DIVES AND LAZARUS.
There is probably no other country where the gulf between the rich and
poor is so wide. Six thousand people own all the land in Mexico, and
eleven million people have to live upon terms made directly or
indirectly by those six thousand. The same six thousand are also the
governing class, and make all laws to favor their own interest. For
instance, all the land of the rich is exempt from taxation, and this
compels the poor laborer to pay the tax for the support of the
government. It is hard for a man to acquire land here, as the holders
will not sell, and the laws against foreigners are very strict. Mexico
has never forgotten 1848, when California, Arizona and New Mexico were
seized by the United States, and she now sees to it that Americans get
no more. Thus, no American, without consent of the president, can
acquire land within twenty leagues of the border. This precaution is
based upon the experience of Texas. Mexicans allowed the Americans to
settle in Texas, and so soon as they felt strong enough they struck out
for independence and got it. If Americans were allowed to buy along the
Rio Grande, it would be but a few years till the Rio Grande country
would declare independence and join Texas, just as Texas joined the
union.
The rich have also made a law that a man may become a slave for debt,
and the property of the creditor. As a legal enactment the law has been
repealed, but as a matter of fact, the law is as operative today as it
ever was, and this class of slave labor is known as peons. The peon may
owe the creditor a hundred dollars. He is paid such low wages he never
cancels his debt, but continues till it is doubled. Should he become
dissatisfied with his master, he can get some one else to buy him by
paying the debt, and he thus becomes the slave of the second, but this
is always done legally. The original owner must write out a statement of
the amount of debt, and allow the peon three days for each hundred
dollars to seek a new master. Once in debt, always in debt, so the poor
peon is never free, and his wife is included in his contract, and the
haciendas will have no other kind of labor. The Mexican by nature is
averse to work, and where land is so fertile and fruit is so plenty, it
is hard to get a free Mexican to work, and harder to hold him. The peon,
on the other hand, has both a moral and legal compulsion to work, and
the fear of the law compels him to work every day but Sundays and feast
days. So this is the kind of labor the haciendados seek.
In opening a new plantation, instead of hiring men, the owner spends six
or eight thousand dollars in buying peons from other farms, before his
new place has earned him a dollar. When he becomes the property of his
new master, a contract must be made as to time and wages. The peon
agrees to work on all days except feast days, and to receive in wages
two dollars and a half a month, plus a ration of corn, beans and salt,
or four dollars a month without rations. The rations consist of six
almuds (6½ quarts each) of corn, half an almud of frijoles (beans) and
one pound of salt. If a peon refuses to pay his debts in money or work,
the law places him in close confinement. Life on these haciendas is
peculiar to itself. The buildings are in the form of a huge rectangle
surrounded by high walls and entered by massive gates which are closed
at night. The walls are mounted by towers and pierced by loop-holes for
muskets, and generally surrounded by a moat. All these precautions have
been necessary in a land infested by bandits and subject to the annual
raids of the revolutionists who could get horses and supplies to furnish
a regiment.
The hacienda of Jaral once controlled 20,000 peons and furnished a full
regiment for the Spanish army in the war of independence. Within this
enclosure on one side is the residence of the bosses, as the owners
nearly all live in Europe. On the other sides, in adobe huts with dirt
floors, live the peons with their families and dogs, while in the center
or in a separate enclosure are the animals. It reminds one of the feudal
days to hear the signal bell rung and see the hundreds of people
hurrying to the hacienda and closing the ponderous gates and preparing
for a siege. Revolutions and bandits are not as frequent now as
formerly, but the haciendas have no faith in Utopia, so they still build
in accordance with past experience. The universal work animal is the ox,
and he is worked just as he was on the Nile four thousand years ago.
The plow is a sharp stick with an iron point that does not turn the soil
but only opens a furrow. The beam is fastened to the yoke, and the yoke
is fastened to the animal’s horns by means of raw-hide thongs, the
universal hammer and nails of the country. The people mend, repair and
make everything by means of raw-hide. The plowman holds the single
handle with his left hand, and in his right he carries a goad with a
steel point on the end with which he persuades his team. The driver
never speaks to his team, but if he wants the team to go to the left he
silently prods the right hand ox, and vice versa. The cruel method of
fastening the yoke to the horns compels the oxen to pull by their necks
instead of by their shoulders, and with a heavy two-wheeled cart loaded
with a ton of stone, their necks soon become so stiff they cannot bend
them, and cannot graze nor drink water unless they stand in it leg deep.
Innovations? O no, the Mexican wants no innovation. An enterprising
Yankee shipped some plows down, and the natives sawed off one handle of
every one. He had always plowed with one handle and always will. In
making excavations for building, no wheel-barrow is seen. A piece of
raw-hide stretched between two poles and carried by two men is the only
wheel-barrow they will ever use. The only ladder in the country is an
upright pole with cross-pieces tied on by ropes. To saw lumber a pit is
dug and the log laid across the top, then with one man in the pit and
one on the log, it is sawed into lumber. For wagons they use only
two-wheel carts, and in loading, sometimes three or four hundred pounds
will overbalance on the forward side and crush the mule to the ground,
but with whip and lash he is made to get up and move.
I have seen these two-wheel carts come from the mines loaded with over
two tons of silver, and drawn by eight mules, and only one mule in the
shafts, and his back would be bent into the segment of a circle and his
legs spread like a cotton toy.
To thresh their grain, it is spread in the yard and the oxen and donkeys
are driven over it two or three days to tramp it out, just as they did
in Egypt in Pharaoh’s time. After ten yoke of oxen had tramped over the
wheat for two days, I fear there are fastidious people who would refuse
to eat it, but we can get accustomed to many things when we have to.
Even the green scum on the stagnant water of the canal makes a fine dish
when you cannot do any better.
There came a Yankee to this country once who saw a Mexican threshing
machine, which consisted of about thirty sheep, goats and burros, that
were wading knee-deep in grain and threshing it out; so when he got
home, he sent that farmer a Yankee threshing machine almost as a
present, and it was put to work. The grain was threshed clean and it
performed the work of a dozen men and twice that number of animals, and
seemed a great success, but it got bruited to the priests. They came and
saw the machine and stood in amazement. From their standpoint it was too
great an innovation, and what might it not lead to? They declared that
the devil was in the machine, and positively forbade the peons to use
it! The threats and warnings frightened the poor ignorant peons out of
their wits, and that machine was sent back across the Rio Grande.
When railroads were first introduced, the priests had the tracks torn
up, and for a long time the rubber hose of the air-brake was continually
cut open, because it was said to be the work of the devil. Wise priests
they are in Mexico. Well do they know that where intelligence and
invention find their way among those Indians, the power of the
priesthood is gone, so it is not a matter of ignorance with them. They
are well-educated--too well to permit innovations that will lessen their
influence and shekels. I have met these priests outside of their
official capacity, and found that many of them were educated in Europe
and America and were well posted in the affairs of today, all of which
proves that their teaching what they know to be false is the most
transparent humbug.
The tools and manner of working is shiftless to the last degree. I have
seen plantations planted in corn, and it was done by men digging holes
with short handled grubbing-hoes, in which to plant, and when it was
large enough to cultivate, take a short paddle or a board, and on their
knees rake the dirt to each stalk.
The corn has been inbred until it is of the most stunted growth, when a
few bushels of Texas corn would give new life to it. It is a rare thing
to see a stalk on the plateau over five feet high, while the conditions
of the soil ought to produce a height of twelve feet. For irrigation
they still use the old well-sweep, a long pole balanced in a fork, and
as the weighted end goes down, the laden bucket rises at the other, and
all day the laborer draws this water to slake his thirsty field. A
suction pump would do the work of six men, but I have not seen such an
innovation as a pump in all this land. In making a cart the native will
take his ax and hew him out one complete, and there will be no particle
of iron about it.
With the woman, life is a continual tread-mill until she dies. From
girlhood to old age her business is grinding corn, and it takes her
entire time. In the entire country I have seen no other corn mill. The
usual method is to put the corn to soak in lime water to soften the
grains, and then they are laid upon a stone a dozen at a time and
crushed by another stone roller made exactly like our kitchen rolling
pins; and when it comes to grinding corn for a large family, a dozen
grains at a time, it means a day’s work. In large cities of over a
hundred thousand population, the public mill is the same. I visited a
number where meal was ground for sale, and on the floor were thirty or
forty women down on their knees grinding corn; the metata, or nether
stone is held against the stomach like a washboard, and the rolling-pin
stone is worked up and down to crush the corn, but always she is on her
knees. This constant labor gives the peon woman a stolid look of
resignation that never departs from her features. For use, the grated
meal is dampened and made into thin cakes the size and thickness of a
saucer, and cooked by placing on a hot stone or piece of sheet-iron.
Neither knives, forks, dishes or spoons enter into their household
equipment. The tortilla is about the color and toughness of leather,
and is baked and stacked away for future use. The frijoles are cooked in
a small burnt clay vessel, then poured into or upon a frijola, which is
then rolled into a cylinder and eaten. If by good fortune they have
anything else to eat, the tortilla is used as a plate for this dainty
and then the plate is eaten. Their adobe houses have dirt floors and no
windows or chimneys. They never use fire except for cooking and that is
done on the outside. Within are neither bed, table nor chairs. Sometimes
there is a straw mat for a bed, and they sleep in the clothes they have
worn all day, the men rolling in their zerapes and the women in rebosas.
Shame and modesty in the usual amenities of life are entirely absent,
and no privacy whatever is sought or needed. The men dress in white
cotton and wear sandals on their feet, and each man is his own
shoemaker. The women wear, often, simply a coarse chemise or at most a
short petticoat reaching to the bare knees. Sometimes they wear coarse
shoes, but never stockings. Their faces have a perpetual look of
sadness. They are slaves for debt, and have nothing else in life to hope
for. Marriage laws are almost unknown. They have not the money to secure
a legal marriage, so the formality is dispensed with. In some of the
largest cities in the country you may take a seat in a public park, and
when no policeman is near some cadaverous looking woman will approach
leading a daughter, and will offer to sell her for two or three
dollars--to such stress are they driven by their condition.
Do not think for a moment that all this suffering and depravity will
awaken sympathy from the rich. The rich are Spaniards, and being such,
have neither sympathy nor charity for Mexicans and Indians. In trading
with these poor people I have purposely paid them more than the price
asked, when some Spaniard, thinking I had been cheated, would rush up
and abuse the seller and attempt to restore my money.
Caste distinctions are drawn as tight as steel wires, and a peon would
no more resent an insult from a Spaniard than if he were a superior
being. They are fatalists, and accept their lot as their portion. Before
the law they are all equal, but if the aristocracy should appropriate a
particular park or street or sidewalk, the rabble would cower and huddle
near the edge but would no more trespass than if it were an enchanted
spot. The laws are made by the aristocracy, and in a lawsuit for damages
the poor would have no show at all, and in most cases the _leges non
scriptæ_ are more powerful than the written. By common consent (of the
aristocracy) the people have divided themselves into classes and they
never transgress their acknowledged boundaries. No peon would think of
asking a well-dressed gentleman for a cigarette light, and said
gentleman would not use said peon for a door-mat.
The most remarkable feature is the zeal with which the police enforce
caste rules. The railroads and street-cars are all divided into classes
and the police are always present to see that the _pilagua_ or poor
class always go third-class. Even should one have a first-class ticket,
the policeman would promptly eject him. At the bull-ring or theater the
police assort them by their clothes, and I have yet to hear of a protest
by the ejected. In the alamedas and promenades, if the aristocracy
appropriate the inner circle next the band stand, the people immediately
fall back to the outer circle, and a string of police will see that they
stay there. But to all Americans, however dressed, barriers fall away
like cobwebs, and with a tip of the hat the official bids you “_Passe
señor_.” Ordinary servants are chosen from the great middle class, and
employers require such exact obedience and homage that no servant of the
United States would remain a day. No matter how often a servant is
called, she must always answer with some deprecating remark denoting her
position, such as: “Yes, your humble servant,” or “At your service,
Señora,” and this formula must never be omitted. In nine cases out of
ten no beds are furnished servants, and I have seen men and women spread
themselves over the bare floor night after night and sleep in the same
clothing they wore all day. For this faithful service women get five
dollars a month, in a country where the cheapest cotton cloth is
thirteen cents a yard. But Mexican servants are the best in the world.
They know nothing of the comforts of life as we know them, so they do
not grumble at their lot. Obedience and hardship are their inheritance,
and like the caged bird that has never known freedom, they never chafe.
It is this submission that makes the priesthood anxious to keep American
innovation out; but let intelligence be once awakened to superior
conditions, and automatic obedience to church and master will suffer a
compound fracture.
The life of the great middle class woman is the happiest of the lot. Not
being ground by poverty nor bound by the laws of aristocratic society,
she enjoys life. The blue blood deserves our greatest sympathy. She must
never appear without _duenna_ or escort. If she engage in any occupation
whereby she earns money or is drawn from her seclusiveness, she
immediately loses caste. An educated lady may do missionary work or
perform in music for some _funcion_; very well, but if it be known that
she received pay for so doing, it would mean her Waterloo. In
consequence most such places in the country are filled by foreigners who
have no such restrictions to face. Sometimes gentility frazzels out to a
very name with no income, and then the poor lady is in the strait
whether she shall go hungry or lose caste, so she works by stealth. To
the public she gives music lessons or art lessons for the love of it but
on the quiet she collects tuition, and thus is able to live and still
hold her own with the four hundred.
A Mexican lady has her world in two hemispheres, the church and the
home. When she is not in one she is in the other. They neither visit nor
receive calls. A Mexican’s home is for himself and he does not invite
his dearest friends to it. This is not indicative of selfishness but the
custom. If you want to see anyone you never go to their home, but to the
plaza at eight when the band begins to play, and see your friends. That
is what the band is for, to play while you visit. And so her life is
spent. In her home all day peeping through iron bars, and on Sunday
going to the bull fight, and three evenings a week going to the plaza to
chat. Her home is furnished with elegance, but she has a peculiar
custom. If her best room will hold forty chairs, then forty will be
there. In nearly every home I have seen the walls held as many chairs as
would set around the four sides, but their use was never revealed to me.
Great is custom.
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