbol of the Chris- tians; these, of course, date from the time of the conquest. The others are representa- tions of certain forms of torture employed by the natives. The criminal or prisoner Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 81 was staked or bound to a frame or to the ground^ with the four limbs extended, and was then slowly executed or, on occasion, al- lowed to die from exposure. 2. Early Roman Catholicism Missionary Work of the Spaniards. The Span- iards after their arrival gave themselves with tremendous zeal to the ^' conversion " of the natives. Indeed, the extension of the '' Christian " domain was one of the pre- texts urged for the conquest. As soon as the mainland of America was discovered there was a scramble to take possession of it. Spain and Portugal were about to come to blows when the Pope of Rome intervened. He ordained that a line should be drawn, north and south, from pole to pole running three hundred and seventy miles west of the Azores islands. The Portuguese were given unlimited sway over all the land discovered east of that line, the Spanish over all west. In the framing of this decree it is needless to say that the people already living in the new world were neither consulted nor consid- ered. Observance of this arbitrary line, which was accepted by both the Christian kings involved in the dispute, gave Brazil to 82 Mexico To-Day Portugal and practically all the rest of America to Spain. Of course nobody knew tlien (1494) how big America was. The Pope, Alexander VI, assumed in this decree to confirm such lands as fell to the Spaniards to Ferdinand and Isabella in every particu- lar and for all time. '' The authority was to be unlimited and to cover all things, temporal and spiritual ; the bodies and souls, the prop- erty and services of the conquered natives were to be their peculiar inheritance, and that of their successors forever.'^ This re- markable title-deed — remarkable especially in that the man who made it had himself no rights in the case — was confirmed to the Spanish monarchs by Alexander's successor, Julius II. By that time the immensity of the domain began to be appreciated. This grant of imaginary rights was taken in all seriousness by the Spanish kings, who ex- acted a strict account from every adventurer who succeeded in overrunning new territory. In return they undertook to reduce all these new lands to subjection to the Pope. The example of Mohammedanism and the fever of the Crusades had poisoned the minds of Christians. They began to believe that the kingdom of God could be extended by the sword. Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 83 Conversion Too Rapid, Priests and mission- aries followed or accompanied the armies of conquest in the new world. In Mexico they found an immense field. The country was well populated. In the centers, about the Valley of Mexico, especially, there were im- mense masses of people. Without accepting the estimates of Cortez and his followers, which are, of course, only the rough guesses of excited men, it is nevertheless quite safe to believe that the empire of Montezuma em- braced millions of people, and that in and about the capital city there were hundreds of thousands. Once these people had been van- quished and overawed in battle, by those whom they probably looked upon as super- human, they were in a mood to accept about anything which the conquerors proposed. One of the tilings immediately proposed was baptism. The Catholic doctrine of bap- tismal regeneration was applied by the priests and soldiers of that period in its baldest, most literal meaning. They seem really to have believed that to have the In- dians submit to baptism was to convert them. Hence they did not hesitate at rather rough measures to get them to submit. These were usually not necessary, however, for the Mexi- cans saw nothing objectionable in the cere- 84 Mexico To-Day mony. Nothing else was required of them, and the sprinkling was soon over. The priests did prodigies. One is said to have baptized in a single day as many as ^ve thousand ^^ converts/^ continuing till he was so tired that he could not lift his hands. The authorities of the Church reported that ^^ in a few years after the reduction of the Mexi- can empire the sacrament of baptism was administered to more than four millions." On this a judicious observer comments: " Proselytes adopted with such inconsid- erate haste, and who were neither instructed in the nature of the tenets to which it was supposed they had given assent, nor taught the absurdity of those which they were re- quired to relinquish, retained their venera- tion for their ancient superstitions in full force." Superstitions Eetained. The testimony of Baron Humboldt, who visited Mexico three hundred years later, proves this : ' ' The in- troduction of the Romish religion had no other effect upon the Mexicans than to sub- stitute new ceremonies and symbols for the rites of a sanguinary worship. Dogma has not succeeded dogma but only ceremony to ceremony. I have seen them, naked and adorned with tinkling bells, perform savage Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 85 dances around the altar while a monk of St. Francis elevated the host.'' A Catholic Critic. How persistent were these customs may be seen further in the writings of Abbe Domenech, whose book was published as late as 1867. He had gone to Mexico as chaplain of the French expedi- tionary forces sent to support Maximilian. After the troops had been recalled, he was required to travel through Mexico and report on its religious and moral condition. The results of that investigation he incorporated in a book, published in Paris (1867), which he called Le Mexique tel Qu'el Est, or Mexico as It Is. Since Domenech was himself a Catholic, his account of the Catholicism of the Mexicans may be looked upon as reliable. He says : ' ^ It would require vol- umes to relate the Indian superstitions of an idolatrous character which exist to this day. For want of serious instruction you find in the Catholicism of the Indians numerous re- mains of the old Aztec paganism." In an- other place he records these observations : '^ The idolatrous character of Mexican Catholicism is a fact well known to all trav- elers. The worship of saints and madonnas so absorbs the devotion of the people that little time is left to think about God. Ke- 86 Mexico To-Day ligious ceremonies are performed with a most lamentable indifference and want of decorum. The Indians go to hear mass with their poultry and vegetables which they are carrying to market. I have had to abandon the Cathedral of Mexico, where I used to go every morning, because I could not collect my thoughts there. The gobble of the tur- keys, the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the mewing of cats, the chirping of birds in their nests in the ceiling, and the flea bites rendered meditation impossible to me, unaccustomed to live in such a menagerie. . . . One day I was present at an Indian dance, celebrated in honor of the patron saint of the village. Twenty-four boys and girls were dancing in the church, in the presence of the priest. An Indian, with his face con- cealed under a mask of an imaginary divinity resembling the devil, with horns and claws, was directing the figures of the dance, which reminded me of that of the redskins. I re- marked to the priest, who, for all that, was an excellent priest, that it was very incon- gruous to permit such a frolic in a church. '' ' The old customs,' he replied, 'are re- spectable; it is well to preserve them, only taking care that they do not degenerate into orgies.' " EeLIGIONS, AJnTCIENT AlTD MODEKN 87 An Exchange of Deities. The Indians had indeed merely exchanged their indigenous superstitions for new and foreign ones. The Virgin Mary was promptly identified with Mother Earth (Nana Curaperi), who had long been a favorite deity among an ag- ricultural people. The periodic fiestas of the Church were celebrated with garlands and processions and dances just as the Mexi- cans had been accustomed to observe the fes- tivals of their own religion. The traveler who chances to be in Mexico City now on December 12, the day sacred to the Virgin of Guadalupe, will see in the village of Guadalupe, a suburb of the city, Indian pil- grims from the neighboring mountains danc- ing their quaint rounds and chanting their native songs as in the days before the Span- ish priests and monks came. Wholesale Christianizing. The priests who accompanied the soldiers were rough and ready fellows, suited to such associations, not averse to taking up carnal weapons on occa- sion, and ready enough to accept the idea that religion could be advanced by harsh and even bloody measures. Once the Indians had submitted, the superiority of Spanish arms and organization was such that upris- ings were not common. The Mexicans even 88 Mexico To-Day then were of a somewhat docile and submis- sive temper. Hence in a very few years things took on a settled and orderly look. A distinguished ecclesiastic who annotated the reports of Cortez to the Spanish throne leaves this memorandum in regard to one of them: '^ The conquest took place in 1521, and three years after Cortez, in this dis- patch, speaks as if fifty years of wise gov- ernment had elapsed. I shall ever reverence Cortez, and respect his name as that of a civil, military, and religious hero, unexam- pled in his career; a subject who bore the freaks of fortune with fortitude and con- stancy, and a man destined by God to add to the possessions of the Catholic king a new and larger world." Later Eeligious Work. The opportunities for religious work under these more settled conditions attracted a better class of mis- sionaries. Men of really devout spirit, some of them of scholarly tastes, others philan- thropic and constructive statesmen who stood up for the Indians against their po- litical and industrial oppressors, still others destined to be the founders of great monas- tic establishments, came from old Spain to New Spain to give their lives to mis- sionary endeavor. Had it not been for Religions, Ancient and Modern 89 tlie ineradicable defects of the Eoman Cath- olic presentation of the gospel, a better record would doubtless have been left by some of these good men. As it was, the re- ligious handling of the Indians continued to be closely bound up with the political treat- ment which they received, and together these produced social conditions which for three hundred years but made the poor poorer and the rich richer. Growth of the Orders. One of the defects of Catholicism which early wrought evil in the new world was its monastic system. The great religious orders were prompt to get a foothold there. Those were their palmy days. Monks and nuns came over in swarms. They obtained grants from the government of lands and endowments. They exacted of the poor Mexicans a heavy tribute of unpaid labor with which they built im- mense establishments in the choicest neigh- borhoods of city and countiy. As early as 1644^ the city council of Mexico City for- warded to Philip IV of Spain a formal peti- tion to allow the establishment of no more convents and monasteries in New Spain. The document declares that there were al- ready so many monks and nuns there that ^ Perez Verdia, Historia de Mexico, 218. 90 Mexico To-Day they were quite out of proportion to the total population; besides which, there seemed to be great danger that they would get posses- sion of all the property in the country, of which they already owned half. It goes on to request a special order to the bishops that they should ordain no more priests, since there were already more than six thousand who were absolutely without occupation ; and that steps should be taken to diminish the number of holidays, of which there were two or three each week, a state of affairs tending greatly to the increase of laziness. This naive petition unhappily received no notice on the part of the court of Spain, a neglect which was afterwards bitterly atoned for by all concerned. The activity of these re- ligious orders resulted finally in a total of one hundred and seventy-nine monasteries and eighty-five nunneries. The Francis- cans led, with fifty-two out of the one hundred and seventy-nine; the Dominicans had thirty, and the Augustinians twenty- six. Gradual Demoralization of Monasticism. The wealth that Mexico during those centuries of vassalage poured into the coffers of Spain was undoubtedly one of the corroding influ- ences that brought Spain low. So in Mexico Eeligions, Ancient and Modeen 91 itself, the privileged ones did not always really profit by their advantages. The relig- ious orders which at the beginning had been actively missionary and benevolent yielded later to the seductions of '' easy money," and as time w^ent by grew sluggish and self- ish and corrupt. The individual's vow of poverty was a light yoke when each could partake of the wealth of the community. Other vows which monks and nuns took upon them were equally ineffective in molding their conduct. Shut up in their great and luxurious establishments they became con- firmed parasites upon society. So tena- ciously did they hold on to their property that two hundred years after the protest of the Mexico City council, when at last Gomez Farias, Miguel Lerdo, Benito Juarez, and other patriots were beginning to agitate the idea of drawing on the Church to help the struggling republic, it was estimated that at least a third of the entire wealth of Mex- ico was in ecclesiastical hands. Much the greater part was property of the religious orders. So obnoxious had these orders then become that when at last the knot was cut and the property sequestered, the orders themselves were banished. That law, not quite rigidly enforced in later years, is still 92 Mexico To-Day on the statute books of the country. It al- lows no three persons under religious vows to live together in the same house, nor can any distinctive religious garb be worn in the street. All worship must be within doors, no processions or open air exercises being allowed. What the development of religious orders had been to warrant measures so drastic may be guessed from the reaction as voiced in the laws themselves. All over Mexico may still be found fragments of the vast, rambling convents and monasteries. Huge walls of amazing thickness and ex- pen siveness have been cut through by the streets of modern cities. Light has been let in on many a dark secret — on hidden pas- sageways, on skeletons imbedded in the walls, on cisterns full of bones, on a thousand mute witnesses to this long era of luxury, sloth, and vice. Developments in Catholicism. Along with the development of the religious societies pro- ceeded that of the parishes under the direc- tion of the ^^ secular " clergy. The people, true to their religious inclination, made seemingly devout Catholics. They attended mass industriously, accepted the doctrines of purgatory, hell, absolution, indulgences, miraculous saints, and the rest, literally and Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 93 unquestioningly. Not naturally of an ag- gressive turn of mind they did not miss the intellectual training which was denied them^ and cheerfully resigned themselves to that state of ignorance which seems in every land where the system is dominant to be the logical status of Roman Catholic peoples. Cliiircli Leaders and the Government. The leaders of the great monastic orders and the bishops and archbishops of the regular clergy were in frequent collision with one an- other. The chapels of the monks at times en- tered into sharp competition with the parish churches. Also the Catholic leaders, secular and monastic, often made things interesting for the Spanish government. Few viceroys escaped conflicts with them more or less vex- atious. Not seldom these disputes arose from the protests made by the priests against mistreatment of the Indians. They had their own ways of exploiting the natives, but they did not always remain silent when oth- ers oppressed them. One priest of an early period, Las Casas, came to be called ^' the protector of the Indians," and a portrait of him in this character by a famous Mexican painter is in the Fine Arts Academy, Mexico City. m 94 Mexico To-Day 3. Modern Roman Catholicism Tendencies in Catholicism. Sucli were the leading elements that made the Catholicism of Mexico what it is to-day; namely, the hasty and imperfect " conversion " of a doc- ile but idolatrous people and the sluggish and inefficient attitude which gradually fas- tened itself upon the Church leaders. The student of the religious history of that coun- try cannot fail to feel astonishment that conditions which began to be in the sixteenth century projected themselves, with only infinitesimal changes, far into the nine- teenth. And the state of affairs described by Baron Von Humboldt a hundred years ago and by Hon. Y\^addy Thompson^ and Madame Calderon de la Barca^ two or three decades later has in many essential features persisted even to the present. The Catholi- cism of Mexico is much the same as the Catholicism of Spain, of Portugal, and of Italy. In all those countries, as well as in South America, the West Indies, the Philip- pines, and other countries, that Church has had a similar development and for the same reason : it has been (at least till very recently) uninfluenced by Protestant public sentiment. 1 Recollections of Mexico (1840). 2 x^yg in Mexico (1842). Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 95 One result of this has been a close alliance between the Church and the government. This has had many important effects on both. The Koman Catholic Church is perforce in- tolerant. Theoretically it does not admit re- ligious liberty, and agrees to toleration only when it must. Wherever it has had alhance with the civil power its first demand has been that no other form of worship shall be al- lowed. This is the secret of the fact that until recently there were no Protestant churches in the countries above mentioned. As a rule, where republican governments have been set up, one of the principles put forth by them has been liberty of conscience and of worship. But even in spite of this the power of custom and the persistence of the Catholic party have often availed to pre- vent the introduction of missions. Not Everywhere the Same. It is well to re- member that there is a deep and wide differ- ence between the Koman Catholic Church as it is known in the United States and England and the same Church in the countries men- tioned above. Theoretically that Church is everywhere the same, but the facts do not bear out the theory. And, without meaning to give offense, one may note that there are tendencies inherent in certain doctrines of 96 Mexico To-Day Catholicism wliicli if unchecked by '' pro- test " from without will surely lead to the deplorable conditions now to be found in strictly Catholic countries. Take, for exam- ple, the authority conferred on the priests. The results of it are bad for both the priest and the people. As affecting the Christian it tends to relieve him of that sense of indi- vidual responsibility which is the motive of all character. If another is able to care for our spiritual welfare here and to furnish us safe conduct hereafter, why should we vex ourselves about the matter? So people rea- son. Instead of being guided by their own conscience and judgment they only seek to obey the priest. That is a state of affairs which means sooner or later the divorce of morality from religion. Bemoralization of the Priests. On the other hand the outcome of this doctrine is quite as bad for the priest. The sense of his author- ity and power subtly diffuses itself through all his inner life. It is dangerous for him. He will presently be wishing to direct not only the religious life of his people but all their affairs. He ceases to reason with them because it is easier to command. He no longer teaches; ultimately he stops preach- ing. Preaching is almost a lost art in the Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 97 Catholic Church of Mexico. A sermon is ad- vertised on special occasions as a matter of wide public interest. Holy Week is distin- guished from other seasons in that a sermon may be expected at least on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday. Some years ago in one of the mountain villages of the State of Michoa- can word was brought to the young man in charge of a Protestant mission church that the parishioners of the Catholic Church wished him to come over and preach for them. They had had a disagreement with their priest — not an unusual matter among those hardy Indians — and he would not preach, and they thought it too bad that Holy Week should pass without a sermon. Of course, it need not be added that Sunday- schools and other forms of Christian teach- ing are not known where even the sermon is almost extinct. The sermons that are preached on the rare occasions when there is preaching, are usually nothing more than brief lectures on the dangers of '^ heresy,'' and like subjects, sometimes becoming ti- rades in condemnation of the Bible and of Protestants. Their Contented Ignorance. Unhappy results also in the character and conduct of the priests might naturally be anticipated from 98 Mexico To-Day this power and authority vested in tliem. And here, as in the character and development of the people, the facts bear ont the forecast. Deprived of the incentive of teaching others, the priests cease to study. Within a genera- tion or two learning virtually disappears. The ignorance of Mexican priests is aston- ishing. One of the native ministers of a Protestant Church there told me that he had long made a business of seeking interviews with the priests where his work had taken him, hoping to be of service to them as well as to others, and that he had never found one who had a Bible in Spanish or that even knew how to find his way about in the Bible when looking up texts, many not even knowing in which Testament to find a certain book. Such poverty of mental and spiritual equip- ment easily leads to slothfulness and the in- dulgence of low appetites. Habits that are not elevating have written on the faces of many of the padres of Mexico only too plain a record that all who meet them may read. Eifects of Ecclesiastical Autocracy. This doc- trine of the authority of the Church has af- fected the religious and intellectual life of the people of Mexico in many ways, though some of them are slightly less direct than those already mentioned. To be sure, had Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N, Y. CATHEDKAL, MEXICO CITY Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 99 the doctrine been spiritually interpreted, and had it been restrained by an alert public sen- timent from leaving the spiritual realm, no great harm might have come. It is not wholly an erroneous doctrine. But this was not done, and those effects of it already traced are but part of the story as it affects Mexico. The uninstructed condition of the people, for example, and the assumption that they are Christians if they receive and prac- tise the Christian rites, have brought in their train a long list of consequences. Supersti- tion is always ready to lay hold of our hu- manity wherever the religious instincts of men are not otherwise satisfied; and super- stition finds its opportunity in ignorance. The worship of saints, which is but another name for the worship of images, has fastened itself firmly upon the Mexican Catholics. In almost any village church may be found pic- tures of miraculous events that are connected with the name of a local saint. Some shrines are famous throughout a wide region. The patron saint of the Indians, the Virgin of Guadalupe, is the most noted of all, being looked upon as an indigena, a native Mexi- can. Her image is everywhere and is thought to be unusually ^ ' miraculous. ' ' The hill below the little chapel where the original 100 Mexico To-Day picture, painted on an Indian ^s coarse blan- ket, long rested is covered with reminders of how sailors, travelers, soldiers, workmen, women have been helped when they called out of their troubles on ^' the Holy Mother of Guadalupe.'^ A large stucco sail perched on the side of the hill proclaims afar the gratitude of some who long ago were rescued by her from shipwreck. Crutches, bandages, canes, and the like, accompanied by thou- sands of crude paintings of rescues and heal- ing, bear their mute testimony to the faith of Mexico in this her favorite saint. Saints and Images. The thought of the common people is so crude that always ^^ saint " is the equivalent of picture or image. A special image in some shrine or chapel begins to get a reputation as '' mi- raculous," and forthwith pictures of this saint commence to circulate, to be in their turn objects of prayer and veneration. A saint of this kind may prove to be quite a source of income. The petitioners who are especially in earnest, or those who come in gratitude for favors received, usually bring otferings. Occasionally one of these '^ mi- raculous " saints is discovered in a private house or in an obscure chapel not connected with the parish church. Unless it can be se- Religions, Ancient and Modern 101 cured for the cliurch, it is apt soon to incur opposition from the priest, who does not rel- ish seeing others profit by an income that ought to belong to him. Shrewd promoters have been known to make the reputation of a saint by causing it to '^ grow '^ or to ^^ sweat " or even to '^ bleed." Any of these effects is looked upon as direct proof of special powers. Saints and Their Days. In the homes of the people the pictures and images of the saints, especially of those having local fame or for some reason particularly honored in the family, are kept and reverently venerated. Litanies recited before these saints are in many homes a sort of substitute for family worship. The calendar of the Catholic saints is a very long one, supplying a saint for every day in the 'year, with a considerable surplus. No matter, therefore, when a baby arrives, he has always a patron saint, usually the one on whose day he is born. Unless there is some good reason to the contrary he receives the name of that saint. The Mexi- cans consider a given name that cannot be identified with some saint quite shocking, calling it an " animal name." The day of any saint of special importance is usually honored as a holiday, and each individual 102 Mexico To-Day must by all means lionor Ms own particular patron by keeping holiday on liis birthday or on the day of the saint for whom he is named. Till recently there were so many of these holidays that their observance affected seri- ously the productiveness of industrial work- ers. The modern revival of industrialism with the urgent pressure of the '' steam age "has tended to cure this evil. But even yet it is often most exasperating to the em- ployer of labor to find his men leaving off work at most inconvenient times on the plea that they must observe a saint's day. The Household Saint. A certain uncon- sciously humorous familiarity is at times dis- played by the people of remote neighbor- hoods in their dealings with their household saints. Earnest prayers are made to these images in any domestic crisis, and if all goes well, the saint gets the credit. But if evil is not warded otf, if sickness is persistent or fatal, if the donkeys are not recovered when stolen, or the cattle contract disease, then the saint must submit to righteous condemna- tion. He may have his face turned to the wall or be hanged head downward, or even be shut up in a closet or banished to the attic. He runs the risk of forfeiting entirely the faith of those who have long trusted him. Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 103 How desolating to the spiritual life all this is need scarcely be pointed out. A " Beautiful Christ." Besides copying and circulating the pictures of famous images, the people believe implicitly in material manifestations or apparitions. If a maguey leaf haiopens to be curiously discolored, in outlines resembling a human face, it will probably be hailed as a miracle. I was walking one day among the barren hills near San Luis Potosi when I fell in with an amia- ble and talkative countryman. He an- swered many questions about the country, its products, its plants and birds and game and minerals. Presently as we came to the top of a ridge sown with cactus and stones and marked with an occasional scragged mesquit, my companion said with much ani- mation, " A beautiful Christ once appeared near here." I began to inquire about the details of the apparition, how it was, who had seen the vision, and similar questions. In reply he said, '' Come, I will show you the stump." Then I gathered that a mes- quit tree (a kind of acacia, closely related to ebony and common in the arid lands of Mexico) had grown with tv/o branches ex- tended like the arms of a cross and on the trunk between some formation that in fancy 104 Mexico To-Day might be supposed to resemble the body and face of a man. The tree was accepted as a miracle, cut down, and placed in the village church to be honored along with the other Christs on exhibition there. I saw the stump. A Puzzling duestion. ^' Tell me,'' I said to my new friend, ^' how it is you have in Mexico so many Christs. In my country we have heard of One, who is the Son of God. Once he came and was a man. He went away into heaven and we believe lives there now. But he is only one. Here you have many — Christs here, Christs there, Christs everywhere." The man looked puzzled and troubled. He was not used to thinking. At last in that resigned tone so natural to his people he said : ^ ' I do not know, sir, how it is. Perhaps it is as you say." Then he brightened up again and said, '^ But that was a beautiful Christ which appeared here. If you come sometime to our village church I will show it to you." Is Mexico Christian? This story illustrates another defect of the Christianity of Mexico. It will be remembered that some people ob- ject to Protestant missions in Mexico on the ground that it is already a Christian coun- try. But the added defect is a grossly in- ..Ji Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 105 adequate conception of Christ. For the Mexican the Savior of men is only one of a numerous calendar of saints. He is no more important than others, and often not so well known as St. Peter or St. James. Indeed, when some pretense at theological statement is made he is usually represented as a stern and angry Judge, who must be ap- proached through another and can most surely be conciliated by the intercession of his own mother. Rivalry Between Vir^ns. The development of Mariolatry has been more pronounced in Mexico than in perhaps any other Eoman Catholic country. One of the favorite saints of the Spanish invaders during and immediately following the Conquest was an image of Mary called Nuestra Sehora de los Eemedios. This particular image was borne as their talisman during the struggles of Cortez and his followers to enter the capital of the Aztec kingdom. Madame de la Barca tells in her usual ,«td rightly manner the story of this Virgin: The Spanish Vir^n. ^' We went lately to pay a visit to the celebrated ' Virgin de los Eemedios/ the Spanish patroness and rival of ' Our Lady of Guadalupe.' This Virgin was brought over from Spain by the army of 106 Mexico To-Day Cortez, and on the night of the Noche Triste the image disappeared, and nothing further was known of it, until, on the top of a barren mountain, in the heart of a large maguey, it was found. Her restoration was joyfully hailed by the Spaniards. A church was erected on the sjDot. A priest was appointed to take charge of the miraculous image. Her fame spread abroad. Gifts of immense value were brought to her shrine. A treas- urer was appointed to take care of her jew- els, a camarista (a keeper of robes) to super- intend her wardrobe. No wealthy dowager died in peace until she had bequeathed to Our Lady of Remedies her largest diamond or her richest pearl. In seasons of drought she is brought in from her dwelling in the mountain and carried in procession through the streets. The viceroy himself on foot used to lead the holy train. One of the highest rank drives the chariot in which she is seated. In succession she visits the prin- cipal convents, and as she is carried through the cloistered precincts the nuns are ranged on their knees in humble adoration. Plenti- ful rains, it is said, immediately follow her arrival, or pestilences are terminated. . . . It is true that there came a time when the famous curate Hidalgo, the prime mover in Eeligions, Ancient and Modern 107 the revolution, having taken as his standard an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an in- creased rivalry arose between her and the Spanish Virgin; and Hidalgo being defeated and forced to fly, the image of the Virgin de los Eemedios was conducted to Mexico dressed as a general and invoked as the patroness of Spain. . . . Shrine of '^ Our Lady of Eemedies." ' ' The church where she is enshrined is handsome, and above the altar is a copy of the original Virgin. After we had remained there a lit- tle while we were admitted into the sanctum, where the identical Virgin of Cortez, with a large silver maguey, occupies her splendid shrine. The priest retired and put on his robes, and then returning, and all kneeling before the altar, he recited the Credo. This over, he mounted the steps, and, opening the shrine where the Virgin was incased, knelt down and removed her in his arms. He then presented her to each one of us in suc- cession, every one kissing the hem of her satin robe. She was afterward replaced with the same ceremony. Ugly Appearing Image. ^' The image is a wooden doll about a foot high, holding in its arms an infant Jesus, both faces evidently carved with a rude penknife, two holes for 108 Mexico To-Day the eyes ^nd another for the mouth. The doll was dressed in blue satin and pearls, with a crown upon her head, and a quantity of hair fastened into the crown. No Indian idol could be much uglier. As she has been a good deal scratched and destroyed in the lapse of ages, C — n observed that he was as- tonished that they had not tried to restore her a little. To this the padre replied that the attempt had been made by several art- ists, each one of whom had sickened and died.'' The Indian Virgin. The rival to the Spanish Virgin is the Indian Virgin of Guadalupe. The story of this image, painted on the coarse cloth of a shepherd's blanket, was told to Madame de la Barca by the bishop in charge of the cathedral of the little town of Guadalupe as follows: Story of the Apparition. ^^ In 1531, ten years and four months after the conquest of Mex- ico, a fortunate Indian, whose name was Juan Diego, passing by the mountain of Tepeyac, a short distance north of Mexico City, the holy Virgin suddenly appeared be- fore him and ordered him to go in her name to the bishop, the Ylustrisimo D. Fr. Juan de Zumarraga, and to make known to him that she desired to have a place of worship Eeligions, Ancient and Modeen 109 erected in tier honor on that spot. The next day the Indian passed by the same place, when again the holy Virgin appeared before him and demanded the result of his commis- sion. Juan Diego replied that in spite of his endeavor he had not been able to obtain an audience with the bishop. ' Eeturn/ said the Virgin, ^ and say that it is I, the Virgin Mary, mother of God, who sends thee.' Juan Diego obeyed the divine orders, yet still the bishop would not give him credence, merely desiring him to bring some sign or token of the Virgin's will. He returned with this message on the 12th of December, when, for the third time, he beheld the ap- parition of the Virgin. She now com- manded him to climb to the top of the barren rock of Tepeyac, to gather the roses which he should find there, and to bring them to her. The humble messenger obeyed, though well knowing that on that spot were neither flowers nor any trace of vegetation. Never- theless, he found the roses, which he gath- ered and brought to the Virgin Mary, who, throwing them into his tilma (blanket), said, ^ Eeturn, show these to the bishop, and tell him that these are the credentials of thy mission.' Juan Diego set out for the epis- copal residence, and when he found himself 110 Mexico To-Day in tlie presence of the prelate he unfolded his tilma to show him the roses, when there appeared imprinted on it the miraculous im- age which has existed for more than three centuries." Virgin of Guadalupe. Such is the account which all devout Catholics are expected to believe. As this Virgin is thought of and spoken of as a native, an " Indita,'' she is very popular in Mexico. The figure as painted has been traced to an obscure church in Spain, though just how it was brought over to Mexico is not known. The whole fable was a step taken to secure the alle- giance of the natives. The adoption of the image as patron of the Mexicans in their war for independence has already been noted. Unchanging Eome. The awakening influ- ences of the nineteenth century have wrought a few profound changes in the re- ligious situation in Mexico. Some account of these will be given later. But in a gen- eral way, the Catholicism which has just been described furnished the religious set- ting faced by the first evangelical mission- aries when they entered Mexico during the latter half of that century. In wealth and in prestige of position the Church had lost Eeligions, An^cien^t and Modern 111 much ground since the days of Madame de la Barca or even of Abbe Domenech. But in the superstition and ignorance of the peo- ple and in the absolute unfitness of the clergy for intellectual and spiritual leadership there had been no change at all. SOCIAL AND MORAL INHERITANCES The peons of Mexico are weak and ignorant, yes. It is not because they were made so by an all-wise Creator, but because they are serfs. Serfs have always been weak and ignorant, and always will be so. They are not serfs because they are weak and ignorant; they are weak and ignorant because they are serfs. It is the custom to put the blame for the shortcomings of these peons upon the peons them- selves. If persons are to be blamed why not blame the hacendados, for it is they, and not the peons, who order the lives of the peons? The blame cannot properly be placed upon either, but upon the system of feudalism, which produces the same results wherever found. — John Kenneth Turner. In^ view of this terrible degradation of the Christian religion, it is little wonder that the morals of the people have suffered in a corresponding degree. Marriage among a large proportion of the poorer classes is looked upon as a useless formality, an expensive luxury which they can ill afford. This is due to the exorbitant fees which the Church demands under penalty of excommunication; and partly, also, to the openly immoral lives of many of the clergy. Baptism is also very widely neglected because the people are too poor to pay the fee. It is no wonder that the intellectual stimulus which Mexico has recently received, through contact with other nations, has led to a wholesale rebellion against this travesty of the Christian religion. Of those who are responsible for Mexico's great advance- ment in the past fifty years, the majority have broken with the Roman Church, and are openly hostile to it. The most enlightened ones of the nation, in other words, have renounced the only religion they have ever known. — Lefford M. A. Haughwout. CHAPTEE IV SOCIAL AND MOKAL. INHEKITANCES Ignorance the Mother of Evil. In all nations moral conditions are intimately bound np with intellectual life. Ignorant men may be good, and educated men bad, but taking whole nations into account, ignorance is the mother of evil. This is not because an illit- erate man cannot be a good man, but because ignorance means weakness, and weakness exposes humanity to moral deterioration as well as to many other evils. This is espe- cially true in regard to social life. The com- munity runs more of risk in its morals by living in ignorance than does the individual. Social evils are those that man perpetuates on man — and woman. Professor Eoss has distinguished between vice, the wrong a man commits against himself, and sin, the evil that he does to his fellows. Using the words in this sense it is easy to see how sin will abound where men are helpless through ig- norance. Their helplessness makes them easy victims, both of designing men and of 115 116 Mexico To-Day adverse conditions. Even vice increases when artificially fomented. The crowding of tenements, for example, has a direct bear- ing upon the morals of the people who live in the slum districts. It is naturally impos- sible to parcel out responsibility in matters of this kind. No adverse conditions excuse a man or a people from the struggle for moral excellence, but it is easy to see how conditions often make that struggle heavier and more hopeless than it should be. Causes of Ignorance in Mexico. In Mexico, in- tellectual limitations have sent down deep and widespread roots. We have seen how there was a sort of conspiracy of influences to keep the bulk of the people of that land in ignorance. The landowners preferred to deal with an ignorant clientage because such people are easier to exploit. So of the min- ing interests. The ignorant peon was help- less. He could not combine with his fellows. He could not defend his rights against crooked bookkeeping or unfavorable condi- tions of labor. He was a ^' hand " and nothing more. Employers therefore found pretexts for keeping the working people in ignorance. Church Did "Not Befriend Education. Church leaders also gradually reached the attitude Social and Moeal Inheritances 117 of discouraging the education of the people. They did not really need to know much, so it was argued. Their land smiled with plenty. The climate made small demands in the matter of clothes and houses. Their spiritual advisers assumed full responsi- bility in regard to their future welfare. The Spanish government was equally pater- nal in taking entire charge of their present interests. Why then should they ^ ^ heat their heads," as the Spanish idiom puts it, in a struggle for education, for information, for intellectual growth! There were prac- tically no books, for the Index Expurgato- rius suppressed them. There were few pa- pers, because the government exercised a severe censorship. There were no public schools^ — no demand for them, no houses, no teachers, no money provided. The country floated gently down the stream of years in contented ignorance. Eighty per cent, and more of its people were illiterate. There were a few schools for the children of the rich, and the government endowed profes- sional academies and even supplied scholar- ships for foreign study. The Church had seminaries for its priests and occasional pa- rochial schools of a primitive order for its parishioners' children. The catechism by 118 Mexico To-Day rote and something of the ^' lives of the saints " comprised the curriculum of these schools. They did not, for the most part, rise even to the dignity of primary schools. Neither master nor parents thought it im- portant that the children should learn to read. Of course the children fell in with this kind of public sentiment willingly enough. Evil Consequences. Many and varied conse- quences can be traced to this state of con- tented ignorance. It went on for centuries. The social customs which grew out of it had time to petrify. It is the tendency of cus- tom to grow into law, especially among a people dependent upon tradition and on word of mouth precepts for its intellectual life. Some of the traditions that came to be handed down were far from helpful and elevating when translated into practise. There are conditions in Mexican society yet which shock the observer but which do not shock the Mexicans. They are used to them. They see in them practises sanc- tioned by custom running back beyond the memory of their fathers. Naturally they reason that what has been done so long can not be much amiss. Want of Moral Sanctions. Many of these ob- jectionable practises might have been reme- Social, and Moral Inheritances 119 died had tlie Church supplied a moral sanc- tion to life. But gradually the religious life of the people, guided wholly by the Roman Catholic Church, came to divorce itself from morals. The demands which Catholicism made could be met without regard to the spiritual and ethical life. They were mostly compliance with rites and ceremonies, im- plicit obedience to the priest, and a spirit of hearty intolerance for all dissent. None of these have to do with morals. Hence,, humanly speaking, a man could be as immoral as he liked and remain a good Catholic. Industrial Oppression. Let us look for a mo- ment at industrial conditions. One phase of these which has had a wide influence is the peonage system. This is, in brief, a plan by which the employer of laborers secures a control over them not differing in any essential point from actual owner- ship. At first they were '' commended '^ to him by the Church in a decree which the state felt bound to enforce. If any of these ^' heathen " workmen got tired of the means used to make a Christian of him and ran away, he was brought back like any other escaped prisoner and turned over to his mas- ter to be ^* converted." After this farce of 120 Mexico To-Day *^ missionary " work liad been ended by the decree of Charles V abolishing the encomi- endas, laws governing the relation of labor- ers and employer were enacted in Mexico which virtually perpetuated the system of peonage already begun. These enactments were, of course, all favorable to the em- ployer, for they were devised and passed by the wealthy Spaniards and enforced by a government which was under their control. The most telling of them was a law that no laborer could leave the hacienda of his em- ployer so long as he was indebted to it. In case he did go away while in debt, he could be arrested and brought back and made to work out his indebtedness. Hoary Abuses. These iniquitous laws re- mained on the statute-book for centuries. The customs bred by them became hoary tra- ditions. The working people were power- less to protest. They had no opportunity of organizing for joint action, and no ca- pacity for it. Even after the coming of in- dependence, congress and the state legisla- tures were made up almost wholly from the employers' class. So the laws, with slight modifications, held on — in some states they seem even yet to be in force. President Diaz some twenty years ago made a stout HOMES OF THE POOR INTEIIIOR OF HOME OF A WEALTHY GENTLEMAN SoCIAi AND MOKAL InHEKITANCES 121 attack on tlie custom of paying in scrip and succeeded in liaving it abolished by a federal law establishing a uniform national cur- rency and outlawing all substitutes. But the peonage laws, as such, and the exemp- tion of unimproved lands from taxation, are matters with which state legislatures deal. The efforts of the federal government under Diaz to do away with these abuses were only partially successful. Resulting Poverty. Their helplessness un- der such laws and customs has inflicted upon the working people of Mexico a degrading state of poverty. In food and clothing and housing, through long usage they have be- come contented — seemingly, at least — with most intolerable conditions. They eat noth- ing but boiled beans and corn cakes. They dress through all seasons in thin and cheap cotton. They live in hovels. Wages are now slowly rising and better food and clothes are coming along with the increase. But it wrings the heart to think of the long centuries in which the vast majority of Mex- ico 's people have been subjected to a state of poverty so deep and so utterly hopeless. Their complete subjugation and the utter lack of any outlook for improvement in their condition have given them an air of patient 122 Mexico To-Day resignation that is pathetic. It also be- tokens a state of mind that is disastrous. The effort to establish a stable government in Mexico has been wrecked repeatedly on this great stone of dead inertia, of hopeless indifference, of inefficiency bred by igno- rance and the want of ideals. Moral Inheritances. In many ways other than in the industrial and political realm Mexico is still paying toll on her days of op- pression. Her moral atmosphere has been tainted by conditions which came of the ab- normal social and political situation follow- ing the conquest, and of the fact that her religion, instead of remedying abuses, but made them worse. A majority of Mexico's people long were, and are even yet, in a state which may be described as servile. People who virtually belong to others, who must look to others for food and clothes and all that makes life endurable, if not actually for life itself, need the steadying power of a spiritual religion. The man whose soul is free can afford to be indifferent to shackles upon his body. But if people exposed to such material conditions as have been de- scribed have also a material religion, one of rites and forms, of images, recited prayers, interceding priests, and meager instruction, Social and Mokal Inheritances 123 tlieii their religion, instead of consoling and remedying, will but exaggerate their indus- trial misfortunes. Ritual No Substitute for Teaching. This is what has happened in Mexico. The people^, naturally religious, got whatever of comfort; they could out of the teachings of Rome, They rejoiced especially in the worship of the Virgin Mary, believing her to be com- passionate. They cajoled and petted, and sometimes punished, the images of favorite saints, — for them the image is the saint, — they rejoiced in musical masses, processions on feast days, and the thousand other osten- tatious and showy ways of their Church. But they had from it no moral backing. The priests set them bad examples. Most of the clergy were self-indulgent and corrupt men. Indeed, in twenty-five years I have seldom, found a Mexican of intelligence who would admit that any of the priests were good men. They advanced a fantastic theory that one might be a bad man without ceasing to be a good priest, and resting on this gave them- selves to excesses of every kind. The Sin of Lying. There are a few sins that are peculiarly the temptation of subject peo- ples. One of them is lying. Men who are subject to the whim of others come to think 124 Mexico To-Day of interest first and truth, second. They tell what they think will be best for them. They instinctively adopt a policy of concealment and deceit. In every age and nation, lying is recognized as a vice of slaves. Now the Mexican was not, and is not, technically a slave. But we have seen how politically, in- dustrially, socially, religiously, he was a sub- ject. He was oppressed. He was kept down. He was shackled by every manner of limitation. He came, perforce, to have the servile attitude of mind. Nor would I say that Mexico is a land of liars. Such a state- ment would be a wrong and an untruth. It is undeniable, however, that truth is not ex- alted there as it might be. It has long been discounted. Nobody takes oifense at being called a liar. It is mere badinage. The word has lost its bitterness. I have heard students say of an incorrect exercise, '^ This thing is full of lies.^' A young man said to another in a group as I passed, ^' Well, you have been about a good deal, but you are as big a liar as ever, ' ' at which they all laughed. The Claims of Politeness. Truth has had to make way for all sorts of things. It is sec- ondary, for example, to politeness. That is measurably the case everywhere. A Mexi- can will, on principle, tell a lie rather than Social and Moral Inheeitances 125 seem impolite. It is to Mm the lesser of two faults. Once a Mexican preacher and I rode into a little town from a horseback trip into the interior. I was going to take the train next morning, he to go on with the horses another day's ride to where he lived. My horse was a hired one, he rode his own. I stopped at a hotel, bnt he preferred to go to the meson (inn), in order to be near the horses and get an early start. I invited him to have supper with me. After seeing the horses cared for we went over to the hotel. The proprietor welcomed us effusively. After I had arranged for supper and a room he rubbed his hands together and said ^' I have also stables for your horses, gentlemen, if you need them.'' I had no reply to make, thinking it was none of his business what we did with our horses. Not so my Mexican brother, who at once spoke up and said, '' Oh, we just had some borrowed horses and have been to return them to their owners ! ' ' I was dumfounded. But I could not think of anything to say that offered any prospect of accomplishing good, so I said nothing. Use of Words. The unreliability of the working classes of Mexico is proverbial. If asked a question, they look sharply to see if they can make out the answer you prefer, 126 Mexico To-Day and then reply accordingly. They do not like to confess ignorance, and have a trying habit of saying, " Si, senor/' to all ques- tions for which yes or no may serve as an answer. Their promises are utterly futile, both because of their want of a sense of the value of truth and of their lack of any under- standing of time. " To-morrow " means any future time. They will not refuse even a beggar outright, but will ask him to return '^ to-morrow." A carpenter came once to see me about some work which I was anxious to have done, but as it was Sunday when he came I explained my objection to doing busi- ness that day and asked him to come back '' to-morrow." The word was fatal. He thought I was dismissing him, and never re- turned. The dilatory and incompetent ways of the working people are constantly cov- ered up by fabrications. If you ask a man about a task which you have not seen he will usually claim to have done all he thinks you expect him to have done. Business Men Eeliable. Though this disre- gard of truth has largely pervaded society, it has not, strange to say, greatly affected the honor and reliability of business firms. Manufacturers and wholesale dealers agree that there are no more reliable business men Social and Moeal Inheritances 127 to be found than the established firms of Mexico. They are often exasperatingly slow, and consider an extension of credit on their orders for two or three years nothing unreasonable. Their own rule of business is the opposite of that commonly adopted in the United States. Their motto seems to be slow sales and big profits. This suits them and apparently suits their customers also. It is a wise manufacturer who adjusts him- self to it and establishes and maintains con- fidential relations with such firms. They are almost always solid financially, they have a rich field, and they do business largely on the basis of personal relations and acquaintanceship. Sin of Stealing. This digression naturally brings me to consider that failing which is so close akin to lying, namely, stealing. Concerning this we may say as of lying: ^^ Mexico is not a land of thieves, yet pilfer- ing is far too common there and is looked upon with much more of tolerance than it ought to be.'' Stealing is like lying in being a sort of natural outgrowth of servility. Slaves, whether industrial or chattel, are al- ways poor. They are without the incentive of self-respect. They are apt even to reason that they have certain rights to the belong- 128 Mexico To-Day ings of tlieir masters, since they too are property. The old darky defended stealing from his master on the ground that it was his master's property that was benefited. He was slow to drive the hogs out of the cornfield because it was both ^' massa's cohn and massa's hogs." Skilful Pilfering. It is useless to deny that in this respect, too, the laboring people of Mexico still show traces of their long ap- prenticeship in servility. They have an in- veterate weakness for picking up loose ob- jects, whether needful to them or not. As for that, they are so poor that they can make some use of almost anything, and, in the cities, especially, can either sell or pawn any object whatever for some amount. In Mex- ico City there was long maintained a ^' thieves' market " — a sort of clearing- house of all kinds of objects of small value. To it property owners went to recover knives, hatchets, hammers, shoes, keys, hats, chains, locks, umbrellas, and various other small objects that had walked off. It was tolerated by a sort of agreement on the part of both citizens and police that it was sim- pler and better to buy back such things than to try to identify and punish the thieves. When I first went to Mexico (1884) there Social and Moral Inheeitances 129 was great scarcity in that country of iron and steel. None of the country's own re- sources for this material had been properly developed and an almost prohibitive tariff kept out foreign supplies or forced them up to enormous prices. Now the desire of ev- ery Mexican's heart is to have a good ma- chete or puntilla to carry. The machete is a short sword or long knife, something like a corn-cutter knife. The puntilla is a dag- ger, long or short, wide or slender, heavy or keen, as the case may be, but always sharp- ened ready for use. Their smiths are skil- ful in the making and tempering of these highly valued tools, and will make them out of almost any bit of good iron or of steel that can be laid hands on. I recall a machete which was most highly valued by one of my old friends — he had carried it for nearly fifty years — which had been made out of a blacksmith's rasp. Some of the corruga- tions could be traced on the side of it still. This pressing demand for steel resulted in a frequency and variety of pilfering which greatly interested and often amused me. The railroads were the greatest sufferers. The tools used on track work had to be con- stantly watched. The flowing blanket, which is an essential part of a Mexican's dress, can 130 Mexico To-Day easily be thrown around any object of mod- erate size. An engineer in charge of some track construction told me that on a certain occasion he noticed one of a group of idlers who had been talking with his men moving off rather stiffly. He stepped up and was greatly interested to find that, by some gym- nastic feat which he does not yet understand, the man had thrust down the inside of his loose cotton trousers-leg a crowbar about five feet long and weighing something like twenty pounds, and was making off with his treasure. Every detachable bit of metal about the tracks was liable to disappear — switch bars, levers, rods, fish-plates, and even the spikes which hold down the rails. Indeed the stealing of spikes became so com- mon, and so many disastrous train wrecks occurred in consequence, that a drastic law was passed by which this was made a capital offense. Position of Woman. Another of Mexico's unhappy inheritances has been the degrada- tion of her womanhood. The union of Spaniard and Mexican was usually by the marriage of a native woman to a Spanish husband. It can be readily seen how favor- able the conditions were for the domineering of husband over wife. The Indian, after the SociAx. AND Moral Inheritances 131 manner of primitive peoples, accepted the degradation of the sqnaw as a matter of course. The Spanish conquistador es were not likely to take a better view of their na- tive wives than the native hnsbands were accustomed to. Inferiority of every kind was thus thrust upon the women of a whole nation and meekly accepted by them. And the nation has not recovered from the effects to this day. Degradation of Ignorance. It is especially true that intellectual inferiority — accepted as such even if not actual — soon brings in its train moral degradation. When men look upon their wives as their inferiors they are not likely to be true to them. Wives will not be, in the long run, better than their hus- bands. In all frankness it must be said that the system of espionage inculcated by the Catholic manner of education does not tend to increase but rather to diminish the sanc- tity of womanhood. A celibate priesthood and the auricular confession have also con- tributed their part — not a small one — to weaken the true sanctions of virtue among the women. Conditions as to Marriag'e. That all these in- iluences have robbed the w^omanhood of Mexico of womanly virtue is not, of course, 132 Mexico To-Day wholly true. Yet laxness of standards is commoner in that country than it should be. The men of the better class disregard social conventions most openly, and among the ig- norant and poor there is much neglect of marriage. At this point should be entered another count in the charge against the Eom- ish Church, namely, that its priests are ac- customed to charge prohibitive prices for celebrating marriages, while at the same time teaching the people that civil marriage is sinful and the ceremony void. To get the blessing of the Church on his wedding costs a working man a sum of money — required in advance — which is essentially prohibitive. He simply cannot save that much. The re- sult has been and still is that thousands of couples live together for years without be- ing married and hundreds of thousands of children are born out of wedlock. It often happens that before converts can be received into a Protestant Church they have to be married, though at the time they may have well grown and numerous children. The Degradation of Womanliood. The direct tendency of such a state of things is the degradation of womanhood. When the sanctions of law and of conscience fail be- cause both human and divine laws are set STKBET GAMBLING GROUP OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN Social and Moral Inheritances 133 aside, then public respect soon follows. So- ciety does not take lightly the disregarding of its conventions and rules. Many other consequences follow in the train of such dis- regard. The worst of all is woman's loss of respect for herself. The regard of society at large, the respect of the public, the re- spect and esteem even of her own husband, she can better dispense with than with her own self-esteem. When that is gone, all is gone. The Mexican Woman. The conditions which I have been describing obtain, of course, chiefly among the poorer classes. But it is these classes which make up the preponder- ating element in the population of Mexico. As modern educational methods spread, the people are rising in the scale of intelligence and influence. It is of the utmost impor- tance that they rise also in the scale of morals. Otherwise the future population of Mexico will be poisoned in its very fountain- head. Notliing but the uplifting and stimu- lating influence of genuine Christian educa- tion can furnish an antidote to the evil already injected into the life of the people. And the womanhood of that land — amiable, domestic, warm-hearted, vivacious, patient, industrious — the womanhood of Mexico, 134 Mexico To-Day which has suffered so many wrongs, borne them so nobly, achieved already so fair a fame, will be the first and greatest gainer in the coming intellectual and moral rebirth of their country. Convent Ideal in Education. The training of the women among the more favored ele- ments in Mexican society has been lightly touched upon. The convent idea of purity and holiness — a purity which can only be guaranteed by vows and an impassable wall — does little to strengthen the moral fiber of girls. Schoolgirls under the convent sys- tem are constantly watched. They infer, by the very force of circumstances, that they are kept from sin only by influences outside themselves. The effect of all this on their standards of thinking cannot be happy. In their homes, as daughters and wives, they are treated with the same open want of con- fidence. No young woman sees gentlemen friends alone. Courting must be done sur- reptitiously through iron-barred windows. The bars over the windows in Mexican homes are designed quite as much to keep women in as to keep burglars out. The whole system is ridiculous, of course, and is rapidly yielding to enlightened public sen- timent. But it has done its part in working Social and Moral Inheritances 135 disaster in not a few directions to Mexican society of yesterday and to-day. Domestic Drudges. One thing more I must mention before dismissing this subject of the social status of Mexico's women. Those of the poorer classes are slaves to a most cumbersome form of housework. Mention has been made of the com cakes or tortillas which are the staple food of the people of this class. The grinding of the corn for these cakes is a never-ending task for the women. The grains of Indian corn are soaked in weak lye or a solution of lime till the husk dissolves. They are then while still moist put into the mill. This is not the round mill of Palestine, of which two women together turn the upper stone. The upper stone of the Mexican mill does not turn. It is a short stone, the size of a man's arm, called a mano, that is rubbed up and down on the face of the lower stone, which is set in a sloping position. Both stones are of hard volcanic rock, and the implement is called a metate. It is operated by a single woman, who kneels and patiently scrubs the heavy pestle up and down, laid sidewise on the face of the metate and held by each end, much as a washerwoman uses a wash-board. The product of the moist hominy (nisJita- 136 Mexico To-Day mal) macerated tlins is dough, rather than flour, a damp mass, which is at once patted into thin cakes and baked. Made from se- lected corn these tortillas are very good and wholesome, but the making of them is a slavish drudgery. Many a time when enter- tained in humble Mexican homes I have heard when first awake in the darkness and chill of the early morning the dull scrub, scrub of the mano on the metate. The house-mother was already up and on her knees at the task of bread-making for the family, a task that not only consumes hours of time but entails the heaviest kind of manual labor. And many other forms of woman's work have been in Mexico equally primitive and exacting, demanding an ex- penditure of energy and of time that has stood much in the way of her intellectual progress and higher moral enlightenment. Churcli and Public Scliools. The hostility of \ the Catholic Church to the public school sys- ; tern has done much mischief. In the first place it has hindered the cause of education, and education is one of Mexico's most crying needs. Besides, in the second place, this an- tagonism of the Church to the public school reacts directly on public morals. Since the Church condemns the schools, all who send WOMAN WHO WALKED 100 MILES TO FIND A PROTESTANT CHURCH Social and Moeal Inheritances 137 to them, all wlio teach in them, all who are taught, must look upon themselves as sinners — whether they will or not. Their consciences are ^ ' offended. ' ' In retaliation or in despera- tion they often become or proclaim themselves unbelievers or atheists. Even young women, studying in the state normal schools and prospective teachers of the country's chil- dren, have to think of themselves as defiant unbelievers. The Church — Christianity — and education are thus set in antagonism. Ee- ligion and morality part company. That which should be a saving force in society becomes a destructive influence. The Clinrch in Mexico. It is through this and other similar proceedings that the Cath- olic Church has about lost its hold upon the thinking people of Mexico. In fact it has but slight power over the thought of any class ; such grasp as remains to it is because of custom and tradition rather than by rea- soned conclusions. This fact accounts for the surprising progress of the Protestant Churches. But only a beginning has been made in remedying the situation. Purer forms of Christianity are unknown to them. Unless religion can be presented to them in terms adjusted to their present standards of intellectual and industrial advance, and to 138 Mexico To-Day their ideals for the futnre, they will suffer ir- re^Darable harm. To remedy their deep- seated conviction that Christianity is the foe of enlightenment and to place religion in its proper relation, as the ally of all that makes for progress and national well-being as well as the salvation of the people from degrading superstition and open sin, is an undertaking which the evangelical churches having entered upon cannot follow up too earnestly. Need of the Master. I am conscious that this is a most incomplete and fragmentary account of the social and moral conditions obtaining to-day in Mexico, and of the reasons for them. I have not sought to paint a black picture, but limitations of space have made it impos- sible to soften and qualify. I am sure that those conditions are improving. And I am equally sure that no other influence for their betterment can begin to compare with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has a healing touch for both the intellectual and the moral life. Its effect upon a nation, upon the women of a nation, especially, who are the mothers of the nation to be, is symbolized by the experience of that woman who, draw- ing near to the Master in the midst of a throng, timidly touched his garment. In- stantly she knew within herself that she was SociAjL AND Moral. Inheritances 139 healed, while all the hands and voices of the multitude could not conceal from him the sense that a hand of faith — the tender, ap- pealing, soothing, ministering hand of a woman — had been stretched out to him. So Mexico stretches out her hand to-day. In the midst of the hurrying, careless throng, let us pray that with it she may reach the garment of One who is able to heal all her diseases. THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING DUEING THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY The progress made in education has been great in the last quarter of a century. Unfortunately reliable statistics up to date are not available; but there is evidence to show that the number of public schools is over ten thousand, and the attendance well on toward a million pupils. Since re- ligious toleration has come again to recognize that the Roman Catholics even have some rights, there are many parochial schools under charge of priests or nuns. There are, besides, many private, religious, and association schools giving education to something like a quarter of a million pupils. Higher, technical, and special education is ad- mirably cared for. — Joseph King Goodrich. The reaction against the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church has driven thousands of the thinking men of Mexico completely over to unbelief in all of its various forms. Atheism, agnosticism, pantheism, spiritualism, and almost every other " ism " in which men have tried to satisfy their spiritual natures are rampant. At least seventy-five per cent, of the male population who can read and write are unbelievers. Many of them outwardly conform to _ the Catholic Church by going to mass once a year, but it is done only to save social ostracism or assure stability in business. Nature's barriers, enactments of man, and un- belief are thus the three great towers of the fortress which stand in the way of the rapid march of the gospel army. The first is gradually giving way before the advance of railroads and progressive public officers who are construct- ing good roads. The second will be removed when the country is thoroughly prepared for it. The last is the greatest and is most strongly built. It is far easier to transplant faith than to grow it anew. — W. E. Vanderhilt. CHAPTEE V THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Beginning of a New Day. Though the new intellectual movement in Mexico did not pro- gress continuously throughout the whole of the last century, it practically began with the century. Its progress was by ebb and flow, sudden starts of feverish arousement alternating with long stretches of apathy. But of all the several impulses which suc- cessively stirred the soul of the nation, none was more vital, more fertilizing, more finally and essentially sigTiificant than the political revolution begun in 1810. Shock of Political Kevolution. In 1776 the British colonists of North America had sent into the beclouded political atmosphere of the world the electric shock of their declara- tion of independence. Fifteen years later the awful upheaval of the French Eevolu- tion followed. Both had essentially the same effect. Both profoundly impressed the world, because each of them was a fresh 143 144 Mexico To-Day declaration of tlie rights of man. Succeed- ing the chaos of the Middle Ages had come a long period of emphasis on government, on law, on power, on the divine right of kings. But the Beformation began at last to sow the seeds of the emancipation of the indi- vidual. The art of printing came in just then, and set these seeds flying upon all the winds. The minds of men — of all sorts and conditions of men — began to stir at this new stimulus. Napoleon and American Liberty. The politi- cal liberation of the Spanish colonies in America came about as a secondary reaction from the French Eevolution, and that in a most unexpected way. The French Revolu- tion made a way for the first Napoleon, and Napoleon, before he was done giving rein to his vast ambitions, so shook Spain, among other European countries, that her colonies fell away from her. The patriot cause in those various colonies had made but meager headway toward the goal of liberation till the hands of the mother country were weak- ened by the little Corsican. In Mexico there was the singular spectacle toward the last of a revolt against the Spanish crown by the Catholics, on the ground that the mon- archy of Spain was no longer a ' ' holy Cath- The Intellectual Awakening 145 olic '' institution. When this element in the Mexican population, always before tories and loyalists, fell in with the rebels, inde- pendence was instantly achieved. Spain at the time (1821) was helpless, being torn with an inner struggle between republican and monarchical parties. Thus liberty, for which Hidalgo and Morelos and Allende and hundreds of other Mexican patriots had poured out their lives, in vain, as it then seemed, and which during a ten years' strug- gle had appeared an ever-receding, unattain- able dream, suddenly came to Mexico over- night, as it were. Men woke up and rubbed their eyes to find themselves free. Preedoin Av/akens. Naturally such an event shook the whole intellectual life of the nation to its very roots. People asked themselves. What is this independencia about which everybody is shouting? What is it to be free? What kind of government shall we have now? That was nearly a hundred years ago. The questions are, for many of the people, unanswered still. For Mexico had to learn that to political liberty — if it is to be maintained — must be added the liberation mentally of the individual from ignorance, superstition, and folly, and his moral re- demption from the shackles of sin. It has 146 Mexico To-Day been for her a hard lesson, and it is not yet fully learned. No student of the history of the people can fail, however, to observe the profound change in their intellectual life wrought by this burst of the sunlight of lib- erty. They were not yet free, but their country was free. They called themselves free. They thought now of their land as a national entity, entitled henceforth to its separate and unfettered life. The thought was an enchanting one. They drank it in like wine. It stirred in them a deep-seated, inextinguishable patriotism. Buoyed by the success of their near neighbors on the north they determined to have a republic, a gov- ernment of the people, by the people. Ideals and AcMevement. It might be sus- pected from the indifferent success which Mexico has had in evolving a stable govern- ment that her ideas of popular rule are poorly defined. That is true, in a sense, as we shall presently see, but not in the sense that the ideals embodied in her constitutions and institutions have been defective. The leaders in the great struggle for free gov- ernment have always known thoroughly the essential principles of such government. They have studied and followed as models the best known republican constitutions. The Intellectual Awakening 147 The Constitution of the United States is the principal basis of the two or three similar documents that Mexico has successively adopted. It is not to theoretical defects of this kind that the comparative failure of her experiments is to be traced. The consti- tutions were good enough. The reasons why they would not '' march " are to be sought in the people. After what they had gone through with during three hun- dred years of training in submission, in obedience, in servility and accepted inferi- ority, it was not possible that any miracle of mere political liberation should change them in a day or a year into intelligent, composed, self-respecting, and self-controlled citizens of an autonomous republic. That transfor- mation has not even yet been fully wrought. What had been three hundred years in do- ing has not been undone in one hundred vears. Two Points of Contact. For our purpose here we dwell on two points only at which the political revolution touched the intellec- tual life of the people. Of course there were many other points of contact, but these seem the most significant. The first is the one above hinted at, namely, the tremendous awakening and vivif^ang effect of the forma- 148 Mexico To-Day tion of a new national ideal. They all, down to the humblest, went through the experi- ence of transferring their allegiance from a king, looked up to as a vicegerent of heaven, to a patria, a native land, a government set up by themselves. This deep and wide in- tellectual upheaval was wonderfully fertiliz- ing. It set the people to thinking of a thou- sand things. The authority of the crown had always been allied, in the thought of the people at least, with that of the Church. Men now began to inquire why, if one had been thrown off, the other should still be tol- erated. Unfortunately for her, Catholicism had no reply to make to these inquiries. Hitherto reasonings had been simply stifled. Men had had to yield to authority, in Church and state, because it was authority. No questions were answered. None were al- lowed to be asked. Now had come a time when mere authority did not suffice to hush men. Their minds, thoroughly aroused, re- fused to stop inquiring. Free speech might be silenced; it often was; but thought went on and on. Popular Education. The other arousing in- iBuence directly traceable to the new political situation was the emphasis placed on popu- lar education. Practically all the great pa- The Intellectual Awakening 149 triots who had to do with laying the founda- tion of the new Spanish American govern- ments understood the fundamental impor- tance, the necessity even, of educating the people — all the people, since all of the peo- ple are citizens and sovereigns. Now this undertaking is in Mexico as yet only an ideal, a dream, largely unrealized. Yet the very fact that such a dream has been dreamed, such an ideal set up, has made a profound stir. The thought has run like an electric current through all the national fiber. Unlettered men and women in remote villages and ranches have thought and talked of a time when there shall be schools every- where, for everybody. Their sons, or their grandsons, they say, will see this, if they themselves do not. And the young people growing up have heard the talk and it has awakened in them a longing for schooling and the things of books. So it has happened that wherever enterprising governors or municipalities have pressed the work of es- tablishing public schools they have found a constituency ready for them. And wherever the Protestant Churches have found it pos- sible to open schools, students have flocked to them. Even the Catholic Church has been forced by this demand to enter, if re- 150 Mexico To-Day luctantly and, for the most part, rather in- efficiently, upon the task of teaching, and its schools too are crowded. There is, in short, universal approval of the idea of educating the people. Nobody whose opinion is worth while now opposes universal schooling. It is an accepted axiom of the national life. It is not yet in practise, but the limitation is because of the system and the equipment, not for the lack of a demand. Education the Motlier of Ideas. This national turning from a long period of contented ignorance to an epoch of universal devotion to the idea of education is a revolution in the mental life and habits of the people that is absolutely fundamental. It is an awaken- ing, a real new birth. It is the fruitful mother of a whole flock of stimulating and arousing ideas; ideas that have spread like a contagion throughout the people during the passing of the century just closed. Economic Awakening. Next in importance to this awakening of the national pride of freedom and the desire for letters — intellec- tual and moral influences strictly, both of them — is the mental reaction aroused by the new industrialism. Of this on every hand are instances — tragic, stirring, melancholy, often ludicrous. The tremendous natural CHILDREN OF MEXICO The Intellectual Awakenii^g 151 resources of the country attracted to it abundance of capital as soon as tlie govern- ment became stable enough to offer protec- tion. Mines were opened, railway lines built, telegraphs established, manufactories inaugurated. It was foreign capital largely that did this, for most of the money of Mex- ico was in the hands of the old, wealthy fam- ilies, of people who are usually excessively timid. They distrusted and disliked the new order of things, and it was next to im- possible to persuade them to invest their funds. With the foreign money came the foreigners too, with their novel ideas, unfa- miliar articles, new ways, strange speech, odd modes of thought, opening up every- where channels of communication with the big modern world outside, so long, for Mex- ico, unknown and remote. Common Carriers of Ideas. The railroads, for example, were a huge entering wedge for modern ideas. Conservative influence was everywhere used against them. The people heard strange stories about the locomotives — that they were living monsters, infernal creatures, full of fire and terror, devouring wood and coal and perhaps also children, and screaming loudly for more. Besides they moved so rapidly that people and chick- 152 Mexico To-Day ens and dogs and donkeys were continually getting ground up under their terrible wheels. In 1884 I rode from Mexico City several miles to a suburban town on a car drawn by mules. Noticing that the track was ballasted and laid with rather heavy steel, I asked the reason of such unusual extravagance. It transpired that the road had had at first steam engines for drawing the cars, but so much prejudice had been excited by the smashing up of chickens and goats and by the breathless and unnecessary haste with which the trains moved, that the company was forced to take off the engines and use mules! Policy of President Diaz. The government, however, under President Diaz especially, steadily promoted the building of railways. They were needed for the industrial develop- ment of the country and quite as much for the purposes of the government itself. The more difficult and unpromising lines were therefore heavily subsidized out of govern- ment funds, special provision being made at the same time for the use of tracks and trains whenever required by the govern- ment. These government funds but in- creased the tide of foreign money which poured into the country. Labor was in de- The Intellectual Awakening 153 mand as never before. The peons from the haciendas and mines were astounded at the offer of wages double their usual pay for labor on construction and maintenance. They were frequently hauled free halfway across the country simply to get them to where they were needed. Strange modes of work, strange tools, vehicles, and imple- ments — dynamite, steam shovels, pile-driv- ers, derrick engines — the bustle and stimu- lation of construction camps where the ends of the earth come together — for it was im- possible that Irish paddy, Chinese cook, and darky camp-follower should fail to appear on a scene like that, to say nothing of en- gineers and their helpers, American, Eng- lish, and Scotch — opened up for these dusky toilers from remote farms and villages a whole new world. Their sons later got to be brakemen, messenger boys, stokers, tele- graph operators, conductors. They them- selves developed a mania for train riding and explored the length and breadth of their broad country. They saw newspapers, fruits, and candies for sale that had come from beyond the border, from that great land to the north that had always before seemed to them so far away. They heard their beautiful language ruthlessly butch- 154 Mexico To-Day ered by big, blonde fellows, who though they could not speak Spanish knew a thousand things and could v/ork marvelous doings and achieve impossible undertakings. Stimulus of Hew Things. So profound and widespread an industrial change, affecting the most intimate affairs of the humblest and most ignorant of the people, wrought mightily to arouse the mind of all. The people had to face a thousand new ideas and relations. They discussed among them- selves, they meditated at length, they can- vassed from every possible angle, all these unfamiliar and stunning concepts. Often they were forced to give up problems as in- soluble. Often they found old faiths and fixed beliefs profoundly shaken. There was a spirit and an indomitable determination about these foreigners that was a source of unmeasured wonder to them. Nothing was admitted to be impossible. Always a way could be found. If a tract of jungle or a wild mountain gorge was considered impenetra- ble, straightway these americanos plowed through it a chasm for their steel rails and shrieking locomotives. It is not surprising, therefore, that ideas in the moral and intel- lectual realm that long had been accepted as settled began to lose their fixity and finality. The Intellectual Awakening 155 The resourcefulness and independence of their new friends were for the Mexicans con- tagious. That spirit of self-reliance, of de- termined self-assertion got abroad among them. Young Ameriea in Mexico. It was especially among the young that the new ideas began to ferment, the new ways to find acceptance. They had been employed perhaps from childhood by these foreign railroad people. They had picked up no small smattering of English from employers who had a way of forcing their hands to speak English because they themselves could not or would not learn Spanish. They were imbued with the desire to be up-to-date, in thought and ways. All of which things served to shake them free of the old customs, more and more. For centuries one phrase had exercised in Mex- ico a most potent sway. Against all innova- tions the sufficient objection could be urged : No es costmnbre, — It is not the custom. That had long sufficed as a reason for not changing. The people argued that if a thing had been good enough for their fathers, it was good enough for them. Not so these youthful imitators of things foreign. They thought all the less of a custom or mode of thought if it represented the ways of their 156 Mexico To-Day fathers, for their fathers and ancestors stood in their minds for industrial ineffi- ciency, for an antiquated and no longer pos- sible subserviency to old ways merely be- cause they are old. The railways and other similar public works were, in short, a school where the youth of Mexico learned modem ways and were awakened to modern concep- tions. Modern Ways. Quite the same may be said of the development of mining, of manufac- turing, and even of farming and stock-rais- ing. The entrance of foreign capital, the opening up of free communication with other countries, and the immigration of many forceful and efficient foreigners have all wrought directly upon the mental habits of the Mexican people. In mining opera- tions there have been a steady advancement of wages and an equally constant improve- ment of the conditions of labor. Modern factories of many kinds have been estab- lished in different sections of the country, and the working people are going through various stages of adjustment to their new conditions, including the organization of labor unions, of mutual benefit societies, and like agencies. This effort at cooperation and organization has been a most wholesome The Intellectual. Awakening 157 influence. The better wages paid under the stimulation of industrial prosperity have made conditions of living much more toler- able than formerly. The people have had time and spirit for social activities, and the desire of bettering their condition has greatly stimulated the organization of vari- ous forms of mutual benefit societies. Learning to Give and Take. The peculiar gain in all this lies principally in the fact that the Mexicans have naturally few apti- tudes for such organization. Like most people newly freed from hard political con- ditions they are prone to indulge in an exaggerated individualism. They are self- assertive, sensitive as to personal honor, watchful of rights, ambitious of leadership. The various social organizations — ^labor unions, mutual insurance societies, debating clubs, masonic and other lodges, — have had stormy careers. Not seldom they have been completely wrecked on the rock of disagree- ments among the members. But the dis- cipline of trying to adjust themselves to the demands of such social experiments, the ef- fort at self-command and at mutual surren- der for a common cause, has been of incal- culable value to the people. It has helped to teach them that if a man is to be a sov- 158 Mexico To-Day ereign citizen lie must begin with mastery of himself. It has turned the eyes of many from the exaggerated egoism natural to those who have just found themselves to the duty of sacrifice for the common good. It has set the common good in its true light as more important than the welfare or gratifi- cation of any individual — as essential even to the welfare of each as well as of all. Mexican Characteristics. These influences have had some deep-seated national traits to which to appeal. The Mexican, in common with most men, has a stubborn hatred of in- justice. He is, moreover, naturally of a sympathetic nature. The adjective in com- mon use by which he describes an agreeable, attractive person is simpdtico. Though sometimes he is seemingly cruel, it is only in a childish, thoughtless way. At heart he is a tender man, generous to a fault, prodigal of time, labor, and money for the benefit of his needy fellows. In no country in the world are beggars treated with more consid- eration or poor relations more generously cared for. Besides all this, the long course of oppression, civil, ecclesiastical, industrial, had welded the people into a unified mass, vast, unwieldy, dimly conscious of itself, yet essentially one. At last the pressure The Intellectual Awakening 159 which had held it together was withdrawn. The centrifugal forces of a new individual- ism were threatening to scatter the mass in whirring fragments. If its unity was to be preserved it must now be by inner attrac- tion, by a conscious effort at union and co- operation. This crucial demand upon them for the study and comprehension of the essentials of community action was only dimly and vaguely felt by many, but it fur- nished a background of courage and of hope amid the many humiliating failures at co- operative organization through which the people had to pass. Groping for a Social Standard. It served also, and this is especially to our purpose, as a potent and inexhaustible stimulant to the in- tellectual life of the people. Like the set- ting up of the standard of political liberty, dependent on the eternal vigilance of those who would be free, it aroused men to think who were not used to think, for whom it is hard to think — an unaccustomed effort to which they adjust themselves with extreme difficulty. The methods and detail of or- ganization, the rules of procedure, estab- lished in other lands on the basis of long ex- perience, the benefits to be derived from joint action and to be forfeited by the want 160 Mexico To-Day of it, all these became the subject of pro- found and persistent study. It made men read, it furnished stock for endless conver- sation and argument, it forced them into contact with the world, hitherto so remote and unknown, and like the influence of the railroads, became really a course of study, a college, a university for developing the minds of all the people. A national Press. Of other elements in the national awakening we have yet to mention one which was among the most potent, and which, though a little hard to isolate from, other related influences, merits separate and special discussion, and that is the develop- ment of a national press. So general was illiteracy throughout the country after inde- pendence was achieved that this develop- ment was a slow one. Liberty of the press was proclaimed from the beginning. But for a long time it was far from being realized. Under Spanish rule there was, of course, no pretense of such a thing. The Spanish gov- ernment, like the Catholic Church, exercised an open and severe censorship. People were allowed to print and to read only what their mentors thought would be good for them. After the beginning of the experiment at self-government it was soon found that gen- The Intellectual. Awakening 161 erals and Presidents were when in power uncommonly sensitive to public criticism. A judicious critic of Latin America lias said that one of the failings of the people of these nations is that they so often take words for deeds. Something of that has from the be- ginning been witnessed in the attitude of public men to the press. In Mexico it has been the rule rather than the exception that men in authorit}^ have suppressed the peri- odicals which criticized them or their poli- cies, and have tolerated only those that would deal out fulsome praise. Steady Gains. Nevertheless the gradual ex- tension of the schools, of one kind or an- other, the steady rise of the people in the scale of literacy, working together with the great democratic principle of a free press, have stimulated the growth and independ- ence of the newspapers. In recent years they have greatly multiplied. In one form or another, as trade journals, literary publi- cations, political organs, or mere newspa- pers, they have now pretty well extended themselves over the whole nation. They go into village and hamlet, as well as into city and town, and they are read till they are w^orn out. The people who cannot read — and the proportion of these, except in remote 162 Mexico To-Day Indian settlements, is rapidly diminishing — have the papers read aloud to them. White paper is expensive in Mexico as are other es- sentials of the printer's art, and the periodi- cals are apt to be cheap looking and shabby. But they are having a tremendous influence. The ideas and the news which the}^ dissemi- nate and the desire for knowledge and learn- ing which they awaken are among the out- standing elements in the general intellectual awakening concerning T\^hich our study is now occupied. As in other and more favored lands, the '^ free press " is by no means always free. Sinister influences of various kinds secure control of these organs of '^ public opinion." Newspapers, like men, may be victims of many other forms of ser- vitude besides being subservient to a tyran- nical government. Even the news columns are invaded, and ends of a secret and selfish character are sought in the very manner of placing the news of the world before the reading public. But while all these influ- ences are more easily exercised among an inexperienced and simple class of readers than among those who are prepared by long training to understand the drift and mean- ing of things, it is still better for people to read than not to read. And whether for bet- The Intellectual. Awakening 163 ter or for worse, the die is cast. The peri- odicals of Mexico are rapidly making a read- ing people of the inhabitants of that coun- try. This profound change in the mental atmosphere in which they move is one which must be taken account of in summing up the elements of the modern intellectual move- ment. Cosmopolitan Consciousness. Closely akin to the newspapers and their influence, is the arousing quality of contact with the world through modern methods of travel and intercommunication. The train service, the telegraph and cable, the telephone and ■Dost-office are all carriers of ideas. Bar- riers of nationality and of language offer dijSiculties, but they are temporary and far from invincible. The train that carries only Texans in Texas may roll across tlie border to be loaded with Spanish-speaking Mexicans. The signs of the Morse alphabet can be made to spell out words in Chinese or Aztec, and the telephone carries a con- versation in Spanish quite as cheerfully and as clearly as one in English. The fact that people all over the world are availing them- selves of modern modes of rapid and distant travel and of modern means of conveying ideas where it is not desired to convey 164 Mexico To^Day bodies, is bringing the whole world to a com- munity of thought. It is a most stirring thing, too, to feel that you are one with the great and widespread human race, that you are thinking the same thoughts with your brother over seas or at the antipodes. Awakening to World-wide Influences. It would be an interesting study, were there space for it, to trace the numerous ways in which this sense of mental touch with the world silently affects the thinking of a people. There are standards of opinion and judg- ment embodied in the very phrases which be- come current and which insensibly press in upon the fixed ideas of non-progressive and isolated people. We have in Spain to-day the spectacle of a people held fast in the chains of authority and restrained at every point from responding to the modern cur- rents of thought which from every quarter blow upon it. Yet so potent are these silent forces of the spirit of the times that even the people of Spain, illiterate and apparently helpless as they are, seem about to break over the barriers set up by both Church and state, and assert their right to be a part of the modern, progressive world. Rapid Transformation. Under the protection of the excellent laws and policing, people from The Intellectual Awakening 165 other countries traveled all over Mexico and many of them settled down to business or professional pursuits. Spread of the English Language. Within twenty years the English language from be- ing a novelty when heard on the streets came to be a commonplace almost everywhere. I was once (about 1892) detained by a storm of rain in an Indian village on Lake Patz- cuaro. The railroad had but lately pene- trated that region and the life of the Tarasco Indians was, as it still is, exceedingly primi- tive. The family with whom I found lodg- ing and a warm welcome had but a dirt floor hut, with a very small and low '' lean-to '^ as kitchen and dining-room. I could only get into this room in a sitting posture, and the one part of the main room where I could stand upright was in the hole left for the ladder which led to the '' loft," with my head and shoulders in the second story! The warmth of the kitchen fire was shared by a cat and dog. The cat caused the family great merriment by sitting on a warm stone till she fell asleep and then nod- ding till she rolled in the hot ashes. This happened several times, causing each time shouts of laughter. The dog was a great favorite and made himself much at home. 166 Mexico To-Day My hosts spoke Spanish with considerable difficulty, talking always among themselves their native Tarasco. This is a beautiful language, by the way, in sound considerably resembling English. They frequently ad- dressed the dog by a name which I took to be Indian, as I was sure it was not Spanish. Fi- nally I said, ^ ^ What is the name you give the dog! " They laughed and looked surprised. ^' Popepy, popepy," they said, ^^ English, you know; American name: popepy. Isn't that right! " I then discovered that they were calling him '^ puppy,'' a word which they had learned from a young Mexican preacher who had visited them the year be- fore and who had a smattering of English. This discovery of my native tongue in that strange out-of-the-way setting was as sur- prising to me as was the fact that they dragged out for me a cheap American can- vas cot on which to sleep. It also had been left by the young preacher, and frightfully cold it proved, that raw, rainy night. Educational Statistics Impossible. The lack of properly kept records makes it difficult to trace the educational development of Mex- ico. During the administration of Presi- dent Diaz much attention was given to public schools. The Federal District and the terri- The Intellectual Awakening 167 tories under federal control had excellent systems provided for them by congress. A number of the states followed with plans for rural schools and for the supervision of those established by municipalities, with compulsory laws, state normal schools, and other advanced features. The plans adopted were modern and admirable, but the course of development was everywhere slow. There was no adequate supply of teachers and supervisors. The influence of the Church was thrown against the whole insti- tution, including, of course, the state normal schools. The people were not yet really hungry for enlightenment, and so were easily discouraged. The schools themselves were usually rather crude affairs. The cus- tom of conning lessons aloud was general. A busy primary school could easily be heard a block away, and the strident yells of en- thusiastic little Indians were enough to make tatters of any teacher's nerves. School Situation To-day. The political dis- turbances of the last two years have pret- ty effectually wrecked the public school work. The Federal Minister of Education recently issued an estimate that probably seventy-five per cent, of the Mexican people are still illiterate. This is undoubtedly an 168 Mexico To-Day exaggeration, indulged in, seemingly, for political effect. Going over the matter care- fully with a Mexican friend, a gentleman who was for eleven years president of the state normal school and superintendent of primary education for the state of Coahuila, I have reached the conclusion that fifty per cent, of illiterates is as high a rate as need fee charged against the Mexican people of to-day. A hundred years ago it was about ninety per cent. Demand for Letters. But while the public school work has of late been interrupted, the demand for schooling has been greatly in- tensified. The recent political disturbances have been distinctively popular movements — excepting, of course, the coup of Diaz and Huerta against Madero. They have pro- foundly stirred popular thought. They put a premium on reading and intelligence. One result is that mission schools are crowded as never before. Newspapers are springing up everywhere. They are eagerly taken and read, and the people who cannot read bewail it and wish to send their children to school. Everybody is Thinking Now. The arousing effect of these recent political events has been, indeed, almost equal to that exercised The Intellectual Awakening 169 by tlie great revolution of a Imndred years ago. In a general way tlie country is much worse off for these revolutions. Farming and commerce are paralyzed and fighting and pillage have caused immense damage. I met a Mexican laborer on the street in El Paso, Texas, while the fighting in Mexico City was in progress last February. He had a small Spanish newspaper in his hand, and I began a conversation by asking what was the news. The paper contained nothing new, but we proceeded to exchange items. I was im- pressed that the feeling uppermost in his mind was one of shame that his countrymen should fall out and fight in the heart of the capital. ^^ That is the one beautiful city that we Mexicans have,'' he mourned, '' and now they are ruining it with their cannon." I tried to draw him out as to his political preferences, but he was too cautious. Yet I did not doubt he had opinions and only con- cealed them because I was a stranger to him. A New Public Opinion. That is the one dis- tinct gain that the visitor to Mexico to-day will note. There is at last beginning to be such a thing there as public opinion. Ambi- tious leaders are finding that the people can no longer be driven like sheep. Greneral Reyes tried to start a revolution against 170 Mexico To-Day Madero, but nobody would rally to him. He was a very popular man, too. Madero tried to raise an army, but the people would not enlist. Huerta has laid violent hands on the presidency, but the people disapprove of him as a usurper, a man whose hands are stained with blood. They will not enlist in his army at double wages even. The sleep- ing giant is awakening. The long sub- merged and disregarded common people of Mexico are coming to a consciousness of themselves. They are longing for light and help. Never before was the way so wide open for the Christian teacher. Are We Grood Neighbors? Of course in a national transition of this sort there are many grotesque and even absurd contrasts. Often the people go so fast that there is a reaction. We Americans have not always been happy in our representatives in Mex- ico. All sorts of adventurers have crossed the Eio Grande, some for their own and their country's good. Many who were not mere adventurers have been harsh and un- sympathetic in their attitude toward the Mexicans. Thus, though we are their near- est neighbors, though we have more that they wish and need than any other people, of both institutions and commerce, though we The Intellectual Awakening 171 have successfully established the kind of government that they are striving for, though our political constitution is the model for theirs, though, in short, we are their natural neighbors and helpers and big brothers, we have played the part but poorly and have no very strong hold on their re- gard. The memory of the unfortunate war of 1845 rankles yet in the thought of many. Our rough ways and bad manners do not fit us for the work of conciliation. Many of our people, in personal contact with the Mexicans, have been and are rude and un- feeling. Our tremendous wealth has put many of the great and productive enter- prises throughout Mexico under American control. That is not a pleasant thing for Mexicans to contemplate. So a spasm of an ti- Americanism not unfrequently passes over the country. "We are not, as we ought to be, the most popular people with them. Fortunately the two governments, especially since we helped Mexico in her great struggle with France and Maximilian, have been on the best of terms with each other. Not even sharp friction along the border from time to time, or the fomenting of Mexican revolu- tions on American soil, has availed to dis- turb this peaceful relationship. This state 172 Mexico To-Day of things should by all means be perpetu- ated. Public sentiment in both nations ought to demand it. We should not inter- vene by sending soldiers to Mexico. That would be terrible, disastrous. But out of our strength and abundance we ought to send to our needy neighbor teachers, evan- gelists, friends. These will be made wel- come. They will win for us the eternal gratitude and good-will of an entire nation. THE PROTESTANT MOVEMENT There is another, if possible sadder, fact. The Indians, or more than half the population, though counted as mem- bers of the Roman communion, never have had an oppor- tunity to know what Christianity is. They have been left without education, without Bibles, and have been permitted to mingle their ancient rites and superstitions with some of the outward forms of Christianity. Indians in feather plumage dancing at the sacred shrine of Guadalupe; niches, side by side, in villages and roadways, to the Virgin of Guadalupe and to the Aztec war god, Huitzilopochtli, are some current evidences of the criminal negligence of the Roman priesthood, a negligence that has covered three cen- turies. How shall Protestant Christians do their part toward the salvation of these millions? — John W. Butler. Why play at missions with such a magnificent opportu- nity as presents itself on this field? A compact city with a population larger than was reported for at least two of the states of our great union at the last census, and nearly two and one-half times as great as the population of one of them. In view of the vast resources which God has placed in the hands of North American Christians does not this condition in a great North American city seem pitiable in the extreme? We certainly have neglected some vast opportunities on our own continent. Who could ask for a better opportunity of investing a few thousand dollars where his investment would bring quick returns in evan- gelizing a great city? — L. E. Troyer. CHAPTEE VI THE PROTESTANT MOVEMENT Breaking" away from Catholicism. The French intervention and the brief and fatal empire of Maximilian of Austria were in reality a sort of last, desperate stand on the part of the Church party in Mexico. After an alli- ance Avith the civil government of the coun- try which had continued for more than three hundred years, enabling them during all that time to proscribe all religious teaching ex- cept their own, Church leaders could ill brook the liberal constitution of 1857 and the ac- companying ^' Laws of Eeform.'' These laws were aimed directly at the special privi- leges of the Eoman Church, such as the right of ecclesiastics when accused of crime to trial in a special court of their own and Church control of cemeteries and marriage as well as at the immense ecclesiastical realty hold- ings and the idle non-producing groups of re- ligious devotees. The new property regula- tions were similar to the mortmain laws long ago enforced in England and more recently 175 176 Mexico To-Day in France. They forbade the holding of real estate by a Church except for immediate use in connection with public worship. It was this drastic provision, coupled as it was with the sequestration of all actual holdings in violation of it, which drove the Church party in Mexico, after failing in a bloody war, to the desperate measure of seeking help in Eu- rope, resulting in the French intervention. Intellectual Emancipation. AH this took place during the dark years of the American Civil War, when the government at Washington was too deeply engrossed with domestic trou- bles to take note of the violation of the Mon- roe doctrine. But the ragged patriots of Mexico gradually drove back the trained French troops under Bazaine and other fa- mous leaders, as they had just previously discomfited the armies of the conservative party in Mexico. By 1867, as we have seen, Maximilian was defeated and slain, the French troops had been withdrawn — partly under pressure from Washington, though the king of France was glad of a pretext — and the Republic was triumphant in the land of the Aztecs. Already during the years of bit- ter struggle, when the principles underlying republican institutions were being subjected to minute study and the Reform Laws had The Peotestant Movement 177 set everybody to examining anew the whole subject of religion, many of the thoughtful opponents of a political and decadent Church had taken occasion to insist that they were not hostile to true Christianity. The York Rite of masonry, with its exaltation of the Bible, had been introduced in spite of savage per- secution and in the face of a horrified public sentiment. Many public men openly advo- cated the introduction of Protestantism as an aid in the struggle against religious condi- tions which had become intolerable. Presi- dent Juarez himself is quoted on excellent authority as saying that ' ^ upon the develop- ment of Protestantism largely depends the future happiness of our country.'' Buildings Available. During the administra- tion of Juarez, immediately following the intervention, the federal government found itself in possession of many buildings taken from the Catholics. These were not easily sold, as anathemas had been launched against any who should traffic in what had been con- secrated property. The long interdict against Protestant societies having been at last raised, work was soon begun by several evangelical Churches. To one of these, early on the ground, a grant was made by the gov- ernment of a valuable chapel in the heart of 178 Mexico To-Day Mexico City, and it was enabled also to pur- chase on easy terms part of what had been the monastery of San Francisco. Other so- cieties obtained by purchase from the federal authorities valuable locations there and in many other cities throughout the country. Religious Clubs. A singular phenomenon of those troubled years, hinting of the influence exerted by that divine Spirit which long ago brooded over earth's chaos, was the forma- tion of numerous quasi-religious voluntary associations — groups of men for study, dis- cussion, and mutual benefit. These sprang up all over the country. Later, several of them were merged into Christian congrega- tions. One such group in Mexico City had as active leader a soldier named Sosthenes Juarez, a relative of the great President. He had by accident come into possession of a French Bible brought over by one of the chaplains of the army of intervention — so strangely does God make the wrath of man to praise him. This Bible was made the nucleus of a voluntary association of men whose religious instincts were feeling after something that might satisfy them. So pow- erfully did the divine Word do its work in their minds and hearts that through the in- fluence of that one Bible in a language which The Peotestant Movement 179 only a few of them "iinderstood, nearly all of them became confessed Christians. Mr. Juarez, who was a man of culture and force, able to read the Bible in French and trans- late it for the benefit of his associates, later became a minister of the gospel, and after more than twenty years of efficient service in that calling died at his post as a soldier of the cross. The old French Bible and the manuscript regulations of this society, signed by all the members, are still preserved in the archives of the Board under which Mr. Juarez labored. Influence of the Bible. This incident illus- trates anew how religious awakenings root themselves in the Bible. That Book is the ally of all intellectual and social struggles after better things. It arouses the minds of those who touch it for the first time as nothing else will, and also profoundly stirs the moral conscience. And it does not stop with awakening new desires and aspirations; it guides as well as awakens. It .makes men demand enlightenment. It is the mother of the public school. It is the enemy of dark- ness. It inspires courage. It drives the hu- man mind to test and to investigate. By thrusting final responsibility on the individ- ual brain and heart, it is in particular the. 180 Mexico To-Day enemy of a religion wMch habitually dele- gates authority on the one hand and demands submission on the other. The modern evan- gelical movement in Mexico rests on Bible distribution. Almost immediately after the republican government had lifted the em- bargo of centuries on Scripture selling, both the American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society had agents in Mexico. The American Society had already for several years been feeling its way into the interior near the northern border where even during the long war the patriot influence was strong enough to protect its workers. One of these deserves special mention. Miss Melinda Eankin, a missionary on the border of Texas among the Mexicans, later made her way into the interior of Mexico, as far as Monterey, and seeing what was the principal need of the people, put herself into touch with the American Bible Society and gave about all her time to Bible distribution. This was in the sixties, prior to and during the French inter- vention, and was, to all intents and purposes, the beginning of Protestant mission work in Mexico. Americans in Mexico. The attention of the people of the United States was strongly drawn to Mexico immediately after the Thb Pkotestant Movement " 181 American Civil War. A considerable group of soldiers of fortune from the United States, both Northern and Southern, allied them- selves with the Juarez government and took part in the closing months of the war against •Maximilian. Another group, smaller but more prominent as to its personnel, of South- ern soldiers and sympathizers, left the United States and settled in Mexico after the defeat of General Lee's armies. The long struggle of the Juarez government against a foreign invader and its final success, added to the popular interest in Mexican affairs. The news of the establishment of a republican government there, with religious liberty, was welcomed everywhere. But it was accom- panied by reports of deplorable religious and educational conditions. The American Churches, therefore, made haste to enter this inviting field. Both the government and the people were ready to welcome evangelical Christianity. And from that day to this no other attitude has been shown by them. The few instances of local persecution have in- variably been disturbances stirred up by the priests and other intolerant partizans of the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning of the Missionary Movement. Ameri- can missions began to be rapidly opened up 182 Mexico To-Day in tlie early seventies. Some Baptist groups had grown np in the northern districts of Mexico in the sixties, related loosely to the work of Miss Eankin. Toward the end of that same decade a mission was organized in Mexico City, first on independent lines. Later it was taken over by the mission board of the Protestant Episcopal Church. This work began nnder peculiarly favorable aus- pices. Mr. H. C. Eiley, a missionary from South America, who already understood Spanish, was at the head of it. The govern- ment of President Juarez favored the work in the matter of adequate housing, and a group of friends of Mr. Riley in the United States contributed largely with funds. The mission flourished for a decade or more, do- ing an especially noteworthy work in the training of a group of young Mexican min- isters. Several of these young men became later, and some of them yet remain, potent factors in the progress of Christianity in Mexico. Some Other Beginnings. The Society of Friends organized mission work in the ex- treme northeastern corner of the republic (1871), following closely upon the work of the Baptists (North) in the same frontiers. Then followed the Presbyterian Church The Pkotestant Movement 183 (1872), the Congregational (1872), the Metho- dist Episcopal Church (1873), the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1873), the Presby- terian (South) (1874), the Associated Ee-' formed Presbyterian (1878), and the South- ern Baptist (1880). Two or three other de- nominations have since entered the field, and in 1897 an Independent Mexican Church was organized. It is principally congregational in its form of government. Recent statistics show a total of about thirty thousand com- municants in these several branches of Prot- estantism. The People Eeached. These members have been gathered largely from among the poor and uneducated classes. Mexico has always heretofore lacked a middle class. The oppor- tunities of the new industrial development and the influence of the schools — public schools and mission schools alike — have tended strongly in recent years to build up such a class, but it remains true even yet that the people of Mexico are divided into two groups only, the rich and the poor. Fortu- nately the poor are often quite as promising material for citizenship, whether in Church or state, as are the rich. The only thing they have lacked has been opportunity. In Mexico, however, the days of recent Protes- 184 Mexico To-Day tant work have had the same mark of genu- ineness that was offered to strengthen the faith of John the Baptist in prison — '' The poor have the gospel preached unto them.'' And they have received it gladly, as they did in the days of Christ. Having nothing to lose they have been quick to see that there was much for them to gain. Bifficulties of Organization. But converts from among the poorer class of Mexico have been more easily obtained than organized. These are people who have never had part in inde- pendent, cooperative efforts. They are with- out experience in such things, and without financial resources as well. The crucial point of mission work in that country has thus proved to be, not the securing of adherents — that is comparatively easy — but the forming of a native, self-sustaining, and self -propagat- ing Church. The process goes on very slowly indeed. It seems that anything like perfec- tion in this direction must await either the conversion of a considerable number of well- to-do people or the gradual building up of a middle class. The Rich Hard to Eeach. Fortunately both of these are far from forlorn hopes. Persons having place among the comfortable element in society — the '^ accommodated," to use a The Protestant Movement 185 Spanish phrase — have heretofore been hin- dered in many ways from becoming interested in the gospel. In the first place, social lines are very sharply drawn, and to expect such peo- ple to attend public worship in a cheap chapel or hired house, in company with a group of day laborers, would not be greatly different from asking men and women in good circum- stances in the South of our own country to worship regularly in the churches of their Negro servants. This social pressure has made itself felt not merely in reference to public worship, but by the insidious channels of family and other associations, since ardent Catholics have always managed to have it understood that interest in Protestantism was bad form. Heavy pressure of another sort also has regularly been exerted, namely, in business and financial matters. Men with property or in business have not been willing to risk the chances of boycott, a measure that has been unhesitatingly applied when neces- sary. The gradual introduction of a more liberal atmosphere is changing all this. Mexicans are traveling abroad; many for- eigners are living or traveling in Mexico. The feeling that to obtrude religious preju- dices into the social and business realm is out of harmony with the spirit of the times 186 Mexico To-Day is becoming general, and so it is not at all uncommon now for persons whose place in the business and social world is secure to follow their spiritual promptings and become Protestants. The number of such persons is few as yet, but it is destined to increase, probably rapidly increase, in the not distant future. A Coining Middle Class. On the other hand, the building up of a middle class is already going on rapidly. Many wage earners are securing what is for them a competence and becoming economically independent. The federal government, the separate states — especially the more progressive and wealthy ones — and the Protestant missions have now for about forty years been diligently en- gaged in the development of popular educa- tion. The work has been far from ideal or satisfactory. There have been many hin- drances. But it has gone on, and the total outcome after more than a generation is most significant. The men and women educated out of the lowest class to a distinctly higher level have been in numbers comparatively few, but their influence is now quite out of proportion to their numbers. They are of a more vital and ambitious type than the con- temporary descendants of the privileged The Protestant Movement 187 classes. They are therefore rapidly displac- ing them in the industrial, business, and po- litical affairs of the country. The revolu- tion of 1911 was officered almost exclusively by men of this type. The proportion of Protestants among its leaders was note- worthy. They were there, not because of be- ing Protestants, for it was in no sense a religious movement, but because of their fit- ness for the work in hand. That state of things has continued in the building up of a new army and the manning of civil govern- ment in the various states. The difficulties with which the Madero government had to contend were many, and not least among them was the prejudice of the displaced aristocracy against this invasion of the bour- geoisie. Modes of Work. Mission work in Mexico has been carried on principally along the two general lines of evangelization and education. At least three successful ventures in medical work have been made, that of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Guanajuato, that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Mon- terey, and that of the Baptists in Guadala- jara. The record made by these hospitals seems to indicate that such agencies might well have been employed even more exten- 188 Mexico To-Day sively. Medical service for the villagers, especially in retired mountainous sections, is scant, often nil; some understanding of sim- ple remedies is therefore of great advantage to religions workers in such sections. Mission Scliools. Educational endeavor, in one form or another, has been common to all the evangelical missions. The women ^s boards and auxiliaries especially have con- cerned themselves with this line of worli, mostly for girls, and have had large and highly satisfactory results. The Mexicans distinctly prefer the boarding-school, often placing their daughters as boarders when living in the same city. Boarding-schools for girls have thus met with general favor in the cities of the republic. When judiciously managed they not seldom are practically self- sustaining, aside from the original outlay for a plant and the salary of one or two mission- aries. Public opinion is, however, highly sen- sitive and also suspicious, so that extreme care in management is essential to success. Coeducation, for example, is nowhere ap- proved, and the attempt to introduce it, even in the lower grades, has been detrimental to several otherwise successful institutions. The public schools rigidly separate boys and girls through all the grades. GRADUATING CLASS, NORMAL SCHOOL, SALTILLO SARAH L. KEEN COLLEGE FOR GIRLS, MEXICO CITY The Protestakt Movement 189 Education of Teachers. The most effective outcome of the girls' schools has been in the development at several of these institutions of a teachers' normal course. These have proved uniformly successful ; the demand for their graduates, in public schools, private in- stitutions, and other mission schools being continuously greater than the supply. These admirable institutions have thus sent out into the influential position of teacher a large number of emancipated, yet modest and Christian young women. Their influence in the course of another generation is destined to be widespread. Reflex Influences. A by-product of the edu- cational work of the missions, especially that for girls, has been the stirring up to better standards of the Catholic schools. There were a good many of these, but their courses of study were unscientific and their interests chiefly other than scholastic. But in competi- tion with the effective and practical courses given in the Protestant schools, advantages for which students and their parents were willing to brave even religious prejudice, these older institutions had either to improve or lose all their patronage. In order to hold their own, therefore, they have taken to im- porting skilled teachers from the United 190 Mexico To-Day States and elsewhere, and are offering many courses of study not before found in their curricula. Simultaneously, as has been noted, there was a general development of the public school system. And so great has been the demand for education that volun- tary private schools have been financially successful in many places. Those offering a commercial course have been especially popu- lar. The Boys E'eglected. In the education of boys and young men, however, the missions have done nothing like so well as with the girls' schools. The women's societies do little else than educational work, and hence success- fully concentrate on it. But the money of the general boards must go for a number of other enterprises, and so it is difficult for them to be sufficiently liberal with educational plants. In many of the missions, day-schools were an early, and always successful, branch of work. This work, however, by reason of the growing emphasis on evangelism, has largely been abandoned. The system of public schools, generally promulgated some twenty-five years ago, promised to be so complete that it was felt by many that the education of the nation was sufficiently provided for. Unfortunately it proved more complete on paper than in The Pkotestant Movement 191 reality, and many missionary leaders are now regretting that the school work was not more persistently followed up by the Churches. Theological Training. Fractically all the chief missions have recognized the need of an institution for the training of their own church workers. Hence theological semina- ries, or more exactly, training schools for Christian workers, have been set up and maintained by the Presbyterians at Mexico City, by the Methodists at Puebla and San Luis Potosi, by the Congregationalists at Guadalajara, and by others. Had it been pos- sible to develop, along with these training- schools, first-class high schools for boys, that work would have been most fruitful. At Puebla the Methodist Episcopal mission has maintained such a school and it has been a most effective agency for good. But the class of boys available for students in these schools have been unable as a rule to pay tuition and board bills, in full, at least, so that failing an endowment, large annual grants have been required to keep up this kind of work. No school in Mexico has as yet been endowed otherwise than with a few spe- cial scholarships or similar aids. Had a great Protestant college been set down in that country twenty years ago, its position would 192 Mexico To-Day by this time be as commanding as is that of Eobert College in the Balkans, or of some of the great missionary institutions in India and China. It is not even yet too late for the planting of snch a school, which ought, if founded, to be interdenominational, liberally equipped, and endowed. There are few open- ings in America more promising than this for the bestowment of a substantial sum of money by some philanthropist who seeks to serve his generation. It has proved quite out of the question for the mission boards to make even a beginning of such an institution. The native churches grow so slowly into a state of self-support and the evangelistic work is so urgent and so successful that up to the present these boards have had more de- mands on them in other lines than their in- come would permit them to meet. Evang'elistic Work. As has been intimated, the outstanding success of the evangelical missionary work in Mexico has been in the evangelistic department. The work of preaching has, it is true, been carried on under some rather severe handicaps. The Reform Laws forbid the holding of any re- ligious service in the open air. This has pre- vented all forms of street preaching, market- place services, camp-meetings, and the like, FACULTY AND STUDENTS, THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, COYOACAN FACULTY AND STUDENTS, QUERETARO INSTITUTE The Pkotestant Movement 193 in a country peculiarly adapted by climate to work of this kind. The same laws, in return for this hindrance, rigorously guaran- tee protection for all congregations meeting in an orderly manner in private houses or in halls or churches. This protection has often had to be invoked as against local disturb- ances stirred up by a few fanatical opponents of anything new in the way of religious wor- ship. Difficulties. The scattered state of the peo- ple in rural districts and the lack of a genuinely rural element in the population, the necessity of holding meetings in mean and unattractive quarters in the cities, the difficulty of securing ministers intellectually and spiritually fitted for leadership, are other hindrances that have often proved grave. Nevertheless, throughout almost the entire period of work in Mexico, evangelistic en- deavor has continued fruitful. The secret is that the people have a real hunger for the gospel. Its doctrines of direct approach to God, of individual accountability, of conscious pardon, and of freedom in Christ Jesus have for them a most compelling appeal. Influence of Song. One element in Protestant worship that has proved a special attraction to the music-loving Mexicans has been the 194 Mexico To-Day singing. The people can nearly all sing. They have an innate sense of harmony and rarely sing discordant notes, though in keep- ing time they often limp a bit. Much poetic skill has come to light among the converts there, in spite of their seeming illiteracy, showing itself especially in the composition and translation of hymns and songs to fit the stirring music of our Sunday-school and Church hymnals. These hymns have sung their way into the hearts of the people. They had had nothing of the sort before. The Catholic worship, aside from the chanting of a few litanies, has no popular singing. The songs of the people are few, many of them tainted by immoral suggestions and associa- tions. One interesting type of these is a group of wailing, minor chord, two part, love songs, a kind of inheritance, so it is said, from the Moors. These are spoken of usually as canciones rancheras — ranch songs — and have no serious claims on popular favor. The songs and hymns of Protestant worship are already widely known and are taking an im- portant place in the life of the people. The Bible Once More. Another element in the acceptability of evangelical teaching has been the stimulating effect of the Scriptures. Many instances are on record in Mexico of conver- The Peotestant Movement 195 sions due wholly to the reading of Scripture, often of only a small portion of Scripture. There are two Catholic versions of the Bible in Spanish, but neither is to be had in a con- venient and cheap form. There has been a measure of confusion as to which is the best version for use among the evangelical churches. The edition most commonly circu- lated is known as the Valera Bible, from Cipriano de Valera, who made a recension of an older translation in the sixteenth cen- tury. It has been revised to a limited extent, and in recent years an entirely new transla- tion, made by Dr. H. B. Pratt, was brought out by the American Bible Society. There has been a considerable measure of opposi- tion to Bible distribution, stirred up invari- ably by the priests, who anathematize the ^ ^ Protestant Bible ' ^ as a corrupt book. The convincing answer to this is to exhibit with it a Catholic version. A very slight inspec- tion will show that the two are in all essen- tials identical. The extent to which the great Bible Societies have laid, in Mexico as else- where, the foundation for all missionary work should be more generally recognized. For the separate missions to have provided each for itself the Scriptures needed even in its own work would have been enormously ex- 196 Mexico To-Day pensive. Besides, the Bible Societies con- tinually act as pioneers, going into sections not yet occupied, sowing the seed, and pre- paring the ground for the organized work of some denomination to follow later. All alike are indebted to them and all alike should join heartily in their support. Ministerial Supply. Evangelistic preaching has been the chief reliance for securing con- verts to Christianity. The people are fond of oratory, and often exhibit surprising pro- ficiency in public speaking. Missionaries are usually able to master the Spanish language sufficiently to preach to good effect. Other things being equal, however, the exhorta- tions and teaching of a Mexican are more fruitful, by reason of those subtle thought processes peculiar to every people into which the foreigner rarely succeeds in entering, no matter how fluently he may speak the lan- guage. There has usually been no lack of volunteers for the ministry among the con- verts. But the number of young men who are sufficiently devoted to undergo an adequate course of training is small. The ranks are still further depleted when a few years of experience have shown how meager is, and for the present must remain, the stipend which they receive. The congregations can- The Protestaxt Movement 197 not pay a great deal, though most of them could do better than they do, and the missions dare not pay a liberal salary for fear of open- ing a breach between workingmen and Church leaders, as well as putting a premium on ve- nality. Thus it comes about that many suc- cessful young ministers drift into secular pur- suits, often at the time when they could be most serviceable. Probably no other single problem besets the missionaries more per- sistently than this. There is a sense, to be sure, in which these young men are hardly to be blamed. They have usually married, and as their families begin to grow expensive and the problem of educating their children pre- sents itself, it is natural that they should think seriously and even conscientiously upon the question of whether they will remain in mission work or take up some other vocation at perhaps double the income. That a good many of them do violence to their consciences by leaving the ministry is indicated by the fact that after leaving it they do not hold to their Christian integrity. On the other hand, some are quite as loyal to Christ and as faithful in his service as laymen as they were as ministers. It is especially encouraging to observe how generally their children do well. Even when the father has been drawn back 198 Mexico To-Day into the world, it is not uncommon for the sons to develop into faithful and valuable Christians. Already a second generation of Protestant Christians has had time to come to maturity in Mexico, and the churches are showing the effects of it. The ablest min- isters to-day, the most efficient lay church offi- cers, and many of the ablest and most pro- gressive citizens are men who '' from a child have known the Scriptures." Consolations of Religion. Something should be said also of the consolations which the gos- pel brings to the individual. The Mexican people as a people are profiting, as we have seen, by the introduction of a spiritual type of Christianity and its effects on public inter- ests. But in few countries are the joys of conscious communion with a saving Christ more profoundly helpful to sorrowing men and women than in Mexico. Life there for the people of the poorer classes, has long been a hard, narrow experience. Hopeless poverty has rested on them for so many generations that it is accepted with fatalistic resignation. Sickness has to be borne in the same way, for there is no medical treatment in reach of most of them. Their religion, real and present as it always is, for they are a devout people, has become a tawdry worship of wooden dolls TRINITY CHURCH, CHIHUAHUA McMURTRIE CHAPEL AND MANSE, COYOACAN The Protestant Movemeistt 199 and cheap cliromos. Of civic consciousness and the sense of freedom they have prac- tically nothing, for ignorance and helpless- ness have been their portion so long that they know not how to bring themselves to hope for anything better. The Gospel in Its Element. It is in such an atmosphere as this that the gospel is most at home. To bless and change such condi- tion it was ''made and provided. '' It was the common people who heard Jesus gladly. Publicans and harlots flocked into the King- dom, even when the doctors of the law held aloof. The gospel gives most to those who need most. The Mexicans rejoice over it as over a pearl of great price. They are some- times slow to accept its moral demands. They do not know how to organize and con- duct a church or even a Sunday-school. They emerge from their poverty and ignorance with painful slowness, often not at all. But in the consolations of the gospel, the joy of sins forgiven, the consciousness of salvation in Christ Jesus, they absolutely revel. It brightens their faces, sets them to singing, lights up their poor homes, and makes more tolerable their poverty and disease. They become heroes and martyrs. More than sixty have laid down their lives for Christ's sake 200 Mexico To-Day during these last four decades. It ^makes them apostles to their kinsmen and neighbors. The churches in Mexico are witnessing churches. By many a lowly bedside our peo- ple there bear testimony with their last breath that Jesus Christ is to them wisdom and sanctification and redemption. Mission- aries are as careful as possible to avoid mak- ing the impression that what they are seek- ing is converts from Catholicism to Prot- estantism, and not rather the redemption of men and women from sin. But it is true that exceedingly few who have tasted of the good word of God and the power of the life to come care to go back to the ^' elements " of their earlier faith. Stories of death-bed repent- ance for ^^ heresy ^' may usually be dis- counted. A Reformed Romanism. The truth is that the ^^ Church of their fathers '' must reestablish its hold upon the Mexicans by other methods than those through which for several cen- turies it has held undisputed sway. Appeal must now be made to the judgment and moral sense of the people. Mere authority will no longer suffice. The appeal of tawdry trap- pings and of gorgeous ritual does not win the thoughtful, and the Mexicans are becoming thoughtful. Whatever strength the Eoman A CHRISTIAN FAMILY TYPICAL RURAL HOME OF A CHRISTIAN FAMILY The Protestant Movement 201 Catholic Church shall exhibit in the future — and doubtless it will remain a potent factor in the life of the Mexican people — must be at- tained largely as Protestantism is seeking to establish its hold, '^ by pureness, by Imowl- edge, by long-suifering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God.^^ To bring back thus into the realm of spiritual vitality the mighty enginery of that efficient and ven- erable organization is destined to be one of the praiseworthy achievements of Protestant work in Catholic countries. Influence of Politics. The prevailing political unrest, in spite of its disastrous effects on the economic condition of Mexico, is destined to fall out to the furtherance of the gospel. The struggle is but a continuance of Mexico's long-drawn-out effort to shake herself free of tyrannies, political, industrial, religious. It is profoundly stirring the intellectual life of the people. They are taking lessons as never before in the art of thinking for them- selves. They are bound to see that the real cause of this prolonging of their struggle for freedom is in their own ignorance and moral inefficiency. They need education and they need moral stiffening. These are precisely the things for which Protestantism stands. 202 Mexico To-Day The boys and girls who have been trained in the evangelical churches and schools are to- day making proof of their training. They are now men and women and they are in the eye of the people. When a really popular gov- ernment gets on its feet in Mexico, it will be found that the young people trained by the missionaries will be as prominent in it as they are in China under the new order of things. That will mean a new day for evan- gelical work in Mexico. Conditions to-day, disturbed as they are at the moment of this writing, are no occasion for the withdrawing of our hand. On the contrary, they call loudly for the strengthening of every agency. Future Possibilities. Schools, churches, hos- pitals, dispensaries, and other agencies will presently be popular as never before. In- deed, during the worst months of the revolu- tion, mission schools have remained crowded to their capacity. The temporary disabling of much of the public school system makes at once a demand and an opportunity for mis- sionary institutions. That great Eepublic, destined by its very location and resources to set the type and hold the leadership of all Latin America, is sure to be a field worthy the life devotion of our best and brightest young people. The Protestant Movement 203 Some Readjustments Keeded. It seems prob- able tliat in its details the missionary work in Mexico may have to go through a process of readjustment. Present conditions make the time for that propitious. The problem in brief is to shift the Church organizations from their present basis of dependence on the mission boards of the United States to one of independence and self-support. The period of tutelage has been too long already. No satisfactory progress in the direction of great national Churches can be made by so- cieties which draw their sustenance from im- ported funds. At all costs the transition must be made. Doubtless it will be costly. It may seem to result in a period of non- progress or even of retrogression. But such a period will be only temporary. The evan- gelical churches of Mexico have in them too much of vitality to perish thus. Fortunately the missions of related denominations show a ready mind for getting together. One Presbyterian Church and one Methodist Church for the whole nation will be easy of achievement. The churches of congrega- tional government will also doubtless work out their problems harmoniously and with the nation as a unit. 204 -Mexico To-Day Denominational Cooperation. It would seem that certain forms of denominational coop- eration might well be inaugurated. The several churches are even now working to- gether in preparing Spanish editions of the Graded Lessons for Sunday-schools. A number of them might combine to advantage in issuing a religious periodical. There is general discussion also of cooperation in theological education. A seminary repre- senting three or four of the strongest mis- sions working together might have an equip- ment and a faculty that would at once reduce the expense of this necessary work and do the work more satisfactorily. Such an in- stitution would command public respect in a way not possible to the separate small and poorly equipped training-schools as now maintained. It might even become the nu- cleus of a great college or university under Christian auspices. Nothing could do more for Mexico than such an institution as that. Self-support. Meantime the Mexican congre- gations should be encouraged to undertake as rapidly as possible their own support. With a view to this, a very large measure of autonomy should be allowed them. Church life in every land is bound to work out indigenous forms of organization. The The Protestant Movement 205 Churches which send missionaries to Mexico should be more concerned for the Christian- izing of the people than for the importation into that country of any special types of church organization and government. Invitation to the Missionary. Despite the gloomy clouds now overshadowing sunny Mexico, I am sure that it is bound yet to be, as it has been, a most inviting field for the missionary. It is near at hand and easy of access. The climate is healthful. The peo- ple are groping for a friendly hand. They need help. To minister to rich and poor alike, to aid in dissipating the thick cloud of ignorance, to bring home the consolations of a living faith to those whose earthly lot, like that of their fathers before them, is hard and comfortless, to help the leaders of the people in developing the intelligence and mo- rality needed for placing on a firm footing government of the people by the people, to take part, in brief, in the making of a great and free and prosperous nation — such is the joyous prospect open to the missionary to Mexico. And while engaged in this enticing task he will live in a land of romance and of entrancing beauty. Fair skies will shine upon him and soft winds will fan his cheek. Wide plains and rugged mountains will stretch 206 Mexico To-Day their panorama of gold and purple beauty before his eyes, under a light so silvery and dazzling that to those who have not seen it it cannot be described. A gentle and grate- ful and affectionate people will surround him, full of spiritual longings and eager for the gospel. Their soft and liquid speech will become to him as his own mother tongue. He will see many sons and daughters born into the kingdom of his Lord, and will hold sweet fellowship with brothers and sisters of his own Father's family. He will minis- ter at the bedside of dying saints as patri- archal and as devout as Abraham and Isaac or as Simeon or Anna or Dorcas. He will train as his own sons the young men who in a coming generation will preach the gospel to their people or take up the burden of teaching its youth or administering its busi- ness. He will thus help to lay the founda- tion of a great nation, rich and strong and proud, a predestined leader in the sis- terhood of Spanish American republics. Before another century missionaries will be going out from there to carry the good news in their own beautiful language to other less favored regions where that tongue is spoken, perhaps, even, to the mother country of it beyond the sea. APPENDIXES APPENDIXES APPENDIX A^ Constitution and Government Mexico was annexed to the Spanish crown by conquest in 1521, and for three centuries continued to be governed by Spain. In 1810 the rule of the Spanish viceroys had become so tyrannical that it caused an outbreak headed by the patriot priest Hidalgo^, who on September 15, 1810, declared the independence of Mexico. In 1821 General Augustin Iturbide declared himself Emperor of Mexico, but in 1824 he had to flee^ and the Republic was established. Several Presidents ruled the destinies of this country with more or less severity until 1864, when the throne of Mexico was offered to Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria. He was executed in 1867, and Juarez, who had been Presi- dent in the northern part of the country, took the reins of government. He was followed by Lerdo de Tigada, who in 1876 fled, and General Porfirio Diaz made his entry into Mexico City. He ruled the country with the exception of 1880-4 (General Manuel Gonzalez) until May, 1911, when he presented his resignation to Congress. Senor F. de la Barra acted as President ad interim until the elections had taken place. The present Constitution of Mexico bears date of Feb- ruary 5, 1857, with subsequent modifications down to May, 1908. By its terms Mexico is declared a federative republic, divided into states — 19 at the outset, but at present 27 in number, with three territories and the Federal District — each of which has a right to manage its ovti local affairs, while the whole are bound together in one body politic by fundamental and constitutional laws. The powers of the supreme government are divided into three branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative power is vested in a Congress consisting of a House of Repre- sentatives (233 members) and a Senate, and the Executive in a President. Representatives are elected for two years by the suffrage of all respectable male adults, at the rate of one member for 40,000 inhabitants. The qualifications 1 Appendixes A to D are taken from Statesman's Year-Book, 1912. 209 210 Appendix A requisite are, to be twenty-five years of age, and a resident in the state. The Senate consists of fifty-six members, two for each state, of at least thirty years of age, who are returned in the same manner as the deputies. The members of both Houses receive salaries of $3,000 a year. The Pres- ident is elected by electors popularly chosen in a general election, holds office for six years, and, according to an amendment of the Constitution in 1887, may be elected for consecutive terms. The election of the Vice-President takes place in the same manner and at the same date as that of the President. The Vice-President is ex officio President of the Senate, with a voice in the discussions but without vote. Failing the President through absence or otherwise, the Vice-President discharges the functions of the President. Failing both, Congress shall call for new elections to be held at once. Congress has to meet annually from April 1 to May 31, and from September 16 to December 15, and a permanent committee of both Houses sits during the recesses. President of the Republic. — Sefior Don Francisco I. Ma- dero; elected October 14, 1911; inaugurated November 6, 1911; killed February 23, 1913. General Huerta assumed power, February, 1913. The administration is carried on, under the direction of the President and a Council, by eight Secretaries of State, heads of the Departments of: 1. Foreign Affairs; 2. Interior ; 3. Justice ; 4. Public Instruction and Fine Arts ; 5. Fomento, Colonization, and Industry; 6. Communications and Public Works; 7. Finances and Public Credit; 8. War and Marine. Local Government Each separate state has its own internal constitution, government, and laws; but interstate customs duties are not permitted, though state taxes are levied. Each state has its governor, legislature, and judicial officers popularly elected under rules similar to those of the Federation; and the civil and criminal code in force in the Federal District prevails only in the Federal District and territories (Tepic, Lower California, and Quintana Roo). All the other states of the Mexican Union have their own special codes based, more or less, on those of the Federal District; but at the same time they must publish and enforce laws issued by the federal government. Appendix B 211 APPENDIX B Abea and Population States and Territories Atlantic States Tamaulipas . . . Vera Cruz . Tabasco .... Campeche . . Yucatan . . . Total . . . Inland States Chihuahua Coahuila Nuevo Leon . . . . Durango Zacatecas San Luis Potosi Aguascalientes . Guanajuato . . . , Quer6taro Hidalgo Mexico Federal District Morelos Tlaxcala Puebla 32,128 29,201 10,072 18,087 35,203 124,692 87,802 63,569 23,592 38,009 24,757 25,316 2,950 11,370 3,556 8,917 9,247 463 2,773 1,595 12.204 Total Pacific States Lower California (Ter. ) Sonora Sinaloa Tepic (Ter.) Jalisco Colima Michoacan Guerrero Oaxaca Chiapas Islands Grand Total 316,125 58,328 76,900 33,671 11,275 31,846 2,272 22,874 24,996 35,382 27,222 324,768 1,420 a -.2 SS2 249,253 1,124,368 183,708 85,795 337,020 1,980,144 405,265 367,652 368,929 436,147 475,863 624,748 118,978 1,075,270 243,515 641,895 975,019 719,052 179,814 183,805 1,092,456 7,868,411 52,244 262,545 323,499 171,337 1,202,802 77,704 991,649 605,437 1,041,035 436,817 5,165,070 767,005 15,063,207 13,605,919 218,948 981,030 159,834 86,542 314.087 1,760,441 327,784 296,938 327,937 370,294 462,190 575,432 102,416 1,061,724 232,389 605,051 934,463 541,516 160,115 172,315 1,021,133 7,191,697 47,624 221,682 296,701 150,098 1,153,891 65,115 930,033 479,205 948,633 360,799 4,653,781 .— ~ OS S^iJ cCfl,' 6.8 33.9 15.8 4.7 8.9 14.1 3.7 4.6 13.9 9.8 18.7 22.7 34.7 93.4 65.3 67.8 101.1 1169.5 58.3 108.0 83.7 22.7 0.8 2.8 8.8 13.2 36.2 28.6 40.6 19.2 26.8 13.3 14.3 17.7 212 Appendix B Chief Census Features Since 1900 the territory of Quintana Roo has been formed on the southeast coast of Yucatan. In 1900 there were 6,716,007 males and 6,829,455 females. 19 per cent, are of pure, or nearly pure, white race, 43 per cent, of mixed race, and 38 per cent, of Indian race. Dis- tinctions of race are abolished by the Constitution of 1824. The foreign population in 1900 numbered 57,507 : — Spanish, 16,258; United States, 15,265; Guatemalan, 5,804; French, 3,976; British, 2,845 ; Cuban, 2,721; German, 2,565; Italian, 2,564; Chinese, 2,834. The chief cities, 1910, are: — ^Mexico (capital), 470,659; Puebla, 101,214; Guadalajara, 118,799; San Luis Potosi, 82,946; Leon, 63,263; Monterey, 81,006; Pachuca, 38,620; Zacatecas, 25,905; Guanajuato, 35,147; Merida, 61,999; Queretaro, 35,011; Morelia, 39,116; Oaxaca, 37,469; Ori- zaba, 32,894; Aguascalientes, 44,800; Saltillo, 35,063; Du- rango, 34,085; Chihuahua, 39,061; Vera Cruz, 29,164 j Toluca 31,247; Celaya, 25,565. APPENDIX C Religion, Instruction, and Justice The prevailing religion is the Roman Catholic, but the Church is independent of the state, and there is toleration of all other religions. No ecclesiastical body can acquire landed property. There are 7 archbishops and 23 suffragan bishops. In 1900, 13,533,013 Roman Catholics; 51,795 Protestants; 3,811 of other faiths; 18,640 of no professed faith. Education is free and compulsory. In 1895, 10,345,899 could neither read nor write; 1,782,822 could read and write; 323,336 could only read; 39,516 unknown. In 1905 elementary schools supported by the Federation and states (exclusive of infant schools), 6,098, by municipalities^ 2,985; total, 9,083 schools, of which 4,876 were for boys, 2,458 for girls, and 1,749 mixed; 575,972 enrolled pupils (352,333 boys and 223,639 girls). For secondary instruc- tion the federal and state governments had 34 schools (27 for boys, 3 for girls, and 4 mixed) with 4,231 pupils (3,793 boys and 438 girls). For professional instruction there were 68 institutions and colleges (34 for men, 17 for women, and 17 mixed); they had (1905) 9,327 enrolled students (5,258 men and 4,069 women). Expenditure on Appendix C 213 schools $9,836,923.1 The private, clerical, and associa- tion schools numbered 2,499 with 152,917 pupils (81,947 boys and 70,970 girls). In 1912 the system of primary education was more fully extended so as to reach the native population. In 1904 there were the National Library, with 180,000 volumes, and 138 other public libraries. There were in that year 34 museums for scientific and educational pur- poses, and 11 meteorological observatories. The number of periodicals published was 459, of which 439 were in Spanish, 12 in English, 5 in Spanish and English, 2 in Italian, 1 in French. The judicial power, which is entirely distinct from and independent of the executive, consists of the Supreme Court, with 15 judges chosen for a period of six years, three Circuit Courts, with 3 judges, and District Courts, with 32 judges. The Ordinary, Civil, Criminal, and Correctional Courts are controlled by the Department of Justice and Public Instruction. APPENDIX D Production and Industry Cultivated lands, 30,027,500 acres; pastoral lands, 120,- 444,200 acres; forest lands, 43,933,200 acres. Agriculture is in a very primitive condition. Agricultural products are maize, cotton, henequen, wheat, coffee, beans; cotton is grown in the Laguna district on the Nazas River, and is dependent on irrigation which is being extended. There is a large output of sugar and molasses, valued at about $12,610,000 annually (crop for 1911-12 estimated at 160,- 000 tons), and the production of spirits in 1910 was 9,838,000 gallons. There are 1,674 alcohol distilleries. There are many colonies, or agricultural settlements, es- tablished either by the government or by companies or persons authorized by the government. On June 30, 1902, there were in Mexico 5,142,457 head of cattle, 859,217 horses, 334,435 mules, 287,991 asses, 3,424,430 sheep, 4.206,011 goats, and 616,139 pigs, the whole being valued at about $117,000,000. Mining is carried on in 24 of the 31 States and Terri- tories, nearly all the mines yielding silver either alone or in combination with other ores. » Dollars throughout are Mexican, two of which equal one dollar of the United States. 214 Appendix D Mineral products exported in 1908, 1909, and 1910: — Gold, kilogrammes Silver, kilogrammes Copper and ore, metric tons Lead and ore Iron and ore Antimony Zinc ore Graphite Marble Salt Asphalt Sulphur 1908 1909 20,156 29,383 2,325,907 2,191,249 118,568 117,484 104,057 122,907 54 4,406 4,095 43,339 41,267 1,827 1,690 1,340 992 3,778 5,365 3,835 5,692 884 3,352 1910 31,970 2,254,103 203,465 125,396 2 4,375 54,136 2,722 1,166 4,429 3,691 3,221 Value of mineral output for 1909-10: Gold, $42,636,402; silver, $76,349,122; others, $37,534,551; total, $156,520,075. The output of coal is estimated at 700,000 tons annually. Opals are mined in Quer6taro ; output not stated. There is a Mint at the Capital, and 13 Assay oflBces ( Federal ) . Important metallurgical works are carried on at San Luis Potosi, Monterej'^, Durango, and Aguascalientes. On June 30, 1910, there were 142 (19 not working) cotton factories, employing 31,963 workmen; spindles 702,874; looms, 25,017; stamping machines, 41. The consumption of cotton in 1909-10 was 34,736,154 kilos; the output of yarn, 2,768,314 kilos, and of cotton piece goods and prints, 13,936,269 pieces. There were 451 tobacco factories, the annual output of which was: 511,573,779 packets of ciga- rettes, 41,839,416 cheroots, 39,676,294 cigars, 193 packets of snuff, and 75,770 kilos of tobacco. There were 1,674 distilleries giving an output of 39,352,205 litres of spirits of various sorts. Appendix E 215 APPENDIX E Bibliography Books Abbott, Gorham B. Mexico and the United States. 1869. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. (Out of print.) Ballou, M. M. Aztec Land. 1895. Houghton, Mifflin & / Co., Boston. $1.50. i^ Barton, Mary. Impressions of Mexico with Brush and Pen. 1911. The Macmillan Company, New York. $3.00. Blake, M. E., and Sullivan, M. F. Mexico — Picturesque, Political, Progressive. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, Boston. $1.25. Brown, Hubert W. Latin America. 1901. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. $1.20, net. Butler, J. W. Mexico Coming Into Light. 1907. Metho- dist Book Concern, New York. 35 cents. Butler, J. W. Sketches of Mexico. 1894. Methodist Book Concern, New York. $1.00. Butler, C. William Butler, the Founder of Two Missions of the Methodist Church. 1902. Methodist Book Con- cern, New York. $1.00. Butler, W. Mexico in Transition. 1892. Western Metho- dist Book Concern, Cincinnati. $2.00. I Calderon de La Barca, Madame. Life in Mexico During a '^ Residence of Two Years in that Country. 1910. Amer- ican News Co., New York. $2.25. Carson, W. E. Mexico the Wonderland of the South. 1909. The Macmillan Company, New York. $2.25. Clark, F. E. and H. A. The Gospel in Latin Lands. 1909. The Macmillan Company, New York. 50 cents. Coe, F. E. Our American Neighbors. 1910. Silver, Bur- dett & Co., New York. 60 cents. Convention Between the United States and Mexico, 1908. United States Department, Superintendent of Documents, Washington. 5 cents. Creelman, James. Diaz, Master of Mexico. 1911. D. Appleton & Co., New York. $2.00. Douglass, J. The United States and Mexico. 1910. Amer- ican Association for International Conciliation, New York. Gratis. Duggan, J. P. A Mexican Ranch. 1907. American Bap- tist Publication Society, Philadelphia. 50 cents. Enock, C. R. Mexico : Its Ancient and Modern Civilization. 1909. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $3.00. 216 Appendix E Edwards, W. S. On the Mexican Highlands. 1910. West- ern Methodist Book Concern, Cincinnati. $1.50. Gillpatrick, Owen W. The Man Who Likes Mexico. 1911. Century Company, New York. $2.00. Goodrich, James K. Coming Mexico. 1913. A. C. Mc- Clurg & Co., Chicago. $1.50. Graham, A. A. Mexico, with Comparisons and Conclu- sions. 1907. Crane & Co., Topeka, Kansas. $1,00. Hale, Susan. Mexico. (Story of Nations Series) 1893. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $1.50. Hale, Susan. Mercedes, a Story of Mexico. 1895. Baptist Book Concern, Louisville, Ky. $1.25. Janvier, Thomas A. Legends of the City of Mexico. 1911. Harper & Bros., New York. $1.30. Kirkham, Stanton D. Mexican Travels. 1909. G. P. Put- nam's Sons, New York. $1.75. Lumholtz, C. Unknown Mexico. 2 vols. 1902. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $12.00. Lummis, C. F. The Awakening of a Nation. 1898. Harper & Bros., New York. $2.50. Martin, P. F. Mexico of the Twentieth Century. 2 vols. 1907. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $8.50. Mexico: A General Sketch. 1911. Pan American Union, Washington. $1.00. Mitchel, B. Cortes, Montezuma, and Mexico. A. Flanagan Co., Chicago. 35 cents. Moses, J. T. To-day in the Land of To-morrow: A Study in the Development of Mexico. 1907. Christian Woman's Board of Missions, Indianapolis. 50 cents. Municipal Organization in Latin America. 1909. Pan American Union, Washington. Noll, A. H. From Empire to Republic. 1903. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. $1.40. Noll, A. H. Short History of Mexico. 1903. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. 75 cents. Noll, A. H., and McMahon, A. P. Life and Times of Miguel Hidalgo. 1910. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. $1.00. Ober, F. A. History of Mexico. Saalfield Publishing Co., New York. $1.00. Prescott, W. H. History of the Conquest of Mexico. 1909. (Everyman's Library) E. P. Button, New York. 2 vols., 35 cents, each. Rankin, Melinda. Twenty Years Among the Mexicans. 1881. (Out of print.) Central Book Concern, Cincin- nati. Reville, A. Native Religions of Mexico and Peru. 1884. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.50. Appendix E 217 Komero, M. Geographical and Statistical Notes on Mexico. 1898. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $2.00. Romero, M. Mexico and the United States. 1898. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $4.50. Smith, F. Hopkinson. A White Umbrella in Mexico. 1892. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., New York. $1.50. Starr, Frederick. In Indian Mexico. 1908. Forbes & Co., Chicago. $5.00. Turner, J. K. Barbarous Mexico. 1911. Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago. $1.50. Tweedie, E. B. Porfirio Diaz, Seven Times President of Mexico. 1906. John Lane Company, New York. $5.00. Wallace, D. Beyond the Mexican Sierras. 1910. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. $2.00. Wells, D. D. Study of Mexico. 1887. D. Appleton & Co., New York. $1.00. Out of print. Winter, N. O. Mexico and Her People of To-day. 1907. L. C. Page & Co., Boston. $3.00. Winton, G. B. A New Era in Old Mexico. 1905. Metho- dist Publishing House, Nashville. $1.00. Wright, M. Picturesque Mexico. 1897. George Barrie & Sons, Philadelphia. $10.00. Magazine Articles The list below contains most of the important articles that have appeared in American magazines in the English language. 1910 " Tramway and Power System in Mexico City, and the Federal District." C. E. Ferguson. Overland, July, 1910. '^American Invasion of Mexico." Harper's Weekly, Decem- ber 18, 1909. "Awakening of a Nation." P. M. Beringer. Overland, July, 1910. "Barbarous Mexico." American Magazine, December, 1910. " Barbarous Mexico : The Rubber Slavery of the Mexican Tropics." H. Whitaker. American Magazine, February, 1910. " Barbarous Mexico : Observations of Two Englishmen upon Slavery in Yucatan." American Magazine, April, 1910. " Betrayal of a Nation." E. A. Powell. American Maga- zine, October, 1910. "A Century of Mexican Independence." Outlook, Septem- ber 24, 1910. 218 Appendix E " In the Lime Light in Mexico." Overland, July, 1910. "Maligners of Mexico." A. H. Lewis. Cosmopolitan, March, 1910. " Marvelous Mexico and the Muck Raker." P. N. Beringer. Overland, May, 1910. " Mexicans and Americans." Outlook, November 26, 1910. " Mexico of To-day." J. B. Frisbie. Catholic World, April, 1910. " Mexico To-day and To-morrow." O. Stevens. Cosmopoli- tan, April, 1910. "Rebellious Mexico." Outlook, December 3, 1910. " Security of Investments in Mexico." T. K. Long. World To-day, June, 1910. " Three Months in Peonage." American Magazine, March, 1910. " True Conditions Existing in Mexico." C. Cebrian. Over- land, September, 1910. " Contest for the Laws of Reform in Mexico." J. W. Foster. American Historical Review, April, 1910. " Mexico the Progressive." 0. Stevens. Cosmopolitan, March, 1910. " Making a Fresh Start." P. N. Beringer. Overland, July, 1910. " Mexico — ^A Nation with a Unique Problem." C. T. Crowell. November 24, 1910. " Personal Recollections." Porfirio Diaz. Cosmopolitan, July, September, November, 1910. " Porfirio Diaz — Soldier and Statesman." P. F. Martin. Living Age, January 1, 1910. *' Biggest Factor in Developing Mexico's Industrial Possi- bilities." C. E. Ferguson. Overland, August, 1910, " Growth of Business in Mexico." Overland, July, 1910. " Industrial Mexico." O.Stevens. Cosmopolitan, May, 1910. " Bull-fighting in Mexico." Mrs. F. A. Hodgson. Canadian Magazine, March, 1910. "Mexico City's New Waterworks System." R. H. Murray. Scientific American, September 24, 1910. " Organization of the Police Department in the Federal District." Overland, July, 1910. 1911 " Protestant Christianity in Mexico." J. W. Butler. Mis- sionary Review of the World, May, 1911. "Religious Influence in Mexico." N. O. Winter. Mis- sionary Review of the World, March, 1911. " American Interest in Mexico." World's Work, February, 191L Appendix E 219 " Cost of Public Lands in Mexico." Bulletin of Pan Ameri- can Union, January, 1911. " Independence Bell of Mexico." Scientific American Sup- plement, February 4, 1911. " The Mexican Republic and Its Future." Chautauqua, August, 1911. " Mexico After Diaz." S. Bonsai. North American Maga- zine, September, 1911. "Mexico in 1910." Maps illustrating. Bulletin of the Pan American Union, July, 1911. "Mexico's Future." C. T. Crowell. Independent, July 20, 1911. " Our Neighbor, Mexico." J. Birlsinbine. National Geo- graphic Magazine, May, 1911. " Rebellion in Mexico Grown General." Current Literature, March, 1911. "Reform in Mexico." Independent, April 20, 1911. "United States and Mexico: Statistics." W. B. Bailey. Independent, May 18, 1911. " In Darkest Mexico." H. E. Smith. Overland, August, 1911. "Mexican Transportation Scenes." W. W. Bradley. Na- tional Geographic Magazine, December, 1910. "Notes on Southern Mexico." G. N. Collins and C. B. Doyle. Map illustrating. National Geographic Magazine, March, 1911. " Our Government's Mexican Policy." Independent, June 15, 1911. " Grievances of the Mexican Insurrectos." Independent, April 27, 1911. "Mexico and Its Maker." World's Work, June, 1911. "Mystery of Mexico." W. B. Northrop. Hampton-Colum- bian Magazine, June, 1911. " Underlying Causes of Mexican Insurrection." J. Creel- ' man. North American Magazine, April, 1911. "The Book that Threw Mexico into Revolution." World To-day, June, 1911. " Meaning of the Revolution." F. Palmer. Collier's, May 27 1911. " Mexico and the United States." Outlook, March 25, 1911. " The United States and Mexico and the Monroe Doctrine." Outlook, March 25, 1911. " Agricultural Possibilities in Tropical Mexico." P. Olsson- Scffer. National Geographic Magazine, December, 1910. "Hooked: Men Who Do the Hard Work in Mexico." A. Ruhl. Outlook, August 26, 1911. " Remarkable American Forest Railway Industrial Road in 220 Appendix E Michoaean." A. Reiehe. Scientific American Supplement, January 28, 1911. " Christian Opportunities in Mexico." L. E. Troyer. Mis- sionary Review of the World, March, 1911. 1912 "Situation in Mexico, 1912." J, A. Avirette. Collier's, January 27, 1912. ".Commerce of Mexico for 1911." Bulletin of Pan American Union, July, 1912. "Winter Festivals of Mexico: A Christmas that Combines Aztec and Christian Legends." W. Weber. Craftsman, December, 1912. " Report of the Committee on the Mexico Centennial." H. H. Cummings. National Education Association, 1911. " Avowal of Mexican Hostility." Literary Digest, September 28, 1912. "Mexico and the United States." Outlook, March 23, 1912. "Warning Mexico." Literary Digest, April 27, 1912. "Warning to Mexico." Outlook, April 27, 1912. " Situation in Mexico." D. Butterfield. North American, November, 1912. " Bandit-governed Mexico." R. Barry. Map illustrating. World To-day, January, 1912. " Civil War in Mexico." Current Literature, October, 1912. "The Issue in Mexico." Outlook, May 4, 1912. "Mexican Revolution." Review of Reviews, July, 1912. " Mexican Revolution : Its Causes and Consequences." L. S. Rowe. Political Science Magazine, June, 1912. "New Government Needed." E. T. Simondetti. World To-day, January, 1912. " Our Duty in Mexican Disorder." Literary Digest, Septem- ber 21, 1912. " Mining in Mexico." T. L. Carter. Map illustrating. Engineering Magazine, March, 1912. " Waking up a Nation with Water." E. A. Powell. Tech- nical World Magazine, November, 1912. " Disruption of Mexico." E. H. Talbot. Harper's Weekly, October 19 1912. "The Hopeful Side in Mexico." World's Work, May, 1912. " The Menace of Mexico." J. C. Welliver. Technical World, December, 1912. " Peon and the Political Situation in Mexico." Review of Reviews, August, 1912. " Prospect for Mexico." C. H. Forbes-Lindsay. Lippincott's Magazine, October, 1912. Appendix E 221 " The Situation in Mexico." D. Butterfield. North Amer- ican Magazine, November, 1912. " Washington's Statue in the City of Mexico." Bulletin of Pan American Union, March, 1912. " New Cattle Country." F. W. Robinson. Scribner's Maga- zine, February, 1912. "Unruly Mexico." Literary Digest, February 17, 1912. " Serious Nature of the Mexican Crisis." Current Litera- , ture. May, 1912. "Mexico's Trouble Maker: Zapata." J. A. Avirette. Col- lier's, February 24, 1912. " Zapata — The Mexican Attila." R. Barry. Harper's Weekly, January 20, 1912. " The Mexican Chaos : A Poll of the Press." Outlook, March 1, 1913. " Personal Side of Madero." Preston S. Krecker. Outlook, March 15, 1913. "Upheaval in Mexico." Assembly Herald, April, 1913. "Political and Missionary Interests in Mexico."- Mission- ary Review of the World, May, 1913. " Unrest in Unhappy Mexico." Missionary Review of the World, March, 1913. *' Mexican Diplomacy on the Eve of War with the United State." G. L. Rives. American Historical Review, Jan- uary, 1913. " Is the Mexican Situation Too Dangerous ? " Current Opinion, February, 1913. "Black Week in Mexico." Independent, February 27, 1913. "Downfall and Death of Madero." Outlook, March 1, 1913. " Evil Genius of the Madero Regime." Literary Digest, March 1, 1913. " Fighting in Mexico's Capital." Outlook, February 22, 1913. " For Peace in Mexico." Independent, February 20, 1913. "Mexican Press on Madero's Failure." Literary Digest, March 1, 1913. "Mexico and Intervention." Outlook, February 22, 1913. " Mexico's New Leadership." Literary Digest, March 1, 1913. " Our Duty to Mexico." Nation, February 27, 1913. "Our Mexican Duty." Literary Digest, February 22, 1913. " Unhappy Mexico." Independent, February 27, 1913. "University Education in Mexico." E. E. Brandon. Bul- letin of Pan American Union, January, 1913. 222 Appendix E "Mexican People." E. L. C. Morse. Nation, March 20, 1913. "Mexico's Brighter Side." Literary Digest, March 15, 1913. ;" Battle of Mexico City." Current Opinion, March, 1913. V " Death of Madero — End of His Regime." Review of Re- views, April, 1913. /"Iron Hand in Mexico." Literary Digest, March 8, 1913. \ " Mexican Fear of Intervention." Literary Digest, March 22, 1913. " Mexico and the United States." Living Age, April 5, 1913. , "Mexico: the Rule of Huerta." Outlook, March 8, 1913. "Religious Conditions in Mexico." Outlook, March 8, 1913. " American Capital in Mexico." Current Opinion, April, 1913. "Mexico in Trouble." E. H. Blichfeldt. Chautauquan, April, 1913. ational 36 a 12 98 555 212 24 4,164 57 404 5,526 Sunday Schools 72 47 20 9 98 68 101 16 23 21 48 3 454 03 CO X3 O ^2; 1,624 901 445 4,709 2,591 5,105 517 403 890 1,442 18,62'; InduBtrial Schools o o » CO tH 13 oj a> ^^ Si'O S3 BB C-i sm 3 "A •13 a 23 23 Medical m ■Ij 'O c O) a> ti '^^ o C3 p. <^ « O ;-l b. 03 ^ b Ci a o ;^