the oppressed and patient creature who looks upon his patrón as
omnipotent and omniscient, or if it were always that of the highfalutin
Spaniard whom at times he so much resembles--or, if it were always that
of Young Mexico, conscious of at least his theoretical independence and
in theory “as good as anybody,” there would be little difficulty in
getting along with him; one would know at any given moment how to treat
him. But as a matter of fact it is a rather intricate combination of all
three, and one can rarely predict which he will choose to exhibit. Add
to this an incredible depth of superstition that is both innate and very
carefully encouraged by the Church, and it is not difficult to see why
an employer in certain parts of Mexico is compelled to treat his
laborers much as one has to treat nervous and unreasonable children.
Although they are hired and receive wages on various terms of agreement,
the normal relation between the proprietor of, say, a café finca of
moderate size and the people who work for him, suggests in many respects
the relation that existed before the Civil War between our Southerners
of the better type and their slaves. Some of the people have small farms
of their own in the neigborhood, but when they go to work for any length
of time they usually close their houses and live on the ranch of their
employer in one-roomed huts built by the patrón at a cost--if they are
made of bamboo--of from six to ten dollars an edifice. Closing their
houses for the coffee-picking season consists of gathering up four or
five primitive pottery cooking utensils, several babies, a pair of thin
and faded sarapes, calling to the dogs and strolling out of the door.
Under ordinary amicable circumstances they are disposed to look up to
the patrón, to be flattered by his notice of them--to regard him, in
fact, as of different and finer clay than themselves. And when this
lowly and dependent mood is upon them there is not only nothing the
señor cannot, in their opinion, accomplish if he desires to--there are
no demands upon his time, his money, his implements, and his sympathies
that they hesitate to make. The proprietor of a far-away ranch acquires
a certain proficiency in the performance of almost every kindly office,
from obstetrics to closing the eyes of the dead.
One Agapito, whose baby died on our place, informed us--after we had
sufficiently condoled and he had cheerfully assured us that the baby was
“better off with God”--that it would give him and his wife great
pleasure to pay us the compliment of having the wake in our sala! There,
of course, was a delicate situation at once. Agapito yearned for the
prestige that would be his if we permitted him to suspend his dead
baby--dressed in mosquito netting and orange blossoms--against the sala
wall and leave it there to the edification of the countryside for a day
and a night. To refuse was, without doubt, to offend him; but to consent
was to establish a somewhat ghastly precedent impossible in subsequent
cases of affliction to ignore. As my brother declared, when we withdrew
to discuss the matter, one had to choose between hurting Agapito’s
feelings and turning the sala into a perpetual morgue. Agapito was in
several respects an efficient and valuable person. He could even
persuade the machine for dispulping coffee-berries to work smoothly
when--as they express it--“it does not wish to.” But, nevertheless, with
much regret we decided to hurt Agapito’s feelings. Like children they do
not shrink from making naïvely preposterous demands upon one, and like
children their sense of obligation is almost entirely lacking. They are
given to bringing one presents of oranges and bananas, or inedible blood
puddings and cakes when they kill a pig or have a party, but they are
rarely incited to display appreciation of kindness--even when it would
be easy for them to do so--in a way that counts.
One afternoon, during the busiest season of the year on a coffee ranch,
all the coffee-pickers--men, women, and children--with the exception of
one family, suddenly struck. When asked what the trouble was, the
spokesman in a florid and pompous address declared that they were “all
brothers and must pick together or not at all.” It came out during the
interview that the father of the family who had not struck had received
permission for himself, his wife, and six small children to pick in a
block of coffee by themselves, and to this the others had been induced
to object. Why they objected they could not say, because they did not
know. It was explained to them that the man had wished his family to
work apart for the sole and sensible reason that, first, he and his wife
could take better care of the children when they were not scattered
among the crowd, and, secondly, that as the trees of the particular
block he had asked to be allowed to pick in were younger and smaller
than the others, the children had less difficulty in reaching the
branches. He not only derived no financial advantage from the change, he
was voluntarily making some sacrifice by going to pick where the coffee,
owing to the youth of the trees, was less abundant.
“Don’t you see that this is the truth and all there is to it?” the
strikers were asked.
“Yes.”
“And now that it has been explained, won’t you go back to work?”
“No.”
“But why not?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because we must all pick together.”
A strike for higher wages or shorter hours or more and better food is
usual and always comprehensible anywhere, but one has to go to Mexico, I
imagine, to experience a strike that involves neither a question of
material advantage nor of abstract principle. It was recalled to them
that the fact of their being “all brothers” did not operate against
their eloping with one another’s wives and slashing one another with
machetes in the mazy dance whenever they felt so inclined--a reflection
that produced much merriment, especially among the ladies. But upon the
point at issue it had no effect whatever, and irritating as it was to be
forced into submitting to this sort of thing, before work could be
resumed the family of eight had to be sent for and told to pick with the
others. All these people were indebted to their employer for loans, for
medicines--for assistance of various kinds too numerous to mention or to
remember, and, in their way, they liked him and liked the ranch. I can
account for such inconsiderate imbecility only by supposing that after
generations of oppression the desire among an ignorant and emotional
people to assert their independence in small matters becomes
irresistible from time to time, even when they cannot discover that
their rights have been in any way infringed upon.
However, their rights _are_ constantly infringed upon in the most
obvious and brazen manner, and knowledge of this undoubtedly contributes
to their uncomfortable habit of vibrating between an attitude of
doglike trust and one of the most exaggerated suspicion. Last year, for
example, a stone bridge was being built in a small town some six or
eight miles away from our ranch. As the heavy summer rains were but a
few months off, it was desirable that the bridge should be completed.
Labor, however, was exceedingly scarce, and for a long time the work
made no visible progress. At first the authorities resorted to the usual
plan of making arrests for drunkenness and obliging the victims to haul
stones and mortar, but as this immediately resulted in the exercise of
unusual self-restraint on the part of the populace, the jefe político
evolved the quaint conceit of detaining every able-bodied man who
appeared in town without trousers! The Indians in that part of the
country, and many of the people who are not pure Indian, wear, instead
of the skin-tight Mexican trousers, a pair of long, loose white cotton
drawers resembling in cut and fit the lower part of a suit of pajamas.
They are not only a perfectly respectable garment, they are vastly more
practical and comfortable than the pantalones, inasmuch as they can be
rolled above the knee and, in a land of mud and streams, kept clean and
dry. But until the jefe had acquired a force sufficient to complete the
bridge, he arrested everybody who wore them. A law had been passed, he
said, declaring them to be indecent. Just when the law had been passed
and by whom he did not trouble to explain. Among the small rancheros of
the neighborhood who did not own a pair of trousers, the edict caused
not only inconvenience but now and then positive hardship. Many of them
who had not heard of it and innocently attended church or market were
sent to bridge-building for indefinite periods when they ought to have
been at home harvesting their corn. Their crops were either spoiled or
stolen. The Indians on our place did not dare venture into town for
supplies until we bought a pair of trousers for lending purposes.
“Trinidad (or Lucio, or Jesús) is going to town and begs that you will
do him the favor of lending him the pants,” was an almost daily request
for weeks.[1]
[1] Since I wrote the above, the following item of news appeared in the
_Mexican Herald_ of February 11, 1908:
FORCED TO WEAR TROUSERS
MOUNTAINEERS AROUND GUANAJUATO
PREFER TO PAY FINES.
Special Dispatch to the _Herald_.
GUANAJUATO, February 10th.--The local treasury will soon be full
to overflowing from the numerous fines collected from sons of the
mountains who daily endeavor to enter this ancient town clad in cotton
drawers. The law is strict in this particular, and the police in the
suburbs have strict orders to see that no peon enters the town without
a pair of factory-made trousers.
[It would be interesting to know who, in Guanajuato, owns the largest
interest in the local trousers factory.]
I remember one jefe político to whom it occurred that he might start a
butcher shop and ruin the business of the only other butcher shop in
town, which was kept by a man he happened to dislike. When he had
completed his arrangements for the sale of meat, he caused a rumor to
circulate among the lower classes to the effect that life would be a
gladder, sweeter thing for all concerned if the meat he was now prepared
to dispense should find a market both ready and sustained. To the
American and English rancheros of the neighborhod he had letters written
by various friends of his who happened to know them; courteous not to
say punctilious letters that, however, contained somewhere between the
lines an ominous rumble. “I thought it might interest you to learn that
H--, the jefe, has opened a butcher shop and would consider it an honor
if you were to favor him with your patronage, instead of bestowing it
upon his competitor,” the letters ran in part. Though somewhat more
rhetorical, it all sounded to the unattuned ear as innocent as any of
the numerous advertisements one receives by post in the course of a week
at home. But it wasn’t. In a “republic,” where the governors of the
various states must be without question the political friends of the
president, and the jefes are usually, with no more question, the
political friends of the governors, the suggestion that a jefe would not
object to one’s purchasing beefsteaks from him is not lightly to be
ignored. The local jefe can, in a hundred subtle ways, make one’s
residence in Mexico extremely difficult and disagreeable. Every
foreigner who received one of the inspired epistles changed his butcher
the next day. Another jefe of my acquaintance--a rather charming
man--decided to pave a certain country road chiefly because it went
through some land owned by his brother. As most of the able-bodied
convicts of that district were engaged in paving a much more important
highway and he could not very well draw upon their forces, he
magnificently sent out a messenger who floundered through the mud from
ranch to ranch, announcing to the countryside that henceforth every man
would have to labor, without compensation, one day in eight upon the
road. Now, to most of the people who received the message, this
particular road was of no importance; they rarely used it and they
owned no land through which it ran. And yet--whether from the habit of
submitting to tyranny, or from guilty consciences, I don’t know--many
responded with their time and their toil. When asked, as we frequently
were, for advice on the subject, we refrained from giving any.
The habit of suspicion and the impulse to make, for no very definite
reason, little displays of personal independence would tax one’s
patience and amiability to the utmost if one did not keep on hand a
reserve fund of these qualities with which to fortify oneself against
frequent exhibitions of Mexican honor. In referring to this somewhat
rococo subject, it is perhaps but fair for me to admit that even so
comparatively simple a matter as the Anglo-Saxon sense of honor presents
certain difficulties to my understanding. Explain and expound as many
intelligent gentlemen have to me, for instance, I have never been able
to grasp why it is so much more dishonorable to evade one’s gambling
debts than it is to evade one’s laundress. Therefore I do not feel
competent to throw a great light upon the kind of honor that obtains in
Mexico. I can only observe that, like politeness, smallpox, and fine
weather, it is very prevalent, and record an example or two of the many
that arise in my memory, by way of illustrating one of the obstacles in
the employer’s path.
A few winters ago we hired a youth to bring our letters and fresh meat
every day from the town to the ranch. He performed this monotonous
service with commendable regularity, and with a regularity not so
commendable always cut off at least a quarter of the meat after leaving
the butcher shop and gave it to his mother who lived in town.
Furthermore, when the workmen on the place intrusted him with letters to
post on his return, he posted them if they were stamped, but scattered
them in fragments if they were not, and pocketed the money. We knew he
did both these things because we found and identified some of the
epistolary fragments, and his mother had the monumental brass to
complain to the butcher when the meat was tough! But even so, he was a
convenience--none of the laborers could be regularly spared at the
time--and we made no moan. One day, however, it was impossible to ignore
the matter; he arrived with a bit of beefsteak about as large as a
mutton chop and had the effrontery, as we thought, to deliver it without
a word of explanation. So, as the imposition had been going on for at
least six weeks, he was as kindly as possible, most unfortunately,
accused. Then followed an exhibition of outraged innocence such as I
have never before seen. He turned a kind of Nile green; he clenched his
fist and beat upon his chest. He made an impassioned address in which he
declared that, although his family was poor and needed the twenty-five
centavos a day we paid him, he could not continue to work for anyone who
had sought to cast a reflection upon his spotless honor; and he ended by
bursting into tears and sobbing for ten minutes with his head on a bag
of coffee.
The tragic, humorous, and altogether grotesque part of the affair was
that on this particular day for the first time, no doubt, since we had
employed him, he _hadn’t_ stolen the meat! We learned from the butcher a
few hours afterwards that there had been scarcely any beefsteak in the
shop when the boy had called, but that he had sent a few ounces,
thinking it was better than nothing at all. We lost our messenger; his
mother would not allow him to work for persons who doubted his honesty.
A friend of mine had in his employ an old man--an ex-bullfighter--who
took care of the horses and accompanied the various members of the
family when they went for a ride. He was given to gambling, and on one
occasion when he had lost all his money but could not bring himself to
leave the game, he gambled away a saddle and bridle of his employer.
Shortly afterwards my friend recognized them in the window of a harness
shop and bought them back, without, however, mentioning the fact to old
Preciliano, who, when casually asked where they were, replied quite as
casually that at the public stable where the horses were kept they had
become mixed with some other equipment and taken away by mistake. He
explained that he knew the distant ranchero who had inadvertently done
this and that steps had been taken to have them returned. For several
weeks my friend amused himself by asking for--and getting--minute
details of the saddle’s whereabouts and the probable date of its
arrival, and then one day he abruptly accused Preciliano of having lost
it in a game of cards.
This was followed by almost exactly a repetition of the performance we
had been given by the meat-and-letter boy. Preciliano was not only
astonished that the señor could for a moment imagine such a thing, he
was hurt--wounded--cruelly smitten in his old age by the hand he had
never seen raised except in kindness. All was lost save honor. That,
thank God, he could still retain--but not there; not under that roof.
He could not remain covered with shame in the shadow of so hideous a
suspicion. Honor demanded that he should “separate” himself at
once--honor demanded all sorts of things in this vein until my friend,
who said he was positively beginning to believe Preciliano very much as
Preciliano believed himself, suddenly stooped down and pulled the saddle
and bridle from under the table. Collapse. Tears. Forgiveness. Tableau.
Preciliano subsequently left this family--gave up an agreeable and
lucrative position--because the wife of the employer thoughtfully
suggested that, on account of his advancing years, it would be wiser of
him not to exercise a certain imperfectly broken horse. He was “covered
with shame” and sorrowfully bade them farewell.
VII
Here is a letter from a coffee plantation:
When I got back in October, they received me with formalities--gave me a
kind of Roman triumph. If it hadn’t been so pathetic I should have
laughed; if it hadn’t been so funny I should have cried. For I had been
fourteen hours on a slow-climbing mule, and you know--or rather you
don’t know--how the last interminable two hours of that kind of riding
unstrings one. Being Mexican, everything about the Roman triumph went
wrong and fell perfectly flat. In the first place they expected me a day
earlier, and when I didn’t arrive they decided--Heaven knows why--that I
wouldn’t come the next day, but the day after. In the meanwhile I
appeared late in the afternoon of the day between. They had built in
front of the piazza a wobbly arch of great glossy leaves and red
flowers, and from post to post had hung chains of red, white, and green
tissue paper. But the arch, of course, had blown down in the night and
most of the paper garlands had been rained on and were hanging limply
to the posts. All this, they assured me, would have been repaired had I
arrived a day later, and I marveled at my self-control as I
enthusiastically admired the beauty of a welcoming arch lying prostrate
in the mud.
It had been the pleasant intention of everyone to assemble and welcome
me home, and when at the entrance to the ranch the Indian who lives
there gave a prolonged, falsetto cry (un grito)--the signal agreed
on--and I rode up the slope to the clanging of the bell we ring to call
in the pickers, and the detonations of those terrible Mexican rockets
that give no light but rend the sky apart, I had a feeling as of a
concourse awaiting me. The concourse, however, had given me up until the
next day, and when I got off my mule I found that the entire festivities
were being conducted by Manuel the house-boy, Rosalía the cook, and
Trinidad the mayordomo. Trinidad shot off all six cartridges in his
revolver and then shook hands with me. Rosalía was attached to the bell
rope--Manuel was manipulating the rockets. At that moment I knew exactly
how the hero feels when the peasantry (no doubt such plays are now
extinct) exclaims: “The young squire comes of age to-day. Hurray,
hurray, hurray! There will be great doings up at the hall. Hurray,
hurray, hurray!” It was all so well meant that when I went into my
bedroom I could not bring myself to scold at what I found there. On the
clean, brown cedar walls they had pasted pictures--advertisements of
sewing machines and breakfast foods and automobiles, cut from the back
pages of magazines and slapped on anywhere. They see but few pictures,
and ours, although rather meaningless to them, are fascinating. A
picture is a picture, and my walls were covered with them; but I
pretended to be greatly pleased. Since then I have been quietly soaking
them off at the tactful rate of about two a week.
Trinidad, the new mayordomo, seems to have done well in my absence. He
planted thirty-five thousand new coffee trees with an intelligence
positively human. Casimiro, his predecessor, and I parted last year--not
in anger, only in sorrow. Casimiro had been a highwayman--a bandit. His
police record, they say, makes creepy reading on dark and windy nights.
That, however, I never took in consideration. It was only when he began
to gamble and to make good his losses by selling me my own corn and
pocketing the money that we bade each other good-by. There was no scene.
When I told him such things could not go on, he gravely agreed with me
that they couldn’t, and without resentment departed the next morning.
They are strange people. When they do lose control of themselves they go
to any lengths; there is likely to be a scene more than worth the price
of admission. Somebody usually gets killed. But nothing short of this
would seem to be, as a rule, worth while, and on the surface their
manner is one of indifference--detachment. Trinidad, who took Casimiro’s
place, rose, so to speak, from the ranks. He was an arriero for seven
years and then drifted here as a day laborer. But he understands coffee,
and the experiment of suddenly placing him over all the others has so
far been a success.
What a watchful eye the authorities keep on them even in far-away places
like this! The instant Trinidad ceased to be a common laborer on
whatever he could earn a day by picking coffee, hauling firewood,
cleaning the trees, and received a salary of thirty-five pesos a month,
his taxes were raised. They all pay a monthly tax (the “contribución” it
is called) of a few centavos, although what most of them, owning
absolutely nothing, are taxed for, it would be hard to say, unless it be
for breathing the air of heaven--for being alive at all. He tried to
keep secret the fact of his advancement, but it became known of course,
and his tax, to his great disgust, was raised fifteen or twenty cents.
Last week we had our first picking of the year and, weather permitting
(which it won’t be), we shall pick with more or less continuity for the
next four months. Coffee is different from other crops (“not like other
girls”) and often inclines me to believe it has acquired some of its
characteristics from prolonged and intimate contact with the hands that
pick it. For quite in the Mexican manner it cannot bring itself to do
anything so definite and thorough as to ripen--like wheat or corn or
potatoes--all at once. A few berries turn red on every tree and have to
be removed before they fall off. By the time this has been done from one
end of the place to the other, more have ripened and reddened and the
pickers begin again. “Poco á poco--not to-day shall we be ready for you,
but to-morrow, or perhaps next week. To do anything so final--in fact,
to be ready on any specific date is not the custom of the country,” the
trees seem to say. However, it is just as well. Nature apparently knew
what she was doing. To pick the berries properly requires skill and
time, and if they all ripened at once one could not take care of them.