V
A barefoot youth came to my rescue, shouldered my suit-case, and led the way to Tehuantepec’s one hotel.
Tehuantepec, although the largest city in population on the Isthmus, is merely a big Indian village. Its streets are sometimes rudely cobbled, but usually of sand. It lies in a wide, fertile valley, straddling a shallow river. In the center its buildings are of heavy white stucco roofed with red tile. Elsewhere its dwellings are of thatch, and straggle up the surrounding mountain cliffs or out among the vast groves of waving coco-palms. None of the merchants have bothered to advertise on their shops the nature of their business, for travelers seldom come there, and the natives all know one another and one another’s occupation, which is usually that of selling cocoanuts to one another.
There is a plaza, but it is a very inferior plaza, fronted by a ramshackle church. In towns where there is an element of Spanish blood, this would be the center of all activity. But Tehuantepec is of almost pure Indian population, and its interests are in the native market.
When Cortez first came to Mexico, he and his followers were amazed at the size of the Indian markets. To-day no village is so tiny but that it has a public square devoted to bartering, even though it may have nothing else. Usually it is a stone-paved courtyard beneath a sheet-iron roof. From the rafters hang raw-hide thongs, lassos, saddles, gaudy blankets, bunches of bananas, and miscellaneous drygoods. The entire floor is covered with great heaps of Indian pottery, jugs and pots and kettles of earthenware. Tables, arranged in long rows, are laden with piles of big round cakes resembling maple sugar, with gravelly hills of flour, salt, spaghetti, beans, and corn, with strings of red or green peppers, slabs of meat, bleary-eyed fish, and everything else imaginable. Flies swarm everywhere. Turkeys are tied to the posts that support the roof. Ducks and chickens, their legs hobbled or broken, lurch from side to side in a futile effort to gain their feet. Dogs slink through the crowd. Buzzards hop about the floor. The whole effect is of confusion and bedlam.
NO LATIN-AMERICAN VILLAGE IS SO TINY BUT THAT IT HAS A SQUARE DEVOTED TO BARTERING
The Mexican loves the noise and excitement of such a place. So ingrained is his fondness for it that a native on his way to market will sometimes refuse to sell his goods for any price along the road. In the few shops outside the square, the clerks are listless; in the market, every one is animated. People selling the same articles group themselves together, for it stimulates competition. Let a potential purchaser stop before one woman to glance at tortillas, and a dozen other tortilla-vendors hiss to attract attention. Here rules the great game of cheat-as-cheat-can. There is no credit. There is no mutual confidence. The merchant tests each coin; the purchaser tests each purchase. Women buying hens ruffle up the feathers and examine the bird carefully. Every one watches the scales. And every one enjoys it hugely.
THE MEXICAN PEON SO LOVES THE EXCITEMENT OF THE MARKET THAT HE REFUSES TO SELL HIS GOODS ELSEWHERE
But nowhere in Mexico is there a market more animated than that of Tehuantepec.
It is essentially a feminine market. Years ago, the men of the Isthmus were practically annihilated in local warfare. For a long time the women outnumbered them by a ratio of five to one; they learned to do their own work; men became to them a luxury rather than a necessity; and to-day the position of the sexes—most strangely, in Mexico—has become completely reversed. In most markets, women predominate. In Tehuantepec so few males are evident that a visitor strolling among the counters feels like Al Jolson surrounded by the Winter Garden chorus.
THE TEHUANA MAIDENS REGARDED A MAN AS A LUXURY RATHER THAN A NECESSITY
It was very clean—as compared with similar bartering places elsewhere. Usually such places were overpowering in their odor of sweaty femininity. In Tehuantepec, however, the ladies were addicted to a daily bath, the prettier and younger ones taking it after dark, the elder ones in broad daylight, when they were to be seen disporting their massive bulks in the river that intersected the town, quite untroubled by the attention they received from the military garrison on the neighboring railway bridge.
Despite the comparative scarcity of males, the usual number of babies were in evidence. Each market-woman had an infant slung over her shoulder in a gayly-colored reboso—the invaluable Mexican shawl, which serves as towel, handkerchief, wrap, carry-all for bringing produce home, and also as a crib. While mother bargained, she fed her offspring. The loose vest-like jacket was designed for such an operation, as was the alternative garment, a low-cut lace-frilled chemise. And she fed her offspring mechanically, without once taking her attention from the business of haggling. A quick jerk of one shoulder, and the reboso with its infantile contents swung to the front; a heated argument continued uninterruptedly with shoppers who maintained that her goods were inferior to those of the lady squatted cross-legged on her right; another quick jerk, and the child swung around again to her back.
So busy were the women that they paid no attention to the few men—mostly soldiers—who strolled about. If these were the vamps that writers have proclaimed throughout the ages, one saw no evidence of the fact in the market. They were the least sex-conscious women that I have seen anywhere in Latin America. The Spanish señoritas of other parts, no matter how modest their deportment, were always supremely aware of the presence of a man. These Indian girls were intent upon their haggling; in their rush to sell their goods, they bumped the lounging men aside as though quite unaware of their existence. Once in a while, when business lulled, they glanced up to survey me casually, since I looked out of place among gaudily-dressed Indians, and I fancied that they discussed me in Indian dialect. But they did not appear fascinated. For their flirtation was limited always to the original remark:
“Buy my cocoanuts, señor!”