CHAPTER XXIII APPROACHING MEXICO FROM THE NORTH
It came as a pleasant surprise, upon entering Mexican territory, to receive gold coins in exchange for paper money. Mexico since 1920 has had a gold and silver currency and no bank notes. All the depreciated paper has been withdrawn from circulation, and there is that much wealth in the Estados Unidos Mexicanos which obtains in no European country to-day, a stability of the value of money.
One certainly feels as if one had in one's possession something real—with a pocketful of handsome gold pieces. The bright silver peso is rather heavy in the pocket, it is true, but one does not soon tire of looking at the coinage and rejoicing in it. When one has traveled round Europe with locally printed francs and wads of worthless crowns and marks, and even in the United States with its many shredded and grease-stricken one-dollar bills, one feels a due astonishment that Mexico in one respect is showing the world its way. Unfortunately however the new "Bank of Issue" is to begin printing bank-notes again very soon.
The ten-peso piece with "Independencia y Libertad" cut into its unmilled edge reminds of the Russian ten-rouble bits. But the Mexican twenty pesos, worth two guineas or ten dollars, is a beautiful and distinctive gold piece with its impress of the elaborate and detailed "Calendar Stone" of the Aztecs.
Mexico has triumphed over the currency trouble, but like Europe and the United States she still has the passport disease, requiring photographs and fees before you enter the land. The United States, however, has exerted her power and influence to remove this obstruction as far as her own nationals are concerned. American citizens go back and forth at will without show of visa. The British Foreign Office could achieve the same result, but is, I am told, too idle. It may seem a small matter to those who do not travel, but it is an undoubted convenience. The sudden demand for photographs often delays the British traveler twenty-four hours at El Paso or Laredo. And he naturally asks himself why he should pay ten shillings while his American neighbor gets in free.
For us these matters were arranged at El Paso. Here my wife and I spent a few days, met Duncan Aikman working on the El Paso Times, and with his hospitable assistance we viewed the frontier city. I learned from him that Wilfrid Ewart had broken his journey to New Orleans at this point and had decided to take a ten-day trip into Mexico. The tickets of the Southern Pacific Railroad give travelers special facilities for doing that. It enables Americans to get a drink if they wish. Ewart, I found, had bought a round trip ticket to take him to Mexico City and then back to Texas by a different route—by San Luis Potosi and Laredo.
I at once felt some apprehension for my friend. "I do hope he comes to no harm," I exclaimed.
"He'll be all right," said Aikman. "I have given him an introduction to the Governor of Chihuahua, General Enriquez. Mexico has become much quieter."
I was much struck by the contrast between El Paso and the Spanish city opposite it. El Paso grows and spreads on the desert like some super cactus barbed with every barb of civilization. It is amazing in its artificiality, its unwontedness. I have been in frontier cities between the Turkestan Desert and Mongolia—low, squalid, utterly unblessed by God or man. But El Paso on the Mexican line is nothing like them. The sidewalks of New York and Chicago are continued there; the line of their housetops against the Texas sky barely attenuates.
But opposite El Paso, on the southern side of the Rio Grande, is El Paso's opposite, la Ciudad de Juarez. There is only a bridge between, a mere thirty or forty yards of wood and iron—Mexico one side, America the other; Mexican squalor on one hand, American civilization in full blast on the other. The three-minutes' transition as you walk across the muddy Rio is surely one of the most surprising in the New World. The road is level, but you step down as into an abyss.
In the United States city is every sign of wealth and self-respect, of militant commerce and the rewards and aims of trade. Schools, theaters, churches vie with one another to raise the population and magnify the name of the city and the fame of America. The newspapers cry the news of the day and the El Paso Times seems no whit less vigorous or informed than the Tribune of Chicago itself. The hotels of El Paso, the luxurious Paso del Norte, the commodious Sheldon, are grandiose in charge and style. No drummer from another city needs to walk along a corridor for his bath. And as for restaurants there seems to be a sort of special El Paso chic. They infallibly bring you finger bowls, and no El Pasoan drinks from one by mistake. But without a jest, one fares better and is treated with more dignity in an El Paso café than in New York.
The air of El Paso is pure, the roads are clean, there are no hobos sitting in the little park where its alligators live under the fountain, the business men wear ironed clothes, their gait is dignified and steady except, perhaps, when coming from the direction of the Juarez bridge. What more can one say? El Paso is real genuine United States. And the fort above it with its barracks and soldiers worships the Stars and Stripes no more than does the business world below.
But walk across that little bridge and the vision is gone. You have more effectually left Uncle Sam than if you had spent a week on the Atlantic doing so. You are in Europe. You have left the banner of Kansas behind and are with the publicans and sinners once again.
Loungers, beggars, drunken men, saloons, gambling houses, dust and stink, moldering mud houses and poor wooden cabins give the first impression of Mexico in the North. Directly you cross the bridge the beggars, as in Spain itself, are whining and extending arms. Of course as one goes further there is a Cathedral and a bull ring, and there are some large American shops. An American trolley car comes out of El Paso, crosses that bridge, circles through Juarez like a figure-skater, and goes out again into America by another bridge, and the steel lines hypnotize one to follow back to the comfortable States.
The city of Juarez has, however, a bad name which is somewhat exaggerated. Vice by repute is generally magnified. Juarez and the other gate-city of old Laredo are both called the Monte Carlo of Mexico. There are columns in the press devoted to tales of their wickedness. There is said to be a large sale of cocaine and opium and that many young people are under the influence of these drugs. As for alcoholic drink there is no question but that in Juarez excessive quantities are taken. There has been much bootlegging on a large and petty scale. So many night excursions by aëroplane have been made by Americans that the Mexican Government has equipped an aërial fleet to police the frontier. Government prohibition agents of the United States have recommended that Mexico be asked to consent to the establishment of a "Dry Zone" all along the Border. President Obregon, when asked about this, said Mexico would welcome the establishment of such a zone, as he felt it humiliating that Americans, unable to satisfy their vicious cravings in America, should come to Mexico to do so. This, however, Obregon probably did not mean to be taken seriously. Like many other Mexican politicians he loves making witty remarks at the expense of America.
In connection with the American idea of control of the Border may be mentioned the resolution adopted by the House of Representatives of the legislature of Arizona requesting the President of the United States to start negotiations for the "purchase, lease, or joint control" of two hundred miles of the said border. But that is not so much to further "Prohibition" as to further trade, the people of Arizona seeking an outlet, a sort of Salonika on the Gulf of California. They would like the frontier of Arizona to run due west from the town of Nogales to the sea.
Nogales is going to be an important point in the approach to Mexico from the North. There is a railway which was wrecked during the revolutionary period. It ran between the Sierra Madre and the ocean, and was the only railroad development of the Gulf of California and the Pacific Coast for a thousand miles. It was not finished—but now I believe the Southern Pacific Company which possesses the franchise have been enabled to repair the damage and will soon run a service of trains from Arizona and California to Guadalajara. It should be said that Californians have naturally a much deeper interest in the American development of Mexico than most States. Financial groups have lately taken over large tracts of land near Tehuantepec and also in the State of Vera Cruz. California has as vigorous an attitude toward Mexico on the western side as Texas has on the east. California's destiny seems to hold the commercial domination of the Pacific Coast.
There is another grand railroad project on foot, the "Gran Ferrocarril Panamericano," which is to join New York with the Canal Zone of Panama by a permanent way through Mexico, Guatemala, etc. The establishment of this pan-American railway depends, however, more upon the Central American republics than on Mexico. A thousand miles of this road remains to be built over land much subject to earthquakes and revolutions. But the through carriages now running from Chicago to Mexico City via Laredo are a symptom of closer railroad connections.
I did not, however, enter by Laredo or Nogales but by El Paso. The distance to Mexico City is nearly two thousand kilometers, mostly of sand and piñon trees. The Santa Fe country seems to extend endlessly southward. Desert dust enters the train and almost stifles you. From the window of the railway carriage you see the yucca's withered stem, and the dead cactus extends to you a dusty hand, welcoming you to No Man's Land. The contours of the mountains are, as in New Mexico, wind-worked, wind-shaped, and there are great rounded hats of rock, gray and sun-wasted. Occasionally one comes to wretched, mud-built villages whose whole population turns out in rags to sell coffee and chili sandwiches to passengers at the halting places.
Three hundred miles south of El Paso the wilderness is broken by Chihuahua, of which Cunninghame Graham used to write, fondly pronounced Chihoo-a-hoo-a in London but locally Chi-wah-wah. I broke my journey in this city and enjoyed the refreshment of spirit which comes when you suddenly escape from winter and change one country grown familiar for one which is unfamiliar.
Chihuahua, capital of one of the "United States of Mexico," is a fine city, or the ruins of one. Not so deep as Pompeii, yet it lies well under the dirt. War and revolution have battered it. Mud has swept over its street-car lines. Economically it seems to be a peon of the United States. American goods alone are in the shops and at prices fifty or a hundred per cent higher than in America itself. Even food such as butter and sugar and cheese and bacon seems to be largely imported and heavily taxed. There is much poverty and want.
But what a spacious city it is! The gardens are fresh and flowering with violets. Fountains are playing. The tradition of Spain is strong in the architecture which expresses the dignity of human life—and of being a Spaniard.
Alas, the most striking characteristic of the city is, I suppose, characteristic of all Mexico, and that is the pearl- and ivory-mounted revolvers. There are shop windows full of pistols. Every other man has a pistol in his hip pocket. Pistols are discharged at all moments for joy, or to kill, or through mere ennui. The Mexicans fire off pistols to kill time.
The city seems to have two regular restaurants, and you either dine with Quong or dine with Sing. The city band plays in front of Porfirio Diaz's Palacio Nacional every afternoon. At the other end of the city you may watch soldiers drilling. In the evening there is nothing to do except watch "barnstormers" do an English musical comedy or look at an American picture show. On Sunday it is true there is always, at least in winter, a bull fight. These are not dressed as in Spain, though flower-decked bowers are put up for the "Queens of love and beauty," the presiding "most distinguished ladies." Probably when famous toreadors visit Chihuahua they wear their crimson and gold, but in the glimpse I had of the killing of a sixth bull the fighters were just men with their coats off—as it were the butcher had taken a holiday from his shop and with his long knife was taking extra pleasure in the darker side of his trade. The crowd kept calling to him to lead the bull away and bring out an ass. And blushingly he eyed the spot in the bull's back where the knife ought to go and made the last lunge. "He is not a bullfighter; he's just an ordinary man," said some one as he went away.
The State of Chihuahua has many bandits; life there is remarkably insecure compared with North of the Rio Grande. This is not entirely due to Mexicans; there are not a few wild Americans at large. Hundreds of men wanted by the American police have in time past crowded into the State of Chihuahua, there to live largely by their wits. "Two-gun Bill" of cinema fame may be met with if you ride from the city to the mine with gold. Political assassins and men of blood are a state product. Thus the life of General Villa and his murder there are natural enough.
The horsemen of Chihuahua are much better mounted than the cowboys of the American South-west—one may spend a pleasant afternoon on the Town Hall steps merely watching the horsemen riding in and out of town. And they are better armed and naturally more ready with hand to holster.
The State was governed by General Enriquez, a Mexican Liberal who has since resigned—but he had little control of the wild people about him. He had to cope with large numbers who believe they have won revolutionary reforms and with land-owning families who are accustomed to treat the rest like slaves. Poor people still call you "patron" instead of "señor." Enriquez staved off the demand for the splitting up and division of the large estates. He protected many business concerns from spoliatory labor laws. But he allowed the rule of daily payment of wages, a point much fought in the South. General Enriquez, who speaks English, is probably wider in his sympathies than most Mexicans. Wilfrid Ewart asked him the question direct—What did he think of the prospect of annexation by America? He replied that in his opinion the political ideals of America made that impossible.
But if the wild forces now loose in Mexico should overthrow all the civilized elements of life? There hides the possible moment of an effective American intervention.
I have not been surprised to read subsequently that the reason for Enriquez's resignation was despair. Four days in Chihuahua is not long enough to judge the whole of the State but any visitor might be struck by the daring faces of the Spaniards and by the almost complete savagery of the Indians. The latter, the Tarahumare, are black and nearly naked. They wear gigantic straw sombreros, and their bodies below are as it were triangled. Broad brows, sunstretched eyes, broad nose but pointed chin—their faces are triangular. Their bodies from shoulders to navel are black triangles, their loin-cloths hang in a triangle of dull rags, their thighs from the fullness of their loins to gaunt bony knees—two more triangles of dark dirt—and then wasted feet with mud-caked separate toes. A strange people these Indians, for they worship the Echino cactus and make sacrifice to it. The other citizens of this great State worship not the cactus but the revolver.
As I resumed my journey southward over hundreds more miles of desert I noted that the man next to me kept a loaded revolver on the couch beside him—ready in case of bandidos. It is a wild country—what do the foreigners go there for? Well, mostly for gold—for a fortune to be quickly won.
We had had some hope of meeting Wilfrid Ewart at Chihuahua, but he had left before we came. We found his signature in the register of the Hotel Robinson. We had gone to a little Spanish hotel in the Plaza called the San Luis. It seemed as if his ten days would be over before we reached Mexico City. After Torreon we began to watch for Laredo trains, not knowing that the railroad branches off at a much earlier point, Huehuetoca. It would have been amusing and pleasant to have shaken hands at some little station where our trains, going in different directions, were drawn up and steaming. But as it happened he had not left the capital.
In the train were several mining men, mostly Americans. One came up to me and said, "I saw you at the Hotel Sheldon and I said to my friend—'He's a mud-digger, I'll bet.'" There, however, he was mistaken, but if you are English and in Mexico it stands to reason you must be in the mining interest. The talk was of gold and opals and silver. Indians brought all manner of jewelry to the trains to sell, much of it manufactured stuff imported from Europe. They brought also lustrous pots which were more genuine, and peasant embroideries and boxes of sweetened cream and baskets of strawberries. At Irapuato on the 26th of December the whole station swarmed with vendors of strawberries. They say it always does, any time in the year.
The train emerged from the waterless sand on to the maguey plantations. The eyes rested gratefully on the green plumes of the banana palm and on the scarlet flowers of some tropical tree. The bougainvillæa bounced into a crimson effulgence of bloom. We entered at last a rich and verdant country fed by many rivers, and that was Anahuac, the fertile land of the Aztec Empire, of which the city now called Mexico but in their day Tenochtitlan is and was the capital.