Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

The city of San Luis Potosi is building a hall that is to be the eighth wonder of the world. It has cost millions and will cost millions more. Seven years ago a dozen skilled stonemasons from Pennsylvania were imported to do the ornamental carving on the front. One Fourth of July a member of the party got drunk and killed a Mexican. He was tried and condemned to be shot.

Then arose the certainty that with him in the grave there would be no one to do the fancy carving on the City Hall, so it was decided to keep him at work and shoot him when he had finished. Every day this workman hangs like a fly against the great white wall and pecks away at gargoyles and griffins’ heads, while a file of soldiers stand in the streets looking at him.

His life ends with his job, and the Mexicans say he is the most deliberate workman in the world. At the present rate of progress, by the best obtainable calculations, the front of the City Hall will be sufficiently scrolled and carved about the middle of 1950. All the churches contain valuable paintings.

The most remarkable thing about these cities, there is no noise. There is no steam, no manufactories, no wagons, no drays, and as the people go without shoes, there is no noise of any kind. You may sit on the busiest street here and close your eyes, and feel all the quiet and comfort of a cemetery. Those who like to sleep late in the morning can better appreciate this. The days and nights are of equal length, and you could stop in the most populous hotel in the city and sleep until ten o’clock in the day. No bell-boy, no breakfast bell; just quiet. The one exception to noise is the market place; it was made for noise, and is different from all the others in the country.

In other cities there are several market places which relieve the congestion, but here there is but one. Before daylight the hubbub begins and lasts till noon, and the main building is soon crowded, and its overflow spreads to the four streets which pass it. There are no passing vehicles, so from curb to curb are hundreds of women sitting flat upon the ground with their gray rebosas around their heads, and their scanty wares spread about. They sell everything, and the streets are redolent with unknown and unsavory odors from the charcoal braziers, from which the designing maid or matron offers her concoctions to the unsuspecting wayfarer.

Of course you try some of these experiments; you do not know what you are eating, but it never kills. This compels me to say that very, very few people eat at home, but go to the market for their meals, going from one stall to the other. Another market feature, green corn is always offered cooked, and the same is true of sweet potatoes. Some people buy their supplies and take them home to be cooked, but green corn and potatoes never. They are both boiled with their jackets on, and if a vendor has a bushel, he or she boils the whole and stacks it up on the pavement, and it may be five or six hours later, the purchaser buys an ear and hulls the grains off and eats his dinner with no salt or accompaniment whatever.

The market is never closed for three hundred and sixty five days in the year. In many stalls are wholesale dealers who supply the retailers. In unloading the corn or grain to put it in bins, there will be half a dozen women or children in the dust under the cart, scrambling for the grains as they fall from the sacks. When the cart has gone, they winnow all the dust through their hands looking for the missing grain.

These market gatherings are the simon-pure article of the native element, unadulterated by foreign influence. Here are Indians from the mountains, peons from the haciendas and peasants from the surrounding country and the gentry from the city, all hobnobbing together. The usual dress of these women vendors is startling. The Indians wear a string of beads around their necks and one or two yards of coarse cloth fastened wherever it will fit best, and they are dressed up. The peasants wear a string of beads and a chemise which commences too late above and stops too soon below, and all are barefoot. The high-caste women all dress in American or French styles, except that they wear no head gear but their own black hair, and they wear the most ill fitting high-heel, needle-pointed shoes that are made. The national color for Spanish and Mexican women is black. Meet a hundred ladies at a time, and every dress without exception is jet. I rather think it is vanity. We put salt on watermelon to enhance its sweetness by comparison, and so with black hair, black dress and fair skin, the contrast I think was the final end sought.

Elite society never appears on the street here till six o’clock, unless a fiesta or church service calls it out; and before that hour, what careful preparation is had? The hair is usually braided and let alone. A quantity of India ink along the eyebrows make a black en rapport with the hair, and a little belladonna in the eyes will add a sparkle that will wither up men’s souls and scatter them prone at her feet—metaphorically speaking, and when those cheeks have been kalsomined—I mean whitewashed—that is—painted, if the dear ladies will spare my life for mentioning it, and when mi-lady has thus performed her renovation—I mean toilet, and placed her diamonds on her neck where they will show best, and wrapped as to her shoulders with the diaphanous mantilla and steps under the electric light, I tell you she is—is indescribable.

The dress of the men of the lower class is just a kaleidoscope, that’s all. Some of the Indians are dressed like their women, in their long hair and a strip of cloth hung where it hangs the best. The high top straw sombrero or the Panama hat with a string under the chin is the prevailing style, although the more costly woolen hat is represented. White cotton and brown linen constitute the dress goods.