SOMETHING OF MEXICAN HISTORY
Perhaps we ought to know a little about the history of Mexico before we
go farther into the country. Hundreds of years before Columbus came to
America, two tribes of the Nahua nation of Indians came down from the
north into what is now Mexico. They were energetic and enterprising, as
people from a bracing climate usually are compared to those who live in
tropical countries. But gradually the first tribe, called Toltecs, seem
to have lost some of their ambition and fighting spirit. It is said that
in the eighth century the capital of the Toltecs was at a place now
called Tula, just north of the Valley of Mexico, in which the capital of
to-day is situated. They were excellent architects, as we can easily
believe from the ruins of many of their buildings that remain. They knew
how to fuse metals, to cut and polish the hardest stone, to make
earthenware and fabrics (cloth), and they invented a calendar and a kind
of writing. Although it was hardly writing as we understand it, being
more nearly picture drawing, the Toltec emperors wrote in it a kind of
poetry and philosophy.
About the end of the twelfth century, three hundred years before
Columbus sailed, the Aztecs moved southward and drove the Toltecs before
them. Although they belonged to the same race, the Aztecs were more
ferocious and gloomy than the Toltecs, and they had a very cruel
religion. They finally established their capital, Tenochtitlan, where
the City of Mexico is to-day. It is said that they waited for a sign to
show where the capital should be located. This sign was the sight of an
eagle perched on a cactus with a rattlesnake in its claws; from it comes
the coat of arms of present-day Mexico.
Meanwhile, for many centuries, a tribe called the Mayas had been living
still farther south. They also seem to have come down from the north,
but much earlier than even the Toltecs. Some scientists believe that all
the original inhabitants of the western hemisphere came from Asia by way
of Bering Strait and Alaska. This is not at all impossible. I have seen
Mongolians of the Gobi Desert and Indians of the New World who could
hardly have been told apart except by their clothes. Perhaps wave after
wave, or tribe after tribe, of people who were originally Asiatic swept
down across the two Americas until there were inhabitants even at the
southern tip of South America. These original settlers are generally
spoken of as Indians, but they might better be called Amerinds to
distinguish them from East Indians.
The Mayas of Yucatan were never conquered by the Toltecs and the Aztecs,
but in the eleventh century famine and pestilence broke out among them.
Those who survived went on to what are now Guatemala and Honduras. They
took their civilization with them, and as we shall see when we come to
the ruins of their cities, they were far more civilized than the Indians
who lived in wigwams and roamed our western prairies shooting buffaloes.
In fact, they probably reached a higher state of civilization than any
other inhabitants of America before Columbus’ day. The ruins of the
Mayas at Uxmal and Chichenitza in the Mexican state of Yucatan, at Cobán
and Quiriguá, Guatemala, and at Copán, Honduras, are still being
explored, mostly by Americans, and we are learning more and more about
this remarkable people.
The Aztec Religion
By the time the Spaniards came to Mexico, the Aztecs had spread their
rule from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They had adopted or thought out
for themselves a civilization like that of the Toltecs, and in their way
were as far ahead of the nomad Indians of our plains as the Europeans
were above the savages of Africa. But the Aztecs were a curious mixture
of mildness and ferocity. This is not so surprising as it may sound; in
my travels I have found many wild tribes that in some ways were as
gentle as children. The laws of the Aztecs were severe, and their taxes
were heavy.
The priesthood were rich, powerful, and very numerous. The chief god of
the Aztec religion was the god of war, who was called Huitzilopochtli!
As if it were not bad enough to have so dreadful a name, he had to be
kept pleasant by human sacrifices. If a week went by without someone’s
being killed in his honor, he was likely to grow peevish and do the
whole Aztec nation great harm. There were altars to him all over the
country, and they were constantly drenched in human blood. In a museum
in Mexico City you may see an elaborately carved stone of sacrifice
which the Aztecs had in their capital.
[Illustration:
Keystone View Co., Inc.
On this stone the Aztecs used to offer human sacrifices to their war
god. It is now in the National Museum, Mexico City.
]
Every year the most nearly perfect young man in the nation, after being
given twelve months of feasting and high living, was sacrificed on this
stone before a multitude of people. Gladiators fought, as in Rome, in
honor of the bloodthirsty god. Men armed only with wooden spears for
protection were attacked by other men carrying weapons made of
obsidian—a black stone as hard as flint and sharpened to a razor edge.
The people really enjoyed the thrills they got from sacrifices and
contests, but they pretended, and perhaps really thought, that the gods
demanded these. Babies and beautiful girls were sacrificed to appease
the rain god. The Aztecs, besides sacrificing hundreds of their own
people every year, made war against their neighbors in order to get
victims—men, women, and children—for the sacrifices.
The Spaniards Arrive
There was a saying or legend in Mexico that some day the mild gods of
the Toltecs would return. According to the legend these gods had white
skins. When the Spaniards came, they found the conquest of the Aztec
nation made easier by the fact that many of the Indians thought the
Toltec gods had arrived.
Hernando Cortés landed in 1519 at a place now called Tabasco, near the
present Vera Cruz, with about two hundred men. After sending a message
to the Aztec emperor, Montezuma, commanding him to submit to the king of
Spain, Cortés forced a thousand Indians to carry his baggage, and
started for Tenochtitlan. The swift Indian runners (who took fresh sea
food to the royal tables in the capital every day) met him with the very
proper answer that Montezuma would continue to rule his own country
without help from a king he had never heard of before.
[Illustration:
Keystone View Co., Inc.
The Aztecs used this stone as a calendar. It is now in the National
Museum, Mexico City.
]
Cortés pushed on over the mountains toward the capital. But he might not
have conquered Mexico and given Spain what was for a long time her
richest colony, if it had not been for three advantages. One was the
legend already referred to. Another was the simple honesty of the
Indians, who did not then know how tricky these people from Europe could
be. But perhaps Cortés’ greatest advantage lay in the quarrels among
various tribes of Indians. If all the people of Mexico had stood
together, they probably could have driven out the Spaniards—in which
case Mexico might have been Aztec to this day.
The kingdom or republic of Tlaxcala, now a poor little state southeast
of Mexico City, long warred with the Aztecs. At first its people fought
Cortés, but later they became his allies against their Aztec enemies.
Near Mexico City is still an ancient tree which is called the Tree of
the Sad Night because under it Cortés sat all one night and watched his
beaten soldiers retreating. But he reorganized among the friendly
Tlaxcalans, and finally came back to Tenochtitlan and overthrew
Montezuma. By 1540 all the territory from Panama to what is now our
state of Washington was called New Spain.
In a way the Spaniards may be regarded as the “more gentle” gods of the
legend, but in some respects they were just as cruel as the Aztec war
god. Cortés had the bloody sacrifice stone cast down, and destroyed the
dreadful blood-spattered temples, driving out the priests. But the
people were distributed as slaves among the Spaniards. The Spanish
priests destroyed many of the native art treasures and inscriptions, so
that the record of Aztec civilization was largely lost. These priests
considered anything that had to do with the Aztec religion or culture as
wickedly superstitious. The conquerors thought of Mexico simply as a
mine to be worked for the benefit of Spain, without any attempt to be
fair to the Mexicans themselves. Commerce with other countries was
forbidden on pain of death.
[Illustration:
Underwood & Underwood
Tree of Noche Triste (“Sad Night”), Guadalupe, under which Cortés is
said to have wept as his defeated soldiers passed by.
]
[Illustration:
In the central _plaza_ of Dolores Hidalgo stands a statue of the
priest Hidalgo, the “Father of Mexican Independence.”
]
For three centuries Spain ruled Mexico in this stern way, through
viceroys sent out by the king. Finally, in 1810, when the Spanish at
home were busy fighting Napoleon, a priest named Hidalgo rose against
the viceroy then in office and tried to overthrow Spanish rule in
Mexico. But Hidalgo was captured and executed the next year. There are
statues to his memory, and streets named for him, all over Mexico. He is
often called the father of his country, or the Washington of Mexico.
Later the revolt was taken up by another priest, named Morelos, who was
executed in 1815, and for whom one state and the capital of another
state are named. In 1821 Mexico City was surrendered by the last Spanish
viceroy. His name, by the way, was O’Donojú—can you guess where his
ancestors came from? A Mexican named Iturbide proclaimed himself
emperor, but he was banished, and when he came back to Mexico again he
was shot. Since 1824—except for the short-lived empire of Maximilian
(1865–7)—Mexico has been a republic.
Mexico as a Republic
Since it was largely the example of the United States that caused Mexico
to proclaim her independence, it was natural that she should form her
constitution and laws very much after ours. But Mexico’s history as a
republic has not been as happy as our own. Our people had long had town
meetings and colonial assemblies; the people who had been ruled by
Spanish emperors and their viceroys for three centuries, and before that
by Aztec emperors, had little idea of how to govern themselves. After
the revolution in Mexico there was chronic civil war and disorder until
1876. While there were only fifty-seven viceroys in the three hundred
years that Mexico was a Spanish colony, there have been, in the century
since the revolution, sixty-six presidents, two emperors, and a regency.
Frequently the presidents have been killed while in office. One of them
ruled for thirty-four years, but another was president for only
forty-six minutes!
Even to-day many Mexicans and other people of Spanish-America cannot
understand any kind of political change except a violent one, resulting
in the death of the ousted leader. I remember being in South America
when Woodrow Wilson was elected president of the United States. You know
that he was a Democrat and that the man in office when he was elected
was a Republican. Even some of the educated Spanish-Americans showed
great surprise that the Republican Taft let the Democratic Wilson take
over the office. They would say to me: “Is not President Taft the
commander-in-chief of the army? Then why does he not order the army to
drive this Wilson out of the country, and keep the office himself?” How
dreadful such a state of affairs would seem to us!
[Illustration:
Photo by H. L. Summerville, San Antonio
The Alamo is often called the birthplace of Texan independence. It was
the scene of a heroic defense against the Mexicans in 1836.
]
We must not overlook our own war with Mexico during that country’s years
of disorder, for it is a more important part of our neighbor’s history
than of our own. Many Americans now think that the war was more our
fault than Mexico’s. There was bitterness and misunderstanding on both
sides. Texas, then a part of Mexico that was being settled more and more
by Americans, had won its independence in 1836. In 1845 it asked to be
admitted as a state of the United States and it was annexed in spite of
the protest of Mexico. A dispute as to the boundary increased the
antagonism between Americans and Mexicans, and the slavery question was
also involved. After about a year and a half of fighting, Mexico City
was taken by General Scott, who came up to it from the coast just as
Cortés had. By the treaty of peace signed in 1848, Mexico ceded to us a
large territory that included the present California, Nevada, Utah, most
of Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming.
[Illustration:
Rare carving was used in decorating the Spanish missions. This window
is in San José Mission, San Antonio, Texas.
]
During our own Civil War there was foreign intervention in Mexico.
France wished to get a foothold in the New World, despite the Monroe
Doctrine; so she sent the brother of the emperor of Austria, a
well-meaning but weak man named Maximilian, over to be emperor of
Mexico, with a French army to support him. But the Zapotec Indian
Juárez, with the help of the half-Indian Porfirio Diaz and others,
defeated Maximilian after the French had abandoned him. They had him
shot, and that was the last time Europe tried to introduce royalty into
the western hemisphere.
[Illustration:
A map showing possessions remaining in the hands of Spain after the
Louisiana Purchase.
]
Porfirio Diaz
Porfirio Diaz was the greatest of the sixty-six presidents Mexico has
had since the revolution. He remained in office for thirty-four years.
As already mentioned, Diaz was partly of Indian blood. He was born a
backwoodsman, in the state of Oaxaca. After studying law he fought in
the war between Mexico and the United States. He remained in the army
for a while after the war, went back to law, and gained increasing
prominence until he was elected president in 1876. He united the various
chieftains by convincing them that if they did not stop fighting among
themselves the United States would intervene. He organized the
_rurales_, a kind of country police on horseback who made Mexico safe
for travel. He persuaded foreigners to invest money in industrial
developments, increased the number of schools, and improved Mexico in
many other ways. But he was a very stern ruler, and did not allow the
mass of the people much individual liberty.
Diaz was elected president for the eighth and last time in 1910. By then
he had become a deaf old man, so that a rich landowner named Madero was
able to drive him out. He went to Europe to spend his last years, and we
are glad that he, unlike most presidents of Mexico, was not killed. With
all his faults he did much for his country. Indeed, as soon as Diaz’
dictatorship was over, Mexico fell back into its old state of civil war.
Madero was assassinated two years later. Among the men who since that
time have ruled Mexico, as president or by some other name, was
Carranza, who defeated the bandit generals Villa and Zapata and was
recognized as president in 1915. He was actually elected president the
following year, but was driven out of office and shot in 1920. Then came
Huerta, then Obregón, then Calles.
The new Mexican constitution allows a man to be president only once, for
a four-year term.