THE LAND OF THE INDIAN VAMPS
I
The railway southward into the Isthmus of Tehuantepec was the worst in
Mexico.
It had been constructed back in the days of Diaz, and apparently had
not been repaired since that time. A rusty engine that wheezed with
asthma dragged behind it a long succession of splintered freight cars,
followed by an aged wooden passenger coach whose walls groaned and
protested at every jolt, and swayed sidewise until the roof threatened
to fall.
From Córdoba, on the main line, the track squirmed away with snake-like
course into the tropical jungles of the coastal plain. At times it
passed a pineapple farm or a banana plantation; usually it ran through
unbroken forest. The vegetation was riotous. Moss covered the trees,
plants sprouted from the moss, vines crept upward among the plants and
dropped their creepers from the limbs, and a thousand other varieties
of parasitic growths twined upward along the creepers. The rampageous
wilderness encroached upon the track so aggressively that a passenger
could not lean from the car windows; it grew up between the tracks, and
sprouted from holes in the rotting ties.
Our progress was leisurely. First a freight car jumped the rail. We
waited three hours while the engine left us and sought a wrecking crew.
Then, as soon as the wrecking crew had corrected the difficulty and
departed, the same car did the same thing, and continued to repeat,
until we reached a siding, where the trainmen left it with all its
contents, presumably to rot in the jungle.
Then there was more delay. Another train was expected from the opposite
direction, but no one seemed to know just where we might meet it, so
the engineer proceeded cautiously. We met it head-on at a dangerous
curve, both engines stopping with a shriek of brakes, and bumping
gently. The two train crews then engaged in heated argument as to
which should back up ten miles to the nearest station to let the other
pass. There was speculation among the passengers as to whether the
debate would be settled with knives or by a pushing match between
the two engines. The conductors finally tapped a telegraph wire, and
consulted headquarters, and received a decision in favor of our own
train. Thereupon the other backed, very slowly as though to maintain
its dignity and give us as little satisfaction as possible, and ours
followed a few feet behind, both engineers hurling Mexican curses at
each other from the car windows.
As always, the native passengers took things with fatalistic unconcern.
They expected to miss connections at Rio Blanco, and be another day
or two upon their journey, but they merely shrugged their shoulders.
One must take things as they come in travel, _señor_! So far, this had
been an unusually good trip. Cars always jumped the rail on this line.
It was not extraordinary to be stranded eighteen hours or so in the
jungle here, without food and water--unless one took the precaution,
observed by the more experienced travelers, of bringing provisions.
They shrugged their shoulders again, lighted their cigarettes, and
amused themselves at each delay by setting up a beer bottle in the
jungle, and shooting at it with their big revolvers, which seemed to
be quite as essential a part of a Mexican’s equipment to-day as in the
more turbulent times of Carranza.
And, as always in Mexico, everything turned out all right. Although
we crawled into Rio Blanco five hours late, it developed that the
connecting train had been similarly delayed. There was a hurried lunch
at a railway restaurant, where the waitresses had been blonds before
the local supply of peroxide gave out but now wore the Princeton
colors. Then the journey proceeded upon another line, which, if
possible, was worse than the one before.
II
In the days of Diaz, the Mexican railways had been built by Americans,
and were under American management.
They had now become a political football, however, operated by the
government not because they were thus more profitable or efficient,
but because they thus offered employment to deserving voters. The
railway men, of course, knew something of railroading, and the
Vera-Cruz-Mexico-City road--as well as the other more important
roads--was kept in repair. But the Obregon government, although an
improvement over its predecessors, was still maintaining itself by
force, and after paying its generals, had little money left for keeping
in order such railways as those that meandered through its southern
jungles.
President Obregon’s term was drawing to a close; there was soon to
be an election; there had never been an election in Mexico without a
revolution; in view of the forthcoming excitement, work of any kind
was practically at a standstill. An escort of troops was still to be
seen on every train--better-uniformed and equipped than in the days of
Carranza, but with the same villainous faces. And a garrison was lined
up at the platform of each hamlet through which we passed--a small
garrison, so that towns could be classified as one, two, three, four,
or five soldier towns--a mere handful of men, but always present.
Conditions had improved during my four years’ absence from the country,
but the land was by no means so pacific and prosperous as Obregon’s
propaganda--circulated widely through the United States at the moment
when Obregon was seeking recognition by our State Department--had led
Americans to believe. Mexico was still Mexico.
III
It was quiet, and peaceful, and sunny, however, as always.
This southern Mexico was a paradise of tropic luxuriance. On the
infrequent banana plantations the foliage was so thick that the tunnels
beneath the trees were black as night. The jungle not only slapped
the face of any passenger who poked his head from the window; it even
scratched along the sides of the car, seeking an opportunity to reach
inside and stick a thorn into the passenger’s eye.
The air was hot and moist. Inhabitants had reduced clothing to a
minimum. Naked children ran races with the engine. The ox-drivers,
leading their patient yokes with a barbed pole, wore only a straw hat,
a pair of pants, and a _machete_--a big two-bladed knife--wherewith to
hack their way through the undergrowth. The women were garbed in what
appeared to be a thin, loose-flowing nightgown. The houses were of cane
and thatch, festering usually in pools of filth. Swarms of pigs came
out at each stopping-place to nose about in search of the melon-rinds
or fruit-skins that passengers might contribute to their welfare. The
people, lolling usually in hammocks of grass-rope, surveyed us with
interest, but made little effort to sell us anything.
Here was the true languor of the tropics, and the train conformed. We
were supposed to reach Santa Lucrecia, the next transfer-point, at 8.30
in the evening, but in this country a railway schedule is much like a
party platform in the United States. Night descended. Dew saturated the
jungle, and the branches swishing past the windows sprinkled every one
inside the car. A golden moon peeped out from a rank mass of silver
clouds, and flitted through the palm-fronds for hour after hour.
There was a brief halt at another railway restaurant, where a sleepy
proprietor had given up all hope of the train’s arrival. He brought out
cold rice, and heated coffee. Milk, _señor_? _Ay_, but although there
were cows, the people here did not bother to milk them. If one wished
to buy a can of condensed milk, yes, but it was expensive in this
country.
We finally crawled into Santa Lucrecia at 2.40 the next morning. A boy
led me upstairs to a room in the station hotel. There was a canvas cot
there with a sheet badly soiled. But, _señor_, it had been washed
only last week! And its occupants since that time had all been white
persons, except one! The boy’s tone implied, “What more do you want?”
So I turned in, and fell promptly asleep, lulled by the scratching of
cockroaches upon the wall. And here--alone of all the station stops I
found in Mexico--one could sleep late the next morning, for the train,
instead of starting at sun-up, did not leave for Tehuantepec until noon.
Santa Lucrecia was a straggling village of tin and thatch, perched
upon stilts as a precaution against the floods of the rainy season,
its several houses connected by ramshackle board walks. Although in
the center of the isthmus, it had an altitude of only twenty-six
meters above the sea; its air was dank and humid and depressing. Its
inhabitants lived on the porch, usually in hammocks, which, although
not completely bug-proof, gave the insects the trouble of scaling
a wall and finding their way across a hook before they could reap
their harvest. All intimate daily functions were performed in public,
preferably on some conspicuous knoll or hilltop, as though the town
were eager to proclaim itself a formidable rival in filth and vileness
to Manzanillo.
But my fellow passengers were cheerful.
“It is a frightful place,” they agreed. “But wait, _señor_, wait!
To-night you shall be at Tehuantepec--in the land of marvelous women!
So big, so strong, so beautiful! They do all the work, while a man has
but to lie in the shade and rest. You will like Tehuantepec, _señor_!”
IV
The noon train carried me over a better road, across a range of
mountains, and down the sandy slopes of the Pacific coast, into an
oasis of waving coco-palms, and dropped me in the city of the far-famed
Indian vamps.
The entire female population was lined up at the station, each with a
basket of cocoanuts.
I had already heard much about their attractiveness, for every travel
writer makes it a point to rave about them. They are described
always as “sloe-eyed queens of the tropics, with the figures of a
golden-bronze Venus, clad in oriental garments of vivid color that do
not quite meet at the waist.” They are said to be of passionate and
jealous nature. But for several years I had been hearing, throughout my
travels, of women somewhere just ahead who were like that, wherefore
I was not surprised, upon descending to the station platform at
Tehuantepec, to discover that the far-famed beauties were smoking
eight-inch cigars.
A few of the younger ones were handsome. Their skin was a light brown,
their eyes large and dark, their hair long and jet-black, their teeth
white and regular, their lips red and sensual. They were a trifle
larger than most tropical Indians, with magnificent, sturdy figures.
But at least two-thirds of them were pock-marked. And although they
wore the costume described--a little jacket of brilliant color, and a
short skirt also of brilliant hue--most of the garments _did_ meet at
the waist, and those that showed a brief strip of Tehuana lady were
worn by extremely aged Tehuana lady, and were not at all romantic. For
what was sturdiness in the younger maidens became monstrous bulk in
their elders. They were majestically fat, solidly fat, with a weight
that must have amounted to three hundred pounds each. The writers
had told the truth about their figures. They had all the truck-horse
characteristics of the Venus de Milo herself.
I looked upon them with awe. I stood for a moment upon the platform,
reviewing the stories I had heard of their passionate nature, and
their aggressiveness toward the males who fell into their clutches.
And even as I reviewed these stories, the women, having seen me, made
a concerted rush. But having surrounded me, they merely removed their
eight-inch cigars from their far-famed lips, and chorused:
“Buy my cocoanuts, _señor_! Two cocoanuts for five cents!”
V
A barefoot youth came to my rescue, shouldered my suit-case, and led
the way to Tehuantepec’s one hotel.
Tehuantepec, although the largest city in population on the Isthmus, is
merely a big Indian village. Its streets are sometimes rudely cobbled,
but usually of sand. It lies in a wide, fertile valley, straddling a
shallow river. In the center its buildings are of heavy white stucco
roofed with red tile. Elsewhere its dwellings are of thatch, and
straggle up the surrounding mountain cliffs or out among the vast
groves of waving coco-palms. None of the merchants have bothered to
advertise on their shops the nature of their business, for travelers
seldom come there, and the natives all know one another and one
another’s occupation, which is usually that of selling cocoanuts to one
another.
There is a _plaza_, but it is a very inferior _plaza_, fronted by a
ramshackle church. In towns where there is an element of Spanish blood,
this would be the center of all activity. But Tehuantepec is of almost
pure Indian population, and its interests are in the native market.
When Cortez first came to Mexico, he and his followers were amazed
at the size of the Indian markets. To-day no village is so tiny but
that it has a public square devoted to bartering, even though it
may have nothing else. Usually it is a stone-paved courtyard beneath
a sheet-iron roof. From the rafters hang raw-hide thongs, lassos,
saddles, gaudy blankets, bunches of bananas, and miscellaneous
drygoods. The entire floor is covered with great heaps of Indian
pottery, jugs and pots and kettles of earthenware. Tables, arranged in
long rows, are laden with piles of big round cakes resembling maple
sugar, with gravelly hills of flour, salt, spaghetti, beans, and corn,
with strings of red or green peppers, slabs of meat, bleary-eyed fish,
and everything else imaginable. Flies swarm everywhere. Turkeys are
tied to the posts that support the roof. Ducks and chickens, their legs
hobbled or broken, lurch from side to side in a futile effort to gain
their feet. Dogs slink through the crowd. Buzzards hop about the floor.
The whole effect is of confusion and bedlam.
[Illustration: NO LATIN-AMERICAN VILLAGE IS SO TINY BUT THAT IT HAS A
SQUARE DEVOTED TO BARTERING]
The Mexican loves the noise and excitement of such a place. So
ingrained is his fondness for it that a native on his way to market
will sometimes refuse to sell his goods for any price along the road.
In the few shops outside the square, the clerks are listless; in the
market, every one is animated. People selling the same articles group
themselves together, for it stimulates competition. Let a potential
purchaser stop before one woman to glance at _tortillas_, and a dozen
other _tortilla_-vendors hiss to attract attention. Here rules the
great game of cheat-as-cheat-can. There is no credit. There is no
mutual confidence. The merchant tests each coin; the purchaser tests
each purchase. Women buying hens ruffle up the feathers and examine the
bird carefully. Every one watches the scales. And every one enjoys it
hugely.
[Illustration: THE MEXICAN PEON SO LOVES THE EXCITEMENT OF THE MARKET
THAT HE REFUSES TO SELL HIS GOODS ELSEWHERE]
But nowhere in Mexico is there a market more animated than that of
Tehuantepec.
It is essentially a feminine market. Years ago, the men of the Isthmus
were practically annihilated in local warfare. For a long time the
women outnumbered them by a ratio of five to one; they learned to do
their own work; men became to them a luxury rather than a necessity;
and to-day the position of the sexes--most strangely, in Mexico--has
become completely reversed. In most markets, women predominate. In
Tehuantepec so few males are evident that a visitor strolling among the
counters feels like Al Jolson surrounded by the Winter Garden chorus.
[Illustration: THE TEHUANA MAIDENS REGARDED A MAN AS A LUXURY RATHER
THAN A NECESSITY]
It was very clean--as compared with similar bartering places elsewhere.
Usually such places were overpowering in their odor of sweaty
femininity. In Tehuantepec, however, the ladies were addicted to a
daily bath, the prettier and younger ones taking it after dark, the
elder ones in broad daylight, when they were to be seen disporting
their massive bulks in the river that intersected the town, quite
untroubled by the attention they received from the military garrison on
the neighboring railway bridge.
Despite the comparative scarcity of males, the usual number of babies
were in evidence. Each market-woman had an infant slung over her
shoulder in a gayly-colored _reboso_--the invaluable Mexican shawl,
which serves as towel, handkerchief, wrap, carry-all for bringing
produce home, and also as a crib. While mother bargained, she fed
her offspring. The loose vest-like jacket was designed for such an
operation, as was the alternative garment, a low-cut lace-frilled
chemise. And she fed her offspring mechanically, without once taking
her attention from the business of haggling. A quick jerk of one
shoulder, and the _reboso_ with its infantile contents swung to the
front; a heated argument continued uninterruptedly with shoppers who
maintained that _her_ goods were inferior to those of the lady squatted
cross-legged on her right; another quick jerk, and the child swung
around again to her back.
So busy were the women that they paid no attention to the few
men--mostly soldiers--who strolled about. If these were the vamps that
writers have proclaimed throughout the ages, one saw no evidence of the
fact in the market. They were the least sex-conscious women that I have
seen anywhere in Latin America. The Spanish _señoritas_ of other parts,
no matter how modest their deportment, were always supremely aware
of the presence of a man. These Indian girls were intent upon their
haggling; in their rush to sell their goods, they bumped the lounging
men aside as though quite unaware of their existence. Once in a while,
when business lulled, they glanced up to survey me casually, since
I looked out of place among gaudily-dressed Indians, and I fancied
that they discussed me in Indian dialect. But they did not appear
fascinated. For their flirtation was limited always to the original
remark:
“Buy my cocoanuts, _señor_!”
VI
Tehuantepec was hot. One was always thirsty. The water supply was of
doubtful quality. So I spent most of my time walking home from market
with another armful of cocoanuts.
The saleswomen opened them with one deft chop from a huge machete,
cleaving off the heavy rind, and leaving just a tiny round hole covered
by a thin peeling of the white coco-meat. When one craved a drink, one
had only to poke a thumb through the thin white peeling. I consumed
cocoanut-milk like a toper, until my room in the adobe hotel was
littered with the empty shells.
Little Guadalupe, my fourteen-year-old servant-maid, never removed
them. For some reason known to herself, she would pile them neatly
around the walls of my chamber, where they looked strangely like the
rows of skulls in a catacomb.
Guadalupe was a husky little Indian, rather moon-faced, and very solemn
in the presence of guests. There were two other maids of her own age
who served us at table, where guests dined with the Spanish proprietor,
and his native wife--a Tehuana lady of masculine features and Amazonian
proportions. The maids would enter very seriously and sedately with
their trays of _frijoles_, but once they were out of sight, we could
hear their bare feet scampering across the _patio_ as they chased each
other to the kitchen in a game of tag.
Sometimes, as I sat in my mud-walled room, writing my notes, little
Guadalupe would come and hover about the door, watching me. Then the
other two youngsters would sneak up behind her and push her inside,
shouting:
“Guadalupe likes the _gringo_!”
Thereupon Guadalupe would exclaim indignantly, “I do not!” and seizing
the first available weapon, usually the heavy walking stick that lay
upon my table, would chase them over the _patio_, all three looking
like tiny plump butterflies as their vividly-colored garments trailed
behind them.
Presently Madame would appear from the region of the bar, clad also
in colors that shamed the rainbow, her massive bare arms as ponderous
as hams, her Jack Dempsey jaw set in firm lines of disapproval.
Immediately the three little maids would become as solemn as jurists.
Seizing brooms, they would sweep the _patio_ with great vim until
Madame withdrew. Then would come the taunt, “Guadalupe likes the
_gringo_!” and the chase recommenced.
The Spanish proprietor always referred to himself as the head of the
household, but Madame’s word was law in the establishment. This, in
Mexico, was a domestic situation which never could be found outside of
the Isthmus. Madame sat usually in a large chair at the bar-room door,
from which she could see whatever transpired in Tehuantepec. Like the
other Tehuana ladies, she carried her weight with impressive dignity.
She was grand and majestic. Beneath her, the plain little wooden
seat became a royal throne. From it she issued orders to husband and
servants with regal authority, and even to the passers-by on the street
outside.
One day an epileptic threw a fit on the cobbled roadway. Madame
sat there in calm unconcern. She was not lacking in pity; she was
merely waiting for a pedestrian to pass, in order that she might give
directions for the relief of the unfortunate fit-thrower. When one did
pass, she called out:
“Pick up that fellow and lay him in the sand where he’ll be more
comfortable!”
The pedestrian, a slouching little male person, jumped with alacrity to
obey the command. The epileptic had just been placed on softer ground
and was throwing his fit in comfort, when the daily circus parade came
around the corner. Its display consisted of a wheezy band, a horse, a
monkey, and one performer.
“Step over that fellow!” called Madame.
And the parade stepped carefully over the recumbent figure.
“A very fine woman!” commented the Spanish proprietor to me in a moment
of confidence. “An asset and an adornment to any hostelry! But there
are times, _señor_, when she does not comport herself with the dignity
befitting an inn-keeper’s wife. She feels the call of her Tehuana
blood--the manifestation of that strange energy which one finds among
these women. Then she slips away from the hotel. She picks a few
cocoanuts, and sneaks down to the market to sell them! _Carramba!_ What
idiocy! But you can not stop her! It is the nature of these people!”
VII
The more I saw of the Tehuana women, the more I marveled.
Writers had overrated their beauty, but not their character. Beside
them, the girls of Spanish ancestry appeared doll-like. The _señoritas_
were pretty, sweet, shy, modest creatures, but devoid of personality.
These Indian maidens had never been sheltered behind moorish walls;
from infancy they had faced the world, and met their own problems;
they had developed character, and their faces were clean-cut, with
individuality in every feature. The _señoritas_, accustomed to no
exercise more violent then a leisurely stroll in the _plaza_, were
frequently stoop-shouldered and walked with a débutante slouch. These
Indian maidens were as straight as the shortest distance between two
points, and their step was the lithe, springy step of the athlete.
They were tremendous workers. They would meet the morning train from
Salina Cruz at daybreak; they would haggle in the market throughout the
day; they would be back at the railway in the evening to meet the train
from the other direction; and thereafter, until midnight, they would
sit outside the circus tent, still selling their cocoanuts. Despite
their devotion to business, there was always an air of play about their
work. They laughed and chattered in their Indian dialect. They joshed
one another. They brandished their big machetes in mock anger, and
slapped one another with the flat of the blade, each slap against a
massive buttocks resulting in a loud “Bam!” that resounded even above
the riotous hubbub of the market-place. But let a stranger appear,
and all fooling ceased. The welkin rang only with cries of, “Buy my
cocoanuts, _señor_!”
Among such self-sufficient creatures, a man felt insignificant. These
women owned the town. The shops and most of the houses were feminine
property, as were the big coco-groves surrounding the city. Men were
mere appendages in Tehuantepec--a somewhat desirable comfort in a
tropical climate--but not at all necessary. The soldiers stationed here
looked peculiarly contented, and the older women all wore strings of
twenty-dollar gold pieces as mementos of the day when the gold-rush to
California led across this Isthmus, yet to the casual observer, these
Indian maidens were the least flirtatious to be seen in Mexico. If they
could find a man--a fairly permanent, dependable man, who could be
counted on to remain at home and keep house--well and good. They did
not bother to vamp the passing tourist. They were too much interested
in bartering.
Their careers as wage-earners and heads of family had made the older
women quite masculine. If they had lost the grace of the younger
maidens, they had acquired dignity. They strode along the street with
a ponderous aggressiveness, cigars cocked skyward as among Tammany
Hall politicians, arms swinging massively as though in readiness to
floor for the count any mere male who did not step aside. Many of these
older women were followed by troops of servants, ready to carry home
purchases from the market. This was a common practice in upper-class
circles elsewhere, for no Latin-American aristocrat can ever bear to
carry home his own purchases, even if they consist of a single tube of
tooth-paste. I was accustomed to the sight, but it was odd to see an
Indian woman in the gaudy, picturesque costume of Tehuantepec marching
before a retinue of retainers.
Before I realized that these were the local Hetty Greens, I had
the temerity to stop one on the street with a request that she
pose for a photograph. It was Sunday, and she had supplemented her
already-astonishing regalia with a _huipile grande_--the old head-dress
of the Isthmus--an elaborate creation of white lace that rose from her
head like a lion’s mane and fell to her heels like a peacock’s tail.
“Ten cents!” I said, holding up the coin, in an appeal which had proved
successful in other regions. “Ten cents if you’ll stop for a picture.”
She gave me one indignant look. Ten cents to one who owned thirty acres
of cocoanut grove, six houses, and a gin mill! She never paused for
a moment. She came on, full speed ahead, along the narrow sidewalk,
swinging her massive arms. Like the other mere males in Tehuantepec, I
stepped hastily aside. These Tehuana women might not be so beautiful
as writers had pictured them, but they undoubtedly were the reigning
queens of the Tropics.
VIII
Romance was not altogether lacking in Tehuantepec, even for the casual
traveler. As I was about to depart, the little hotel proprietor stopped
me.
“You really should stay longer, _señor_. In time, I believe you could
win Guadalupe, my little servant. Young men are scarce here, and she
has taken quite a fancy to you. These girls do not throw themselves
away upon one who flits from flower to flower, as does the tourist. If
you were to wait, _quien sabe, señor_? She is small, of course, but
eventually she will become a fine big woman, like my own wife.”
But I chose to flit. And one couldn’t take Guadalupe along. What would
a Tehuana lady do if the traveler were to visit a country that grew no
cocoanuts?