Our last day in Mexico City, we ended up our riding school lessons
(which we have had nearly every day since we’ve been here) by starting
out across country at 10 o’clock A.M. I never enjoyed anything so
much. We went through Chapultepec Park then out across the fields
and galloped. Jumping a ditch Dick came off, but he was not a bit
frightened and with good presence of mind clung to the reins and landed
on his feet. Had he fallen, he might have been kicked by the horses
scrambling up the bank. I was very pleased with him. Most of the rest
of the day was spent packing, writing little notes of thanks and
farewell and dropping them.
At five o’clock, Dick and I drove to Chapultepec Castle in the face of
a blinding rain and thunder storm, which followed after a dust storm.
And oh! it was cold.
When we got to the Castle it was very difficult to make anyone
understand that I wasn’t a tourist, and that I had an appointment to
see the President. One of them argued with me that what was the use,
the President couldn’t speak English, and I couldn’t speak Spanish.
I wrote my name on a piece of paper and gestured to him to “take
it”--which he finally did, without further protest. We were then asked
to follow upstairs, and were shown into the reception room that is
entered from the roof garden. We waited and waited, and meanwhile Dick,
who had heard about the President having lost an arm plied me with
questions about war. Was war a thing that we had always with us, and
would he go to it when he grew up? I found it extremely difficult to
tell.
Finally Obregon came in, very pleasantly and smilingly, but we couldn’t
talk, only a few words such as concerned Dick’s age. I said he was
five, because I didn’t know what six was in Spanish. I understood he
was expecting an interpreter, but no interpreter came, although we
wasted three quarters of an hour, during which time he was in and out
of the room, restless and expectant. The children came in, Alvaro and
Alvarada, aged two and four, and when the President left the room,
Dick and the boy, who had eyed each other silently, began to turn
summersaults. Alvaro did it first, and then the damask sofa cushions
went on to the floor, and when the President returned the children
were standing on their heads, and coming down onto the parquet
floor with a thud of heels. He laughed heartily. I then went out
onto the freezingly cold roof terrace to see if that interpreter was
coming--instead, I beheld Pani, smiling as usual. I was glad to see him
... I told him our plight and how difficult it was ... Pani however had
come on business, and he and the President were closeted for some time.
When he came out, we all went down stairs to the front door, piled
into a car, were driven a few paces through the pouring rain across
the courtyard, to another door. Here he went down a spiral stair, it
was very mysterious and quaint--it led to the living apartments of the
Obregons. The rooms were smaller and it certainly was more habitable.
Madame Obregon met us at the foot of the stairs. She is one of those
simple pretty young Mexican women, grown fat prematurely (though in
this case, as an infant is due in October, there is some excuse ...) a
woman devoted to her husband and her children and her home. She told
me she had three children already, two, three and four years old.
She asked about mine, and I told her and we discussed Dick--food and
internal ailments. She talks American-English very well. We sat in a
small room. It had a table in the middle and chairs all around. In the
middle of the table was a silver flute-shaped vase of flowers on a
Mexican flag “doyley”.... On the floor, in between the chairs, were
large spittoons, quite useful for cigarette ends. Dick dropped his cake
into one and roared with laughter. The little two year old girl sat
down in her little baby arm chair and was given milk out of a baby’s
bottle. I asked Mrs. Obregon if she wanted a boy or a girl. She wanted
a girl, but her husband she said wanted another boy. He did not like
girls, they had such a hard time in the world he said.
I thought of Mexican girls, and agreed--yet if the girl is born across
the border of American citizenship, how different. How near and yet how
far is emancipation for the Mexican girl.
I was at the castle an hour and a half altogether. The President had
the use of Pani, or of his wife as interpreters if he wished. But he
said nothing interesting, and asked nothing. I have an explanation for
this in my own mind: In Mexico it is not easy for a woman to be taken
seriously. In England, in the States and especially in Russia (where
among the Intellectuals woman is on a perfect equality with men) it
is natural that clever men should think it worth while to talk to a
woman on subjects of mutual interest. But in Mexico woman is on such
a different plane. I am told for instance that a “feminist movement”
exists, but consists barely of 50 women! For the rest, they are the
very carefully guarded mothers of families, and utterly submissive in
spirit. I shall never forget the way Madame Pani asked me, the day I
lunched there: “Are you here in our country all alone...?” Who in the
world did she think I would be with...?