This eBook was produced by Jim O'Connor, Charles Aldarondo,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
TRAMPING THROUGH MEXICO, GUATEMALA AND HONDURAS
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
By Harry A. Franck
Author Of
"A Vagabond Journey Around The World,"
"Zone Policeman 88,"
etc.
Illustrated With Photographs By The Author
To The Mexican Peon With Sincerest Wishes For His Ultimate Emancipation
FOREWORD
This simple story of a journey southward grew up of itself. Planning a
comprehensive exploration of South America, I concluded to reach that
continent by some less monotonous route than the steamship's track; and
herewith is presented the unadorned narrative of what I saw on the
way,--the day-by-day experiences in rambling over bad roads and into
worse lodging-places that infallibly befall all who venture afield south
of the Rio Grande. The present account joins up with that of five months
on the Canal Zone, already published, clearing the stage for a larger
forthcoming volume on South America giving the concrete results of four
unbroken years of Latin-American travel.
Harry A. Franck.
New York, May, 1916.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I INTO THE COOLER SOUTH
II TRAMPING THE BYWAYS
III IN A MEXICAN MINE
IV ROUND ABOUT LAKE CHAPALA
V ON THE TRAIL IN MICHOACÁN
VI TENOCHTITLAN OF TO-DAY
VII TROPICAL MEXICO
VIII HURRYING THROUGH GUATEMALA
IX THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HONDURAS
X THE CITY OF THE SILVER HILLS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A street of Puebla, Mexico, and the Soledad Church.
The first glimpse of Mexico. Looking across the Rio Grande at Laredo.
A corner of Monterey from my hotel window.
A peon restaurant in the market-place of San Luís Potosí.
A market woman of San Luís Potosí.
Some sold potatoes no larger than nuts.
A policeman and an arriero.
The former home, in Dolores Hidalgo, of the Mexican "Father of his
Country".
Rancho del Capulín, where I ended the first day of tramping in Mexico.
View of the city of Guanajuato.
Fellow-roadsters in Mexico.
Some of the pigeon-holes of Guanajuato's cemetery.
A _pulque_ street-stand and one of its clients.
Prisoners washing in the patio of the former "Alóndiga".
Drilling with compressed-air drills in a mine "heading".
As each car passed I snatched a sample of its ore.
Working a "heading" by hand.
Peon miners being searched for stolen ore as they leave the mine.
Bricks of gold and silver ready for shipment. Each is worth something
like $1250.
In a natural amphitheater of Guanajuato the American miners of the
region gather on Sundays for a game of baseball.
Some of the peons under my charge about to leave the mine.
The easiest way to carry a knapsack--on a peon's back.
The ore thieves of Peregrina being led away to prison.
One of Mexico's countless "armies".
Vendors of strawberries at the station of Irapuato.
The wall of Guadalajara penitentiary against which prisoners are shot.
The liver-shaking stagecoach from Atequisa to Chapala.
Lake Chapala from the estate of Ribero Castellanos.
The head farmer of the estate under an aged fig-tree.
A Mexican village.
Making glazed floor tiles on a Mexican estate.
Vast seas of Indian corn stretch to pine-clad hills, while around them
are guard-shacks at frequent intervals.
Interior of a Mexican hut at cooking time.
Fall plowing near Patzcuaro.
Modern transportation along the ancient highway from Tzintzuntzan, the
former Tarascan capital.
In the church of ancient Tzintzuntzan is a "Descent from the Cross"
ascribed to Titian.
Indians waiting outside the door of the priest's house in Tzintzuntzan.
A corner of Morelia, capital of Michoacán, and its ancient aqueduct.
The spot and hour in which Maximilian was shot, with the chapel since
erected by Austria.
The market of Tlaxcala, the ancient inhabitants of which aided Cortez in
the conquest of Mexico.
A _rural_ of the state of Tlaxcala on guard before a barracks.
A part of Puebla, looking toward the peak of Orizaba.
Popocatepetl and the artificial hill of Cholula on which the Aztecs had
a famous temple, overthrown by Cortez.
A typical Mexican of the lowlands of Tehuantepec.
A typical Mexican boy of the highlands.
Looking down on Maltrata as the train begins its descent.
A residence of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
On the banks of the Coatzacoalcos, Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Women of Tehuantepec in the market-place.
On the hillside above Tehuantepec are dwellings partly dug out of the
cliffs.
A rear-view of the remarkable head-dress of the women of Tehuantepec,
and one of their decorated bowls.
A woman of northern Guatemala.
A station of the "Pan-American" south of Tehuantepec.
An Indian boy of Guatemala on his way home from market.
Three "gringoes" on the tramp from the Mexican boundary to the railway
of Guatemala.
Inside the race-track at Guatemala City is a relief map of the entire
country.
One of the jungle-hidden ruins of Quiraguá.
The last house in Guatemala, near the boundary of Honduras.
A woman shelling corn for my first meal in Honduras.
A vista of Honduras from a hillside, to which I climbed after losing the
trail.
A resident of Santa Rosa, victim of the hook-worm.
The chief monument of the ruins of Copán.
I topped a ridge and caught sight at last of Santa Rosa, first town of
any size in Honduras.
Soldiers of Santa Rosa eating in the market-place.
Christmas dinner on the road in Honduras.
Several times I met the families of soldiers tramping northward with all
their possessions.
A fellow-roadster behind one of my cigars.
An arriero carrying a bundle of Santa Rosa cigars on his own back as he
drives his similarly laden animals.
The great military force of Esperanza compelled to draw up and face my
camera.
The prisoners in their chains form an interested audience across the
street.
Honduras, the Land of Great Depths.
A corner of Tegucigalpa.
The "West Pointers" of Honduras in their barracks, a part of the
national palace.
View of Tegucigalpa from the top of Picacho.
Repairing the highway from Tegucigalpa to the Coast.
A family of Honduras.
Approaching Sabana Grande, the first night's stop on the tramp to the
coast.
A beef just butchered and hung out in the sun.
A dwelling on the hot lands of the Coast, and its scantily clad
inhabitants.
Along the Pasoreal River.
The mozo pauses for a drink on the trail.
One way of transporting merchandise from the coast to Tegucigalpa.
The other way of bringing goods up to the capital.
The garrison of Amapala.
Marooned "gringoes" waiting with what patience possible at the "Hotel
Morazán," Amapala.
Unloading cattle in the harbor of Amapala.
The steamer arrives at last that is to carry us south to Panama.
We lose no time in being rowed out to her.
MAP
The Author's Itinerary
CHAPTER I
INTO THE COOLER SOUTH
You are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is a
purely--though not pure--Mexican town with a slight American
tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sell
sticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. There
are not a dozen shops where the clerks speak even good pidgin English,
most signs are in Spanish, the lists of voters on the walls are chiefly
of Iberian origin, the very county officers from sheriff down--or
up--are names the average American could not pronounce, and the
saunterer in the streets may pass hours without hearing a word of
English. Even the post-office employees speak Spanish by preference and
I could not do the simplest business without resorting to that tongue.
I am fond of Spanish, but I do not relish being forced to use it in my
own country.
On Laredo's rare breeze rides enough dust to build a new world. Every
street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of
the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat--"Cincinnati Slim" put
it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the
freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full
this'll do fine for an annex."
Luckily my window in the ruin that masqueraded as a hotel faced such
wind as existed. The only person I saw in that institution during
twenty-four hours there was a little Mexican boy with a hand-broom,
which he evidently carried as an ornament or a sign of office. It seemed
a pity not to let Mexico have the dust-laden, sweltering place if they
want it so badly.
I had not intended to lug into Mexico such a load as I did. But it was a
Jewish holiday, and the pawnshops were closed. As I passed the lodge on
the north end of the bridge over the languid, brown Rio Grande it was a
genuine American voice that snapped: "Heh! A nickel!"
Just beyond, but thirty-six minutes earlier, the Mexican official
stopped me with far more courtesy, and peered down into the corners of
my battered "telescope" without disturbing the contents.
"Monterey?" he asked.
"Sí, señor."
"No revólver?" he queried suspiciously.
"No, señor," I answered, keeping the coat on my arm unostentatiously
over my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic.
The man who baedekerized Mexico says Nuevo Laredo is not the place to
judge that country. I was glad to hear it. Its imitation of a
street-car, eight feet long, was manned by two tawny children without
uniforms, nor any great amount of substitute for them, who smoked
cigarettes incessantly as we crawled dustily through the baked-mud
hamlet to the decrepit shed that announced itself the station of the
National Railways of Mexico. It was closed, of course. I waited an hour
or more before two officials resplendent in uniforms drifted in to take
up the waiting where I had left off. But it was a real train that pulled
in toward three, from far-off St. Louis, even if it had hooked on behind
a second-class car with long wooden benches.
For an hour we rambled across just such land as southern Texas, endless
flat sand scattered with chaparral, mesquite, and cactus; nowhere a sign
of life, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on crooked sticks--not
even bird life. The wind, strong and incessant as at sea, sounded as
mournful through the thorny mesquite bushes as in our Northern winters,
even though here it brought relief rather than suffering. The sunshine
was unbrokenly glorious.
Benches of stained wood in two-inch strips ran the entire length of our
car, made in Indiana. In the center were ten double back-to-back seats
of the same material. The conductor was American, but as in Texas he
seemed to have little to do except to keep the train moving. The
auditor, brakeman, and train-boy were Mexicans, in similar uniforms, but
of thinner physique and more brown of color. The former spoke fluent
English. The engineer was American and the fireman a Negro.
Far ahead, on either side, hazy high mountains appeared, as at sea. By
the time we halted at Lampazos, fine serrated ranges stood not far
distant on either hand. From the east came a never-ceasing wind,
stronger than that of the train, laden with a fine sand that crept in
everywhere. Mexican costumes had appeared at the very edge of the
border; now there were even a few police under enormous hats, with tight
trousers and short jackets showing a huge revolver at the hip. Toward
evening things grew somewhat greener. A tree six to twelve feet high,
without branches, or sometimes with several trunk-like ones, growing
larger from bottom to top and ending in a bristling bunch of leaves,
became common. The mountains on both sides showed fantastic peaks and
ridges, changing often in aspect; some, thousands of feet high with flat
tableland tops, others in strange forms the imagination could animate
into all manner of creatures.
A goatherd, wild, tawny, bearded, dressed in sun-faded sheepskin, was
seen now and then tending his flock of little white goats in the sand
and cactus. This was said to be the rainy season in northern Mexico.
What must it be in the dry?
Toward five the sun set long before sunset, so high was the mountain
wall on our right. The sand-storm had died down, and the sand gave way
to rocks. The moon, almost full, already smiled down upon us over the
wall on the left. We continued along the plain between the ranges, which
later receded into the distance, as if retiring for the night. Flat,
mud-colored, Palestinian adobe huts stood here and there in the
moonlight among patches of a sort of palm bush.
Monterey proved quite a city. Yet how the ways of the Spaniard appeared
even here! Close as it is to the United States, with many American
residents and much "americanizado," according to the Mexican, the city
is in architecture, arrangement, customs, just what it would be a
hundred miles from Madrid; almost every little detail of life is that of
Spain, with scarcely enough difference to suggest another country, to
say nothing of another hemisphere. England brings to her colonies some
of her home customs, but not an iota of what Spain does to the lands she
has conquered. The hiding of wealth behind a miserable facade is almost
as universal in Mexico of the twentieth century as in Morocco of the
fourth. The narrow streets of Monterey have totally inadequate sidewalks
on which two pedestrians pass, if at all, with the rubbing of
shoulders. Outwardly the long vista of bare house fronts that toe them
on either side are dreary and poor, every window barred as those of a
prison. Yet in them sat well-dressed señoritas waiting for the lovers
who "play the bear" to late hours of the night, and over their shoulders
the passerby caught many a glimpse of richly furnished rooms and flowery
patios beyond.
The river Catalina was drier than even the Manzanares, its rocky bed,
wide enough to hold the upper Connecticut, entirely taken up by mule and
donkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As one
moves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet above
sea-level, was not so weighty in its heat as Laredo and southern
Texas. But, on the other hand, being surrounded on most sides by
mountains, it had less breeze, and the coatless freedom of Texas was
here looked down upon. During the hours about noonday the sun seemed to
strike physically on the head and back whoever stepped out into it, and
the smallest fleck of white cloud gave great and instant relief. From
ten to four, more or less, the city was strangely quiet, as if more than
half asleep, or away on a vacation, and over it hung that indefinable
scent peculiar to Arab and Spanish countries. Compared with Spain,
however, its night life and movement was slight.
Convicts in perpendicularly striped blue and white pajamas worked in the
streets. That is, they moved once every twenty minutes or so, usually
to roll a cigarette. They were without shackles, but several guards in
brown uniforms and broad felt hats, armed with thick-set muskets, their
chests criss-crossed with belts of long rifle cartridges, lolled in the
shade of every near-by street corner. The prisoners laughed and chatted
like men perfectly contented with their lot, and moved about with great
freedom. One came a block to ask me the time, and loafed there some
fifteen minutes before returning to his "labor."
Mexico is strikingly faithful to its native dress. Barely across the
Rio Grande the traveler sees at once hundreds of costumes which in any
American city would draw on all the boy population as surely as the
Piper of Hamelin. First and foremost comes always the enormous hat,
commonly of thick felt with decorative tape, the crown at least a foot
high, the brim surely three feet in diameter even when turned up
sufficient to hold a half gallon of water. That of the peon is of
straw; he too wears the skintight trousers, and goes barefoot but for a
flat leather sandal held by a thong between the big toe and the rest. In
details and color every dress was as varied and individual as the shades
of complexion.
My hotel room had a fine outlook to summer-blue mountains, but was
blessed with neither mirror, towel, nor water. I descended to the
alleyway between "dining-room" and barnyard, where I had seen the
general washbasin, but found the landlady seated on the kitchen floor
shelling into it peas for our _almuerzo_. This and the evening
_comida_ were always identically the same. A cheerful but
slatternly Indian woman set before me a thin soup containing a piece of
squash and a square of boiled beef, and eight hot corn tortillas of the
size and shape of our pancakes, or _gkebis_, the Arab bread, which
it outdid in toughness and total absence of taste. Next followed a
plate of rice with peppers, a plate of tripe less tough than it should
have been, and a plate of brown beans which was known by the name of
_chile con carne_, but in which I never succeeded in finding
anything carnal. Every meal ended with a cup of the blackest coffee.
Out at the end of calle B a well-worn rocky path leads up to a ruined
chapel on the summit of a hill, the famous Obispado from which the city
was shelled and taken by the Americans in 1847. Below, Monterey lies
flat, with many low trees peering above the whitish houses, all set in a
perfectly level plain giving a great sense of roominess, as if it could
easily hold ten such cities. At the foot of the hill, some three hundred
feet high, is an unoccupied space. Then the city begins, leisurely at
first, with few houses and many gardens and trees, thickening farther
on. All about are mountains. The Silla (Saddle), a sharp rugged height
backing the city on the right, has a notch in it much like the seat of a
Texas saddle; to the far left are fantastic sharp peaks, and across the
plain a ragged range perhaps fifteen miles distant shuts off the view.
Behind the chapel stand Los Dientes, a teeth or saw-like range
resembling that behind Leceo in Italy. Only a young beggar and his
female mate occupied the ruined chapel, built, like the town, of whitish
stone that is soft when dug but hardens upon exposure to the air. They
cooked on the littered floor of one of the dozen rooms, and all the
walls of the chamber under the great dome were set with pegs for birds,
absent now, but which had carpeted the floor with proof of their
frequent presence.
At five the sun set over the city, so high is the Dientes range, but for
some time still threw a soft light on the farther plain and hills.
Compared with our own land there is something profoundly peaceful in
this climate and surroundings. Now the sunshine slipped up off the
farther ranges, showing only on the light band of clouds high above the
farther horizon, and a pale-faced moon began to brighten, heralding a
brilliant evening.
Fertile plains of corn stretched south of the city, but already dry, and
soon giving way to mesquite and dust again. Mountains never ceased, and
lay fantastically heaped up on every side. We rose ever higher, though
the train kept a moderate speed. At one station the bleating of a great
truckload of kids, their legs tied, heaped one above the other, was
startlingly like the crying of babies. We steamed upward through a
narrow pass, the mountains crowding closer on either hand and seeming to
grow lower as we rose higher among them. The landscape became less
arid, half green, with little or no cactus, and the breeze cooled
steadily. Saltillo at last, five thousand feet up, was above the reach
of oppressive summer and for perhaps the first time since leaving
Chicago I did not suffer from the heat. It was almost a pleasure to
splash through the little puddles in its poorly paved streets. Its
plazas were completely roofed with trees, the view down any of its
streets was enticing, and the little cubes of houses were painted all
possible colors without any color scheme whatever. Here I saw the first
_pulquerías_, much like cheap saloons in appearance, with swinging
doors, sometimes a pool table, and a bartender of the customary
I-tell-yer-I'm-tough physiognomy. Huge earthen jars of the fermented
cactus juice stood behind the bar, much like milk in appearance, and was
served in glazed pots, size to order. In Mexico _pulquería_ stands
for saloon and _peluquería_ for barber-shop, resulting now and then
in sad mistakes by wandering Yankees innocent of Spanish.
There were a hundred adult passengers by actual count, to say nothing of
babies and unassorted bundles, in the second-class car that carried me
on south into the night. Every type of Mexican was represented, from
white, soft, city-bred specimens to sturdy countrymen so brown as to be
almost black. A few men were in "European" garb. Most of them were
dressed _á la peón_, very tight trousers fitting like long
leggings, collarless shirts of all known colors, a gay _faja_ or
cloth belt, sometimes a coat--always stopping at the waist. Then last,
but never least, the marvelous hat. Two peons trying to get through the
same door at once was a sight not soon to be forgotten. There were felt
and straw hats of every possible grade and every shade and color except
red, wound with a rich band about the crown and another around the
brim. Those of straw were of every imaginable weave, some of rattan,
like baskets or veranda furniture. The Mexican male seems to be able to
endure sameness of costume below it, but unless his hat is individual,
life is a drab blank to him. With his hat off the peon loses seven
eights of his impressiveness. The women, with only a black sort of thin
shawl over their heads, were eminently inconspicuous in the forest of
hatted men.
Mournfully out of the black drizzling night about the station came the
dismal wails of hawkers at their little stands dim-lighted by pale
lanterns; "_Anda pulque!_" Within the car was more politeness--or
perhaps, more exactly, more unconscious consideration for others--than
north of the Rio Grande. There were many women among us, yet all the
night through there was not a suggestion of indecency or
annoyance. Indian blood largely predominated, hardy, muscular,
bright-eyed fellows, yet in conduct all were _caballeros_. Near me
sat a family of three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikingly
handsome in his burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four or
five inches long, hanging down in "bangs" below his hat. The mother was
even younger, yet the child was already some two years old, the
chubbiest, brightest-eyed bundle of humanity imaginable. In their fight
for a seat the man shouted to the wife to hand him the child. He caught
it by one hand and swung it high over two seats and across the car, yet
it never ceased smiling. The care this untutored fellow took to give
wife and child as much comfort as possible was superior to that many a
"civilized" man would have shown all night under the same
circumstances. Splendid teeth were universal among the peons. There was
no chewing of tobacco, but much spitting by both sexes. A delicate,
child-like young woman drew out a bottle and swallowed whole glassfuls
of what I took to be milk, until the scent of pulque, the native
beverage, suddenly reached my nostrils.
The fat brown auditor addressed señora, the peon's wife, with the
highest respect, even if he insisted on doing his duty to the extent of
pushing aside the skirts of the women to peer under the long wooden
bench for passengers. A dispute soon arose. Fare was demanded of a
ragged peon for the child of three under his arm. The peon shook his
head, smiling. The auditor's voice grew louder. Still the father smiled
silently. The ticket collector stepped back into the first-class car and
returned with the train guard, a boyish-looking fellow in peon garb from
hat to legging trousers, with a brilliant red tie, two belts of enormous
cartridges about his waist, in his hand a short ugly rifle, and a
harmless smile on his face. There was something fascinating about the
stocky little fellow with his half-embarrassed grin. One felt that of
himself he would do no man hurt, yet that a curt order would cause him
to send one of those long steel-jacketed bullets through a man and into
the mountain side beyond. Luckily he got no such orders. The auditor
pointed out the malefactor, who lost no time in paying the child's
half-fare.
This all-night trip must be done sooner or later by all who enter Mexico
by way of Laredo, for the St. Louis-Mexico City Limited with its
sleeping-car behind and a few scattered Americans in first-class is the
only one that covers this section. Residents of Vanegas, for example,
who wish to travel south must be at the station at three in the morning.
Most of the night the train toiled painfully upward. As a man scorns to
set out after a hearty meal with a lunch under his arm, so in the
swelter of Texas I had felt it foolish to be lugging a bundle of heavy
clothing. By midnight I began to credit myself with foresight. The
windows were closed, yet the land of yesterday seemed far behind
indeed. I wrapped my heavy coat about me. Toward four we crossed the
Tropic of Cancer into the Torrid Zone, without a jolt, and I dug out my
gray sweater and regretted I had abandoned the old blue one in an empty
box-car. Twice I think I drowsed four minutes with head and elbow on my
bundle, but except for two or three women who jack-knifed on the long
bench no one found room to lie down during the long night.
From daylight on I stood in the vestibule and watched the drab landscape
hurry steadily past. No mountains were in sight now because we were on
top of them. Yet no one would have suspected from the appearance of the
country that we were considerably more than a mile above sea-level. The
flat land looked not greatly different from that of the day before. The
cactus was higher; some of the "organ" variety, many of the "Spanish
bayonet" species, lance-like stalks eight to ten feet high. The rest was
bare ground with scattered mesquite bushes. Had I not known the altitude
I might have attributed the slight light-headedness to a sleepless
night.
Certainly a hundred ragged _cargadores_, hotel runners, and boys
eager to carry my bundle attacked me during my escape from the station
of San Luis Potosi at seven, and there were easily that many carriages
waiting, without a dozen to take them. The writer of Mexico's Baedeker
speaks of the city as well-to-do. Either it has vastly changed in a few
years or he wrote it up by absent treatment. Hardly a town of India
exceeds it in picturesque poverty. Such a surging of pauperous humanity,
dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western
Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. The
chief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of several
thousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight trousers
collections of rents and patchwork in many colors, sandals of a soft
piece of leather showing a foot cracked, blackened, tough as a hoof, as
incrusted with filth as a dead foot picked up on a garbage heap, the
toes always squirting with mud, the feet not merely never washed but the
sandal never removed until it wears off and drops of its self. Above
this a collarless shirt, blouse or short jacket, ragged, patched, of
many faded colors, yet still showing half the body. Then a dull,
uncomplaining, take-things-as-they-come face, unwashed, never
shaved--the pure Indian grows a sort of dark down on his cheeks and the
point of the chin, the half-breeds a slight beard--all topped by the
enormous hat, never missing, though often full of holes, black with
dirt, weather-beaten beyond expression.
Then there were fully as many women and girls, even less fortunate, for
they had not even sandals, but splashed along barefoot among the small
cold cobblestones. Their dress seemed gleaned from a rag-heap and their
heads were bare, their black hair combed or plastered flat. Children of
both sexes were exact miniatures of their elders. All these wretches
were here to sell. Yet what was for sale could easily have been tended
by twenty persons. Instead, every man, woman, and child had his own
stand, or bit of cloth or cobblestone on which to spread a few scanty,
bedraggled wares. Such a mass of silly, useless, pathetic articles, toy
jars, old bottles, anything that could be found in all the dump-heaps of
Christendom. The covered market housed only a very small percentage of
the whole. There was a constant, multicolored going and coming, with
many laden asses and miserable, gaunt creatures bent nearly double under
enormous loads on head or shoulders. Every radiating narrow mud-dripping
street for a quarter-mile was covered in all but the slight passageway
in the center with these displays. Bedraggled women sat on the cobbles
with aprons spread out and on them little piles of six nuts each, sold
at a centavo. There were peanuts, narrow strips of cocoanut, plantains,
bananas short and fat, sickly little apples, dwarf peaches, small wild
grapes, oranges green in color, potatoes often no larger than marbles,
as if the possessor could not wait until they grew up before digging
them; cactus leaves, the spines shaved off, cut up into tiny squares to
serve as food; bundles of larger cactus spines brought in by hobbling
old women or on dismal asses and sold as fuel, _aguacates_, known
to us as "alligator pears" and tasting to the uninitiated like
axle-grease; pomegranates, pecans, cheeses flat and white, every species
of basket and earthen jar from two-inch size up, turnips, some cut in
two for those who could not afford a whole one; onions, flat slabs of
brown, muddy-looking soap, rice, every species of _frijole_, or
bean, shelled corn for tortillas, tomatoes--_tomate coloradito_,
though many were tiny and green as if also prematurely gathered--peppers
red and green, green-corn with most of the kernels blue, lettuce,
radishes, cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, melons of every size except
large, string-beans, six-inch cones of the muddiest of sugar, the first
rough product of the crushers wound in swamp grass and which prospective
purchasers handled over and over, testing them now and then by biting
off a small corner, though there was no apparent difference; sausages
with links of marble size, everything in the way of meat, tossed about
in the dirt, swarming with flies, handled, smelled, cut into tiny bits
for purchasers; even strips of intestines, the jaw-bone of a sheep with
barely the smell of meat on it; all had value to this gaunt community,
nothing was too green, or old, or rotten to be offered for
sale. Chickens with legs tied lay on the ground or were carried about
from day to day until purchasers of such expensive luxuries
appeared. There were many men with a little glass box full of squares of
sweets like "fudge," selling at a half-cent each; every possible odd and
end of the shops was there; old women humped over their meager wares,
smoking cigarettes, offered for sale the scraps of calico left over from
the cutting of a gown, six-inch triangles of no fathomable use to
purchasers. There were entire blocks selling only long strips of leather
for the making of sandals. Many a vendor had all the earmarks of
leprosy. There were easily five thousand of them, besides another market
on the other side of the town, for this poverty-stricken city of some
fifty thousand inhabitants. The swarming stretched a half mile away in
many a radiating street, and scores whose entire stock could not be
worth fifteen cents sat all day without selling more than half of it. An
old woman stopped to pick up four grains of corn and greedily tucked
them away in the rags that covered her emaciated frame. Now and then a
better-dressed _potosino_ passed, making purchases, a peon, male or
female, slinking along behind with a basket; for it is a horrible breach
of etiquette for a ten-dollar-a-month Mexican to be publicly seen
carrying anything.
One wondered why there was not general suicide in such a community of
unmitigated misery. Why did they not spring upon me and snatch the purse
I displayed or die in the attempt? How did they resist eating up their
own wares? It seemed strange that these sunken-chested, hobbling, halt,
shuffling, shivering, starved creatures should still fight on for
life. Why did they not suddenly rise and sack the city? No wonder those
are ripe for revolution whose condition cannot be made worse.
Policemen in sandals and dark-blue shoddy cap and cloak looked little
less miserable than the peons. All about the covered market were peon
restaurants, a ragged strip of canvas as roof, under it an ancient
wooden table and two benches. Unwashed Indian women cooked in several
open earthen bowls the favorite Mexican dishes,--_frijoles_ (a stew
of brown beans), chile con carne, rice, stews of stray scraps of meat
and the leavings of the butcher-shops. These were dished up in brown
glazed jars and eaten with strips of tortilla folded between the
fingers, as the Arab eats with _gkebis_. Indeed there were many
things reminiscent of the markets and streets of Damascus, more customs
similar to those of the Moor than the Spaniard could have brought over,
and the brown, wrinkled old women much resembled those of Palestine,
though their noses were flatter and their features heavier.
Yet it was a good-natured crowd. In all my wandering in it I heard not
an unpleasant word, not a jest at my expense, almost no evidence of
anti-foreign feeling, which seems not indigenous to the peon, but
implanted in him by those of ulterior motives. Nor did they once ask
alms or attempt to push misery forward. The least charitable would be
strongly tempted to succor any one of the throng individually, but here
a hundred dollars in American money divided into Mexican centavos would
hardly go round. Here and there were pulquerías full of besotted,
shouting men--and who would not drink to drown such misery?
There was not a male of any species but had his colored blanket, red,
purple, Indian-yellow, generally with two black stripes, the poorer with
a strip of old carpet. These they wound about their bodies, folding them
across the chest, the arms hugged together inside in such a way as to
bring a corner across the mouth and nose, leaving their pipe-stem legs
below, and wandered thus dismally about in the frequent spurts of cold
rain. Now and then a lowest of the low passed in the cast-off remnants
of "European" clothes, which were evidently considered far inferior to
peon garb, however bedraggled. Bare or sandaled feet seemed impervious
to cold, again like the Arab, as was also this fear of the raw air and
half covering of the face that gave a Mohammedan touch, especially to
the women. To me the atmosphere was no different than late October in
the States. The peons evidently never shaved, though there were many
miserable little barber-shops. On the farther outskirts of the hawkers
were long rows of shanties, shacks made of everything under the sun,
flattened tin cans, scraps of rubbish, two sticks holding up a couple of
ragged bags under which huddled old women with scraps of cactus and
bundles of tiny fagots.
Scattered through the throng were several "readers." One half-Indian
woman I passed many times was reading incessantly, with the speed of a
Frenchman, from printed strips of cheap colored paper which she offered
for sale at a cent each. They were political in nature, often in verse,
insulting in treatment, and mixed with a crass obscenity at which the
dismal multitude laughed bestially. Three musicians, one with a rude
harp, a boy striking a triangle steel, sang mournful dirges similar to
those of Andalusia. The peons listened to both music and reading
motionless, with expressionless faces, with never a "move on" from the
policeman, who seemed the least obstrusive of mortals.
San Luís Potosí has many large rich churches, misery and pseudo-religion
being common joint-legacies of Spanish rule. Small chance these
creatures would have of feeling at home in a place so different from
their earthly surroundings as the Christian heaven. The thump of church
bells, some with the voice of battered old tin pans, broke out
frequently. Now and then one of these dregs of humanity crept into
church for a nap, but the huge edifices showed no other sign of
usefulness. On the whole there was little appearance of "religion." A
few women were seen in the churches, a book-seller sold no novels and
little literature but "mucho de religión," but the great majority gave
no outward sign of belonging to any faith. Priests were not often seen
in the streets. Mexican law forbids them to wear a distinctive costume,
hence they dressed in black derbies, Episcopal neckbands, and black
capes to the ankles. Not distinctive indeed! No one could have guessed
what they were! One might have fancied them prize-fighters on the way
from training quarters to bathroom.
There is comparative splendor also in San Luís, as one may see by peeps
into the lighted houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearful
of the poor breaking in. As in so many Spanish countries, wealth shrinks
out of sight and misery openly parades itself.
Out across the railroad, where hundreds of ragged boys were riding
freight cars back and forth in front of the station, the land lay flat
as a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, with
neither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on the
edge of the starving city, was there a sign of cultivation. We of the
North were perhaps more kind to the Indian in killing him off.