Spanish America: Its Romance, Reality and Future. C. Reginald Enock
Although it is not yet, the student of history will be fain to think that out of this seed a good growth must in the future come to being, and this we may say without any unnecessary apologetics for Mexico.
But what, we may ask, is the influence here, that throws back this fruitful land from time to time to anarchy, and makes its name a byword?
Disorder and treachery periodically arises, dictator succeeds dictator, revolution follows revolution, and the country's soil, whether in the streets of its capital, whether upon its desert plains or in its tropic valleys, is drenched with the blood of its own sons. The results of thirty years of a constructive national policy which Diaz gave, the hopes and pretensions of a high civilization, laboriously built up, sink down to nought, revert to the conditions of that dreadful half-century that followed upon Independence, from which stand forth the names—noble and ignoble—of Iturbide, Maximilian, Juarez, or Morelos. What ails this strange land? Is it capable of no better life?
In reply, Mexico is a land following the inevitable law of reaping what it has sown, and both the sowing and the reaping are but exaggerated forms of processes that are affecting the world at large. Judgment must not be too heavily passed upon Mexico as a whole, for, as I shall later show, a whole nation must not be condemned by reason of some of its nationals.
Mexico, like all Spanish American States, is at the mercy, politically and economically, of certain small sections of the people. Government is of an oligarchy in normal times, which often abuses its position. The bulk of the people have neither art nor part in their own governance. The ballot box is too often a delusion and a snare. A turbulent or ambitious element can seize power at any moment by a golpe de estado (a coup d'état). The upper and refined class, which, be it said, is the equivalent of and as well-informed often as that in Europe, stand aloof from political revolution and disturbance, and would be the last to commit the excesses which bring execration upon the country's name. The educated Mexican has all the traditions of the caballero, the gentleman; the Mexican lady is refined, devout, delicate and tenderhearted. The peon and the Indian are not turbulent, but well-meaning and generally industrious.
These matters we shall further consider; for the moment let us pass on to survey the land itself, to traverse its wide and diversified surface, with its many elements of beauty, interest and utility.
Here, then, is a land of vast extent, in which various European countries could be contained; stretching from the borders of Central America northward to those of the United States, two thousand miles long upon its major axis, shaped upon the map like a cornucopia, washed on one side by the Atlantic, on the other by the Pacific, and containing within itself every resource of Nature which could make for plenty and progress. Its southern half lies within the Tropics, but consisting in great part of an elevated tableland, where the diurnal range of temperature—from the heat of the day to the cold of the night—is so considerable that latitude we find is not a reliable guide to climate.
This great plateau, whose escarpments, viewed as we approach from either side present the appearance of mountains, is in large part sterile, treeless, and without rivers of importance or navigability. But it is crossed by ranges of steely-blue hills and intersected by fertile valleys, where agriculture is carried on under irrigation—an ancient art by means of canals fed from the intermittent streams. Cacti, strange and gaunt, clothe it by nature, but there are large coniferous forests upon the mountain slopes in places.
Do we approach the country from the north, by the railway lines from the United States border, we traverse deserts among the most dreadful of the New World, deserts yet with a certain cruel beauty of their own, where once the Apache roamed—cruellest and most horrible of all the world's savage folk.
But Nature has disposed along this high plateau, vast, fabulously vast mineral wealth, and from the famous mines of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Durango, Potosi, Aguascalientes, Pachuca; and places—some of them noble towns, dowered with royal charters before the Mayflower sailed for New England—silver and gold poured forth to fill the needy coffers of Spain. Later, the English shareholder tried his hands upon the "mother-lode" with varying fortune, and copper, iron and other metals also came like magic from the rocks of this great wilderness.
On the eastern and western versants of the country, and in the south, we encounter a different landscape. Here Nature smiles. In places it may be hot and humid, perhaps malarious, with tangled forests. But rich vegetation, gorgeous flora and profuse animal life—bird, insect, reptile—abound. Here are fruitful plains and valleys, vast sugar-cane plantations, luscious fruits of kinds unknown to the world outside—among them the mamey, the "fruit of the Aztec kings," with orange and banana groves, coffee gardens, cocoa-trees, yielding the chocolatl of the Aztecs, rubber-trees with elegant foliage, whilst above, the graceful coco-palm rears its stately column and feathery plume high against the azure sky.
SCENE ON THE GREAT PLATEAU, MEXICO.
Vol. I. To face p. 104.
Here, indeed, is a region where it might have been supposed that man could dwell in peace and plenty, with a minimum of toil and ambition, of care and evil.
The climatic zones of Mexico were named by the Spaniards in accordance with the condition of their varying temperatures respectively, as, the Tierra Caliente, or hot lands, the Tierra Templada, or temperate lands, and the Tierra Fria, or cold lands: the first lying upon the coast, the second midway up the slopes, and the last the higher regions, reaching an elevation of 8,000 to 10,000 feet and more above the level of the sea.
In this intermediate zone of the Tierra Templada lies a land which has been not unjustly termed a region of perpetual spring, a truly desirable land, where the fortunate inhabitant lives close to the kindly earth as if in some mortal paradise—as far as Nature is concerned. In the high zone, healthful and invigorating, lies the beautiful city of Mexico in its enclosed valley; and many a handsome town is found throughout the three zones.
This city of Mexico was the coveted prize of Cortes and his Spaniards, and through the varying zones they passed after having, on that Good Friday in 1519, landed on the shores to which they gave the name of Vera Cruz—the place of the True Cross. Across the waters of the Gulf as they approached the unknown land was seen the gleaming peak of Orizaba, called by the natives Citlalteptl, or the Mountain of the Star, hanging in mid-heaven, its point over thirteen thousand feet above the sea.
From the shore, the native runners of Montezuma bore swiftly upwards to the mountain city news of the white man's arrival—long expected of old, from the traditions of Quetzalcoatl, the mystic god-man of white race. These messengers made curious but faithful "picture-writings," on Mexican paper, of the great "water-houses" or caravels swinging in the bay, the dread "men-animals" or horsemen, and the thunderous guns of the Spaniards, and hastened thence to warn their master.
Swiftly they returned from the mountains. "Go back," the Aztec Emperor said, "come not hither, the road is long and difficult," and he sent presents—a huge wheel of gold and beautiful feather work and other objects.
But Cortes, heeding not the message, burned his boats; the customary Mass was rendered by the Padre Olmedo—the Spaniards were always devout, partly in sincerity, partly as a custom—and the adventurers set forth on that remarkable and adventurous journey which forms one of the most thrilling episodes in early American history. Let us briefly review it.
The Spaniards have allied themselves, in the fruitful land of Tlascala—the "Land of Bread" in the native tongue—with the Tlascalans, foes at first but friends afterwards, and then began the most stirring events of their march.
"The Tlascalans were a people who had developed a remarkable civilization and social and military organization, akin to that of the Aztecs. On the arrival of the messengers of Cortes much dissension had prevailed in their councils, some of the chiefs—the community was ruled by a council of four—maintaining that this was an opportunity for vengeance against their hereditary enemies, the hated Aztecs and their prince, Montezuma. 'Let us ally ourselves with these terrible strangers,' they urged, 'and march against the Mexicans.' For the doings of