GUADALAJARA IN THE VALE OF LERMA.
Guadalajara, which is reached by the Mexican Central R. R. from
Irapuata, was built in 1541 and in importance ranks next to the city of
Mexico. It is the capital of Jalisco, situated near the River Lerma,
which here changes its name to Santiago, in the midst of a plain hemmed
in on three sides by mountains, and on the fourth side is the Canon of
Santiago and the jumping-off place to the Pacific Ocean.
Being the only city of importance near the Pacific and never having had
a railroad till 1888, it is strictly a Mexican city without foreign
tendency. The city is exceedingly beautiful, with streets crossing at
right angles and lined with orange trees for shade, the rarest of
innovations in this country. There are a score of public parks with
music stands, fourteen portales or arcades covering the sidewalks for
many squares, and fourteen bridges spanning the San Juan River.
The Degollado Theatre is the largest on the continent, with the possible
exception of the Metropolitan in New York. The only academy of fine arts
in the country outside the capital is here. It is a great manufacturing
city, but not a column of smoke or the noise of a wheel breaks the
Sunday quiet. It is entirely what the word means--manufactures,
hand-made. Pass across the little river among the humble adobe dwellings
and every house is a work-shop for cotton and silk and wool and leather
and musical instruments. Seated upon the dirt floor with a distaff in
her hand, I saw Penelope weaving rebosas after the manner of the ancient
Greeks. Two doors further I saw young girls with foot-power looms
weaving cotton goods, and hard by were a score of young women weaving
hosiery with small hand-worked machines. Leather and straw hats and
baskets were all done by hand, and what a busy city! For squares and
squares, every doorway revealed a hive of busy workers, for Guadalajara
must supply the country a hundred miles around, and forever, and
forever, the pack-trains from the Pacific country and the mountains come
and go with the exchange of commerce. It is the busiest city I have yet
found here and the people are happy. Saddles and hats and hammocks and
baskets and pottery and shoes are made by the thousand tons and all by
hand or the crudest of foot-power machinery. It is wonderful to see the
skill of mere boys, who seem to inherit the trades of their ancestors,
like the watch-makers of Switzerland or the wood-carvers of Germany.
Of necessity, hand-made articles come high in price, and that forces
other thousands into the trade to make rather than to buy. A manilla hat
will sell for four dollars right in the shop where it is made, and
woolen sombreros without ornament are from four to ten dollars, and a
pair of French suspenders costs a dollar and a half. A curious custom
is the grouping together of all similar industries. In seeking a pair of
shoes I was sent to a quarter of the town where for an hour every open
door gave forth its leather odor, and the wall outside was lined with
leather articles. There is no mooted question about shop-made shoes.
Every workman sits in front of his door with his kit of tools on the
sidewalk and works and waits for custom, and if he does shoddy work it
is done under your gaze. All the rope and hemp dealers and workers in
sisal are grouped in like manner, and the far-famed Guadalajara pottery
can be found all in one square. Guadalajara is the home of the chocolate
industry. The botanical name of the chocolate tree is _Theobroma cacao_,
and on account of the theobromine the seeds contain, it is one of the
most nourishing foods in the country. The cacao tree grows about 20 feet
high. The leaves are large and the flowers small, and the fruit is a
long purple pod similar to the yellow locust pods of our forests. The
pod contains from twenty to forty beans, each very similar in size and
color to the shelled almond. Butter made from these beans has an
agreeable taste and odor, and rarely becomes rancid. The principal
constituents are stearin and olein, and is much used in surgery, and in
France is used in pomade. The chocolate of commerce is prepared by
roasting the seeds, which establishes the aroma and changes the starch
into dextrin. The seeds are then crushed, winnowed and molded, and are
ready for export. For instructions in the art of preparing the steaming
beverage, consult your cook. I do not know.
The most noted point in the city is the Hospicio de Guadalajara. This
building covers eight acres of ground, and within its walls are
twenty-three patios or open courts where fountains play and flowers
bloom in the open air, and mangoes, oranges and bananas grow in the very
doors. This is a public institution for foundlings and orphans and the
deaf, dumb and blind. Girls and boys occupy opposite sides of the
building, and are grouped according to age. A matron in white cap led me
through the entire establishment, beginning with the nursery with its
long rows of cribs with infants of all ages and in all stages of humor.
Some are orphans by necessity and some by desertion, but they have a
better home than thousands with healthy parents. Life here is not a
sinecure and the children are all taught valuable trades. Crippled and
deformed little girls were embroidering and embossing laces and silks
upon patterns so intricate it looked impossible to follow without
machinery. I shall never again believe that the Irish and Venetian
lace-workers have a monopoly of this wonderful and painfully intricate
knowledge. There is a bazaar in the front where these finished articles
are offered for sale, and that is the main channel through which they
receive gratuities. A direct gratuity would be respectfully declined as
it is a state institution and well supported, but you would be told that
to purchase these articles would be directly helpful to the poor
unfortunates who were weaving their lives into those wonderful patterns.
I asked the matron as to their final disposition. She said that the
afflicted ones would of course stay still death. The healthy girls
would be helped to places of self-support, and the boys would all go to
the army, if they had not mastered some trade. The children have a
beautiful chapel in an open court and decorated in the most pleasing
manner. I learned more of the nobler side of the Mexican people by a day
spent here than in all my wanderings elsewhere. Sorrow and affliction
are like to bring us in a more sympathetic union, and the hundreds of
patient and afflicted children trying to solve the problems of life
under difficulties, force home the truth that all human nature is the
same. Except for the Spanish language, these neatly dressed attendants
and wards could not be told from any similar institution in our own
land, and they will compare as favorably in any line of conduct or
results achieved, and the moral tone and timbre of the institution is a
paragon of excellence. The Hospicio San Miguel de Belen is a similar
institution for afflicted adults with hospital, lunatic asylum and
school attached.
I suppose penitentiary life is never pleasant, but prison life here is
the most pleasant I have seen. The outer walls look grim enough, but
within there must be two acres of flower plots all under care of the
prisoners. The guards are all upon the walls and can see all that goes
on below. The penitentiary is arranged like a turbine wheel, or rather
like a wagon wheel, with avenues from all parts of the ground converging
to a central arena without roof, and where the prisoners may be all
assembled under inspection if need be. There is here also a reformatory
for boys with dungeons for refractory ones and books and lessons for
the ignorant ones. While it is called a penitentiary, there are no long
term men there; they are all in the army, where they do all the drudgery
work of the barracks. They wear a distinctive uniform and would be
instantly shot if they attempted to escape. It is very easy to gain
admission here, because the visitor is on the wall forty feet above
ground and every part of the wall is traversed by narrow bridges across
the amphitheatre over which the guards constantly travel. The prisoners
are allowed to come to the office and sell anything they manufacture,
and their friends may bring them the raw material, so a man may be a
prisoner and yet support his family. The building contains a court of
justice and prisoners from the patrol wagon are brought directly here
and tried and turned into their wards.
Monopolies have no chance here; the government controls everything. The
slaughter house is a model of cleanliness and water is freely used. A
hundred or more animals are slaughtered daily and the butchers buy as
the animals are quartered. Prices go according to the grade of meat and
as it is a state affair there is no swindling and no bidding on prices.
The animals are slaughtered without cruelty. One is drawn up a gangway
by a windlass and fastened so it cannot struggle, and a knife is driven
behind the horns, severing the medulla oblongata, and another into the
heart, and the blood drawn off by a conduit while the carcass falls into
a car and is drawn to the skinning room and in six minutes is quartered
and sold. The city market is a wonder all by itself. It covers an
entire square and the roof is supported by 196 arched portales on the
outside, and the number within the mazy interior are too many to count.
Underneath is sold everything that is common to the country.
Across the San Juan River, five kilometers away, is the suburban town of
San Pedro. The tramcar passes through the city gate under a huge arch
and enters a beautiful avenue of giant elms and camphor trees, and
finally stops at a shaded plazuela in the midst of the little town. The
town for the most part consists of mud-colored adobe huts with no
comfort or convenience, but you soon discover that this is a residence
town of the merchants of Guadalajara. You discover this by the lofty
stone walls shutting out the eyes of the vulgar. One of the first
indications of wealth is a desire to be seclusive, and to wall the great
world out from one’s own little selfish world. Even the church is walled
in and the cemented coping stuck with jagged glass, and the entrance
guarded by heavy iron gates.
But San Pedro is known by one thing alone worth notice--pottery.
Guadalajara pottery is known all over the world. Here is found a
peculiar clay that gives it _a priori_ advantage, and for generations
the making of pottery has been the business of the town, and the knack
of the thing is inherited. The delicate and artistic painting is done by
people who never had a lesson in art or pigments. Everything in the
shape of a vessel is made in San Pedro, from the huge urns that hold
your largest lawn plants to the minute toy that may be covered with a
button. Not only vessels, but every thing the Mexican has ever seen he
can reproduce in clay, be it horse or man or procession or bull-fight or
building, and he will make it as true to life and color and purpose as a
photograph. But in San Pedro they do more than that. You can sit for a
statue or a bust, six feet or six inches, and the workman will take his
clay and produce a likeness your own mother would know. They are
absolutely true to life in every respect, and will be colored as to eyes
and clothes to the fractional part of a division of a tint, and I refuse
to abate one jot or tittle of the statement.
But everybody in San Pedro can do that, so we have not yet reached the
celebrity. To find _the_ artist of Mexico, of Guadalajara, of San Pedro,
you must walk two squares east on the street that leads from the
southeast corner of the plaza, turn down to the right half a square till
you come to a little tumble-down adobe house on the left. The
latchstring is on the outside and you are always welcome. Within is Juan
Pandero, the Indian sculptor, a genius if there is one. To be exact
there are two, father and son. If you want a statuette of your beautiful
self it is made while you wait, or will be built and sent to your hotel,
or he will go to your room and do it. But more than that, send him your
photograph and he will do the same, and herein lies his genius. Only
these two can produce statues from photographs, and they will be as true
to life as though he made them from models. And the tools. Such tools!
Seated on the floor with a lump of clay and an old case knife, and the
outfit is complete.
From the hill of San Pedro, the City of Guadalajara and the Vale of the
Lerma lie before you, and you notice what you have noticed a hundred
times before, how like the hills of Palestine are the landscape. Take
any series of pictures of the Holy Land and of Mexico, and no person who
had not traveled in one or the other could tell the difference. The
houses low, flat-roofed and painted white, the absence of trees and the
naked plain force the resemblance every time a vista is opened.
Back to the city among those magnificent elms and to the Paseo. The
Paseo! what would any Mexican city be without its Paseo, where
fashionable people take their outing with such system and abandon? This
Paseo extends for a mile along both sides of the Rio San Juan de Dios.
There are also the Botanical gardens, and the Alameda, and the mint and
state buildings with the finest of architecture, so unlooked for in this
far-away place. Churches! ah yes, same old thing, even to the earthquake
brand, and they are costly and beautiful. The cathedral was begun in
1561 and completed in 1618. Both towers were thrown down by an
earthquake in 1818. Paintings without number adorn the wall. The
Assumption, by Murillo, is a genuine master-piece. All the saints in
this part of the vineyard have been remembered in the christening. There
are El Sagraria, San Francisco, San Augustin, San Felipe, La Campania,
Guadalupe, Mexicalt-zingo, Jesus Maria, Capuchinas, Santa Monica, El
Carmen, San José de Analco, San Sebastian de Analco, La Parroqua de
Jesus, San Juan de Dios, Aranzazu, La Soledad, San Diego, Belen, La
Concepcion, La Trinidad y la Parroqua del Pilar, and I am tired of
naming them; but if you will get an almanac and call off all the saints
in the calendar, I will agree to find their churches christened and
waiting for them in Guadalajara.
Nothing but a conscientious duty makes me go around among these old
paintings, and what do I know about them? I stood in an art gallery once
before a picture called “The Transfiguration;” my companion asked me how
much was it worth. I sized up the gilt frame and measured the space it
covered and said it must have cost ten dollars. He pointed to the name
in one corner and said in disgust: “Don’t you see Raphael’s name on
there? that picture is worth forty thousand dollars!” I dropped my
catalogue to hold my palpitating heart in place and told him I knew
better. Why, there were not ten yards of canvas in the whole thing, and
the molding was not much over eight inches wide and there was not fifty
feet of it, and I knew the price of molding and canvas too. Forty
thousand dollars! who ever heard the like? “But it is not the frame,
goosie, look at the picture!” I looked at it, and then I told him to
look at the picture on the other side, at that Stag Fight, or at that
fellow on the beech-log fishing, and “there’s a picture to look at.”
He cast a withering glance at me and said some words which sounded like
this: “----!----!!----!!! natural born fool.” I stayed an hour trying
to get educated enough to see the forty thousand dollars. Hundreds of
people came, looked in the catalogue at the price and then showed their
superior education. “Now, that’s what I call art.” “Just look at the
expression.” “What an ensemble!” “Note the radiance of that halo!” I
merely asked them what was it anyway. Some said it was the price, some
said it was an original old master, and some said it was both. I saw
hundreds of pictures I liked better, but I was out of style. I saw a
beech forest with silver bark and purple and brown leaves that I thought
was a gem, and some one turned up his nose in disgust and pointed to the
price; only $25! bah! And then I wept because my art education had been
so sadly neglected, and so I never miss an opportunity now to improve
it. Now, when the guide strikes an attitude and proudly points to a
painting and says: “_Murillo!_” I throw up both hands and step back a
pace or two and say: “_Murillo! Murillo!_ Ah, _Murillo!_ Just look at
that expression! What an ensemble!” Then I look at the guide’s face to
see how I am getting along, and he looks happy, and then we pass on.
Then he stops. “The Entombment, by Titian, $50,000.” Then I go into
ecstacies and strike another attitude: “The Entombment! $50,000! Titian!
$50,000! Ah, Titian! $50,000! That’s art!” When we stopped again I was
just about to raise my hands again, and looked to him for my cue, but he
said: “By a Mexican, $25.” “Oh!” I said in contempt. “Just a daub! Why
in the name of Saint Peter doesn’t that man learn to paint!” That guide
said I ought to make art my calling, and I do not know till this day
what he meant.
Of course excursions outside of the city are in order. The cars lead to
Tlacotalpan, about five kilometers away, a quaint old town that looks
like Rip Van Winkle’s summer residence. The Falls of Juanacatlan are
farther. You go by rail twelve miles to Castillo, and go by horse-car
one league farther to the River Lerma. The river is over a hundred yards
wide and the cascade is seventy-one feet high. In high water the falls
are beautiful, but a huge flour-mill has been erected which draws most
of the water through a flume when the river is low, at which time it is
possible to walk across the rocks the entire distance above the falls.
The mill was not completed when I was there, but judging by the name it
bears, it will be a very correct and moral mill. The part of the name as
completed reads: “The Mill of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene;” and when the annex is added to the mill, I was assured that
the rest of the name would be added, as at present there was not enough
room. Between Castillo and the falls is a rich valley covered with fine
beef cattle for the city market, and here can be witnessed some of the
finest work of roping cattle to be found among cowboys. While in full
gallop they can rope any foot of the animal that may be desired.
Above here the river Lerma passes through Lake Chapala, and as it
emerges from the other side it bears the name of Rio Grande de Santiago.
Surely baptism is a wonderful alembic that can make a saint of a muddy
little river by one emersion only. But its good works follow it, and
where it empties into the Pacific, behold the Bay of San Blas! It was
from Lake Chapala that the Aztec migration began, 648 A. D., for the
valley of Mexico, and on this march their name was changed from Aztecs
to Mexicatls, in honor of their war-god, Mexitli. Soon after the river
leaves the lake, and just beyond Guadalajara, it forms a wonderful
canon, which for grandeur is not surpassed on this continent. The chasm
is a narrow barranca two thousand feet down its perpendicular walls.
You stand on the brink in the _tierra templada_ and behold the tiny,
silver stream a full half mile below you in the _tierra caliente_, the
hot lands of the Pacific. You will never see elsewhere such a work of
nature as the canon de Rio Santiago. No, not even in the Colorado Canon.
It seems as though the great Titans in play had spaded this great block
of the continent from those perpendicular walls, and hurled it at the
Cyclops in the sea.
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