Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Harry Alverson Franck
of meat on it; all had value to this gaunt community, nothing was too green, or old, or rotten to be offered for sale. Chickens with legs tied lay on the ground or were carried about from day to day until purchasers of such expensive luxuries appeared. There were many men with a little glass box full of squares of sweets like "fudge," selling at a half-cent each; every possible odd and end of the shops was there; old women humped over their meager wares, smoking cigarettes, offered for sale the scraps of calico left over from the cutting of a gown, six-inch triangles of no fathomable use to purchasers. There were entire blocks selling only long strips of leather for the making of sandals. Many a vendor had all the earmarks of leprosy. There were easily five thousand of them, besides another market on the other side of the town, for this poverty-stricken city of some fifty thousand inhabitants. The swarming stretched a half mile away in many a radiating street, and scores whose entire stock could not be worth fifteen cents sat all day without selling more than half of it. An old woman stopped to pick up four grains of corn and greedily tucked them away in the rags that covered her emaciated frame. Now and then a better-dressed potosino passed, making purchases, a peon, male or female, slinking along behind with a basket; for it is a horrible breach of etiquette for a ten-dollar-a-month Mexican to be publicly seen carrying anything.
One wondered why there was not general suicide in such a community of unmitigated misery. Why did they not spring upon me and snatch the purse I displayed or die in the attempt? How did they resist eating up their own wares? It seemed strange that these sunken-chested, hobbling, halt, shuffling, shivering, starved creatures should still fight on for life. Why did they not suddenly rise and sack the city? No wonder those are ripe for revolution whose condition cannot be made worse.
Policemen in sandals and dark-blue shoddy cap and cloak looked little less miserable than the peons. All about the covered market were peon restaurants, a ragged strip of canvas as roof, under it an ancient wooden table and two benches. Unwashed Indian women cooked in several open earthen bowls the favorite Mexican dishes—frijoles (a stew of brown beans), chile con carne, rice, stews of stray scraps of meat and the leavings of the butcher-shops. These were dished up in brown glazed jars and eaten with strips of tortilla folded between the fingers, as the Arab eats with gkebis. Indeed there were many things reminiscent of the markets and streets of Damascus, more customs similar to those of the Moor than the Spaniard could have brought over, and the brown, wrinkled old women much resembled those of Palestine, though their noses were flatter and their features heavier.
Yet it was a good-natured crowd. In all my wandering in it I heard not an unpleasant word, not a jest at my expense, almost no evidence of anti-foreign feeling, which seems not indigenous to the peon, but implanted in him by those of ulterior motives. Nor did they once ask alms or attempt to push misery forward. The least charitable would be strongly tempted to succor any one of the throng individually, but here a hundred dollars in American money divided into Mexican centavos would hardly go round. Here and there were pulquerías full of besotted, shouting men—and who would not drink to drown such misery?
There was not a male of any species but had his colored blanket, red, purple, Indian-yellow, generally with two black stripes, the poorer with a strip of old carpet. These they wound about their bodies, folding them across the chest, the arms hugged together inside in such a way as to bring a corner across the mouth and nose, leaving their pipe-stem legs below, and wandered thus dismally about in the frequent spurts of cold rain. Now and then a lowest of the low passed in the cast-off remnants of "European" clothes, which were evidently considered far inferior to peon garb, however bedraggled. Bare or sandaled feet seemed impervious to cold, again like the Arab, as was also this fear of the raw air and half covering of the face that gave a Mohammedan touch, especially to the women. To me the atmosphere was no different than late October in the States. The peons evidently never shaved, though there were many miserable little barber-shops. On the farther outskirts of the hawkers were long rows of shanties, shacks made of everything under the sun, flattened tin cans, scraps of rubbish, two sticks holding up a couple of ragged bags under which huddled old women with scraps of cactus and bundles of tiny fagots.
Scattered through the throng were several "readers." One half-Indian woman I passed many times was reading incessantly, with the speed of a Frenchman, from printed strips of cheap colored paper which she offered for sale at a cent each. They were political in nature, often in verse, insulting in treatment, and mixed with a crass obscenity at which the dismal multitude laughed bestially. Three musicians, one with a rude harp, a boy striking a triangle steel, sang mournful dirges similar to those of Andalusia. The peons listened to both music and reading motionless, with expressionless faces, with never a "move on" from the policeman, who seemed the least obstrusive of mortals.
San Luís Potosí has many large rich churches, misery and pseudo-religion being common joint-legacies of Spanish rule. Small chance these creatures would have of feeling at home in a place so different from their earthly surroundings as the Christian heaven. The thump of church bells, some with the voice of battered old tin pans, broke out frequently. Now and then one of these dregs of humanity crept into church for a nap, but the huge edifices showed no other sign of usefulness. On the whole there was little appearance of "religion." A few women were seen in the churches, a book-seller sold no novels and little literature but "mucho de religión," but the great majority gave no outward sign of belonging to any faith. Priests were not often seen in the streets. Mexican law forbids them to wear a distinctive costume, hence they dressed in black derbies, Episcopal neckbands, and black capes to the ankles. Not distinctive indeed! No one could have guessed what they were! One might have fancied them prize-fighters on the way from training quarters to bathroom.
There is comparative splendor also in San Luís, as one may see by peeps into the lighted houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearful of the poor breaking in. As in so many Spanish countries, wealth shrinks out of sight and misery openly parades itself.
Out across the railroad, where hundreds of ragged boys were riding freight cars back and forth in front of the station, the land lay flat as a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, with neither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on the edge of the starving city, was there a sign of cultivation. We of the North were perhaps more kind to the Indian in killing him off.
CHAPTER II
TRAMPING THE BYWAYS
Heavy weather still hung over the land to the southward. Indian corn, dry and shriveled, was sometimes shocked as in the States. The first field of maguey appeared, planted in long rows, barely a foot high, but due in a year or two to produce pulque, the Mexican scourge, because of its cheapness, stupefying the poorer classes. When fresh, it is said to be beneficial in kidney troubles and other ailments, but soon becomes over-fermented in the pulquerías of the cities and more harmful than a stronger liquor.
Within the car was an American of fifty, thin and drawn, with huddled shoulders, who had been beaten by rebel forces in Zacatecas and robbed of his worldly wealth of $13,000 hidden in vain in his socks. Numbers of United States box-cars jolted across the country end to end with Mexican; the "B. & O." behind the "Norte de Méjico," the "N. Y. C.," followed by the "Central Mejicano." Long broad stretches of plain, with cactus and mesquite, spread to low mountains blue with cold morning mist, all but their base hung with fog. Beyond Jesús María, which is a sample of the station names, peons lived in bedraggled tents along the way, and the corn was even drier. The world seemed threatening to dry up entirely. At Cartagena there began veritable forests of cactus trees, and a wild scrub resembling the olive. Thousands of tunas, the red fruit of the cactus, dotted the ground along the way. The sun sizzled its way through the heavy sky as we climbed the flank of a rocky range, the vast half-forested plain to the east sinking lower and lower as we rose. Then came broken country with many muddy streams. It was the altitude perhaps that caused the patent feeling of exhilaration, as much as the near prospect of taking again to the open road.
As the "garrotero" ("twister," or "choker" as the brakeman is called in Mexico) announced Dolores Hidalgo, I slipped four cartridges