7. In the Marquisate of Oaxaca
Cortes was recognized and rewarded and he made a happy end of life. He overcame all the intrigues. His success, like a rising sun, triumphed over all mists and clouds and at its zenith shone over half the world. His Emperor honored him and granted to him and his heirs in perpetuity the lands of the Valley of Oaxaca with all the wealth therein contained, both potential and actual. On the strength of it the Cortes of to-day ought to be Morgans or Rothschilds. Oaxaca is one of the most golden valleys of Mexico, a marvelous place, El Dorado itself in the eyes of the first pioneers who grabbed what they could carry and lost what they could not defend.
Hernando Cortes became the "Marquis of the Valley," known commonly in Spanish annals as "the great Marquis," a title which in British history is, however, associated with a nobler man, the Marquis of Montrose.
Oaxaca, pronounced Wahahca, is some three hundred miles southwest of the capital, reached by rocky, narrow, and often precipitous trails once the secret knowledge of Indians but now followed by a railroad considered a marvel of scientific engineering. No motor road goes through—and it is adventurous going for either horseman or pedestrian. It is one of the ways to the Pacific shore, and once the capital of the marquisate is reached it is not a difficult journey on horseback to Tehuantepec or Salina Cruz, down on the quiet beaches of the Southern Sea.
It should be said that Oaxaca is now a State and that the heirs of Cortes have long since dissipated their fortunes. English and Americans now own the most valuable properties of the Valley which is recognized still as one of the richest mining districts of Mexico. Oaxaca has enriched thousands of individuals. Mexicans without doing work pathetically hope to stumble suddenly on large fortunes. The legends they preserve of hidden gold are many. The Indians especially are supposed to hold secrets which they hand down from generation to generation, of the shrines and treasures of their lost gods. As cupidity is not a vice of the pure-blood Indian this seems always conceivable. You can find out nothing by asking Indians questions. Their innocent mirthfulness under cross-examination has always been one of the most baffling matters to the Spaniard. The days of burning them alive to find their secrets has of course long passed, but the Indians told little under stress of pain. Over the slow fire their innocent mirth changed to a suffering taciturnity and that unearthly fixed gaze which showed a race that had conquered pain.
Out in this valley most of the people now are pure-blood Indians, either Zapotecs or Mixtecs, unambitious, easy-going, fruitful, and true to the soil on which they have always lived. They were never an imperial race like the Aztecs, nor revengeful like the Totonacs. They have no inheritance of ill-will, and all seem as happy as kings. Oaxaca to-day, despite the turmoil of the revolution, presents a picture of what Mexico as a whole might be if her peoples possessed the right temperament. For my part, I count the three weeks I spent in the Marquisate as the happiest in Mexico. One could easily become content to live a long while there. The people retain their national customs and are marvelously good-humored; crime is rare, pistols infrequent, and the cost of living is less than half that of the capital—you can live very well on two dollars a day—and the winter climate is perfect. The happiness of the little city is greatly enhanced by a large city square where a fine brass band plays every evening amid palms and electric lights and lilies and hanging rosy pomegranates.
The cathedral faces the Palacio, and colored stone porticos of shops face porticos of other shops. The broad efflorescent square or plaza is between. The cathedral, alas, looks like a ruin and has been taken and retaken by soldiers in many fights! The Church is too poor to repair it. I saw the "Hombre Mosca," the "Human Fly" climb its pretty façade one morning, stepping on the carved saints and patting the Infant Christ in St. Christopher's arms on his way up, and the Church was quite impotent to stop the insult, even on a Sunday when Mass was observed within. A curious contrast surely, a whole congregation on its knees listening to the sermon of an archbishop within, a hilarious crowd outside cheering the Human Fly and the brass band playing lustily. Something of the destiny of Mexico in that! But in my opinion the human flies hold the future. Sitting on the top of the Cross on the turret of the Cathedral an American acrobat called "Babe White" unfurls a flag on which is printed "Drink Montezuma Beer." Poor old Pope, dead and gone Holy Inquisition, what think you of that?
The Palacio, where I saw the Governor, Garcia Vigil, just before he left for Mexico City where he was badly shot by a hired assassin, is a fine building rendered more impressive by its Indian sentries, some of whom are extremely handsome and fine-looking soldiers. The legislative business of the State is transacted in this palacio and it occupies the whole of one side of the square. Here one may commonly see in the evenings and on Saturday morning long lines of Indians waiting for wages. On Saturday mornings the band enters the interior square of the palacio and plays while waiting for its pay.
The shops which flank the other two sides exhibit various novedades in dress and many marvelous hats ranging in price from ten to a hundred dollars. As Mexicans are more proud of their head wear than of any other part of their attire they are ready to pay fantastic prices for hats. These sombreros which are usually of felt or velour are sometimes two feet high and three feet across from rim to rim. When a little dark man puts on one of these he changes in aspect and looks like some sort of fantastic magician.
In front of the shops and yet under the covered way of the porticos are many tables and booths, and at the tables men wearing these sombreros and long black moustachios play dominoes and drink beer. At the booths quiet-eyed women sell cigarettes and sweets, and all along the curb outside the colored arches of the porticos sit Indian women with their hair hanging to the pavement, breasts exposed and papooses sucking there.
The scene in the plaza at nightfall, when the whole population comes out in parade, is in its way a ballet, unrehearsed and yet faultless. The life of the whole seems to be the band up in the fine stand in the central circle of the square. There stands the perfect little Zapotec conductor facing another Indian who with gourds in his hands waves his rattle with long arms, and on each side of them and around them is resounding brass. A fine discipline has been achieved and a military precision in play. German and Spanish compositions alternate. Marches and Spanish dances seem to have a preference and with joyous clamor and seductive melodies take possession of every man, woman and child in the plaza. Most remarkable are the tatterdemalion crowds of Indians who in cotton slops and bits of old blankets tied together tramp into town and creep out of the dirt and the dust to the inner court of the bandstand. There they crouch and stare, though they get the music in ear-breaking blasts, being far too close. But they love to hear in the midst of it the rattle of the gourd players, the rattle of the rain drops as in their own half-forgotten rituals. Huddled together they stare at the brass, at the gourds, at the Zapotec bandmaster in his perfectly ironed regimentals.
From the inner court of the bandstand go six shady tracks under palms, and scarlet-flowering trees, and orange fruits dripping from boughs, and pomegranate trees; and these tracks reach the broad outer court, round which like mystic shapes the great crowd comes and goes.
Here run the newsboys crying, "Patria, Patria," and the boys with dozens of bottles on their little heads shouting, "Frescos, frescos," and scores of bootblacks with little wooden stools calling to all and sundry "Grasar, grasar." Here walk stately icecream merchants with colored barrels balanced on their heads, and swarthy, sunburned men with sheaves of blankets for sale. Every Indian wears a blanket either slit at the middle for his head to go through or swathed about his body from head to foot as the Arab wears his burnous. Scarlet and orange are the commonest colors of these blankets. They wear their sombreros, the poor ones of straw, the rich ones of felt, Popocatepetls of felt, high-domed, vastly brimmed, embroidered. Here are gray hats all decorated with sailing ships and anchors worked in brown silk. Here are white hats bedizened with silver tinsel sewn on as the Indian women sew beetle-backs and butterfly wings into their embroideries in India. The great hats flock, they shadow the pavement. And all the while tran-tan-tan above it dominates the band.
Little boys carrying sugar canes eight feet long all hung with tiny flags add great color to the scene. The canes are perforated with tiny holes and in each hole is a sugar plum mounted on a long match or wire and each sugar plum has a tiny flag hanging from it. A dozen boys are carrying these resplendent poles; several others are carrying gourds perforated and adorned in the same way.
There are park seats all the way round and there sit the more leisurely of the listeners, and the tired, and watch the world go by. Old dames with trays of pineapple and girls with baskets of pine kernels go from seat to seat selling their wares.
The Zapotec women are straight as pine trees. They wear voluminous cotton skirts but their feet are bare. Above the waist they do not mind how much of their bodies they expose; they wear commonly a slightly embroidered cotton vest cut as low as the rise of their bosoms and leaving their arms bare from just below the shoulders. They have broad, open faces, carved mouths, lined brows, and an enormous flow of raven hair almost to their knees which they allow to hang. They wear earrings of filigree gold and beautiful gold chains round their bare necks. They may be on the point of beggary and yet wear these. The young ones are very beautiful, but quiet-eyed and never lascivious. They hold their heads so far back that if they wore hairpins and dropped one it would always fall clear of their bodies.
Outside the Palacio the sentries march to and fro with bayonets fixed and loaded rifles. The sergeant of the guard has golden bobinets hanging from six golden chevrons. At the changing of the guard bugles sound within the Palace yard in a sort of counterblast to the triumphant choruses of brass coming from the branches of the palm trees and the electric lights of the bandstand. Oaxaca, birthplace of Diaz, birthplace of Juarez, is proud of itself and makes some show under the Mexican sky.
Round and round walks the crowd and there mingle with the Indians American men and women, jaunty men dressed anyhow and women in low-cut evening gowns, simpering to one another and to their male companions. Mexican belles also come out, with highly painted faces and dainty, manicured hands. Girls in their teens join one another and all holding arms walk in strings of sevens and eights. Youths of similar age walk in similar strings. Horsemen with tight trousers and silver spurs dismount and tie up their steeds and join the throng. The Governor himself, the legislature of the State, joins the parade. There is the highest and also the lowest. Bow, bow, bow, come the beggars. You give them centavos or you give them cakes. They wear old dusty sombreros of straw and you put the cakes in the brim. You see beggars with dozens of cakes and tortillas and rolls in the brims of their straw sombreros. The blind beggars walk in tandems; blind mother led by seeing child, sister by sister, grandfather by grandson. There are two pseudo beggars, too proud actually to beg, and they get more alms than all the rest. One is a magnificent fellow with a gigantic straw sombrero. He has lost both legs at the knee, but he must have been very handsome. He has large pads now like the wooden boots put on horses drawing the heavy roller over a lawn, and on these pads he walks like any other man using hip muscles where we use the muscles of the knee. His yellow hat points backward from his head—he carries a bootblack's stool and wherever he goes the crowd makes way for him—a king of the pavement and of all beggars and bootblacks. The other pseudo beggar is a boy with curved spine and twisted body. He walks on all fours and has a basket of matches or sweets hung from his neck. All among the people he jumps like a frog—and whose heart can be so hard as to refuse him when he looks up with angel smile, so sweetly, so appealingly? You pretend to buy, he looks at what you give him, meditatively. He looks up at you smiling, but perhaps a little troubled in expression.
"Adios?" he asks as if it were a question.
"Adios," you reply.
The trouble clears from his face; he is perfectly happy.
"Adios, adios," he exclaims and hops on like a frog amid the bare brown feet of the Indians and the polished boots of Mexicans and Americans.
Tran-tan-tan goes the band all the while, and the Zapotec bandmaster with narrowed waist and rigid little head and shoulders looks like Juarez himself. And the rattle of the gourds is like tambourines struck on the knees of dancing girls.