Courtesy is the price of position here, and no better officials can be found than the street car conductors, and, the least infraction or discourtesy reported to headquarters receives prompt attention. The railroads also run three separate classes of cars with prices accordingly, but not quite in the proportion as street cars. Thus, from Celaya to Guadalajara, the distance is 161 miles, and a return ticket, first class, is $9.86, second $6.56, and third $4.90.
Of carriages there are four classes. Carriages painted yellow and flying a yellow flag are third class and cannot charge more than twenty-five cents for a half hour or less, nor more than fifty cents for a whole hour. Those painted red and carrying a red flag cannot charge more than thirty-seven cents, and for an hour seventy-five cents. Blue, fifty cents for half hour, $1 for one hour. Green, special rates at option of driver and passenger. When a passenger enters a carriage, the flag must be taken down immediately so that everybody may know it is engaged and will not hail the driver, and he cannot make other engagements until the carriage is empty. All carriages and horses are inspected by a commission who pass upon the respectability of carriage and team and order the proper color painted across the doors, and the printed rates pasted inside so that no intelligent traveler need be imposed upon. And every hotel must post in its rooms the rates “con comida,” or “sin comida”—with or without board. No one need pay in advance; no matter how dilapidated you look or how scant your baggage, you may hire the most costly apartment in the hotel and no questions asked about security.
This is because the law protects the people, and if you defrauded a poor market woman out of a copper the law would follow you to the confines of the republic and imprison you for debt. That settles the bum question. The hotel proprietor assigns you to your room and cares not a straw about you until you are ready to leave. If you pay, very well, come again. If not, by clapping the hands at the door brings a policeman immediately. The policeman hears the landlord’s story, and gives you your option—either pay or go with him, and the prisoner becomes the property of the creditor until he is paid.
The police system is excellent, from the reason I am told that they are not appointed by political favor, but are soldiers from the barracks and can be always found. Every street-crossing has a policeman all day and another all night, so during the twenty-four hours there is not a moment when he cannot be found. When the night squad comes on at 6 p. m. each man brings a lighted lantern and sets it in the middle of the crossing, and it is possible to stand at a crossing and count forty lanterns down the four intersecting streets. As soon as the houses are closed the policeman tries the doors and windows of each house to see if they are fastened, and returns to his lantern. Every half hour during the night each man must blow his whistle to show that he is awake and on duty. If you are a stranger and ask for direction, the politico will take you to the next crossing and deliver you to another and you may thus be passed to a dozen politicos, and they will take every precaution to deliver you safely. If you are a prisoner, the process is the same, and no man knows what you are arrested for but the first. The man who delivers the prisoner simply tells from whom he got him, and so to the next until the first is reached who makes the charge. This makes bribery and escape impossible, for when a prisoner is delivered to the next man, the deliverer must report. It is exactly after the manner of the registry department of our post office. Should the person making the arrest receive a bribe and permit an escape, no one would know, but when once started down the line no politico would take the chances.
Every gambling house or assignation house or cock-pit or any other institution that the government licenses, is also furnished with policemen. All day long he stands guard at your door, and all night long his lantern sits at your steps, and, like the old man of the sea, he is always there to prevent disturbance. In the gambling house, he sits like a statue till the business is closed and sees all that passes. You give a ball in your private house, the politico takes a chair by the door and sits quietly till your guests have departed. You get up a little picnic or an excursion a few miles from the city, a special coach is fastened to the train carrying a company of infantry to keep you company all day. A foreign consul gives a reception to other consuls, a squad of mounted police sit their horses like statues in front of the consulate until it is all over. The American colony gives a 4th of July celebration, all day long they follow the procession or look at the dancing but never a word say they. They are neither meddlesome nor prying, they are just omnipresent.
Your society gives a parade. Your line of march must be made known to the prefect of police and every rod of that distance will be guarded by cavalry. You enter a theater and every tier of seats has a silent man in uniform. You enter a hotel and any complaint from guest or proprietor is made to the politico. You sit at a public table or other place, and the proprietor refuses to serve you on account of color, the politico locks the door and takes the proprietor before the tribunal. He is absolutely everywhere, but he is neither garrulous nor loquacious, and he answers all questions with a courtesy that is refreshing. Beyond the city limits he is no longer a politico but a rurale, a horseman dressed in buckskin and “booted and spurred and ready to ride.” He patrols the outlying country as a policeman, judge or soldier. On the western division of the railroad, whenever the train stops, two rurales armed with rifles and sabres inspect the train. When the train leaves the station, a rurale stands on each platform and looks through the glass door at the passengers till the train gets to the next station, where he gets off and another takes his place, and so on to the end of the road. The next train going the next way, each squad is carried back to their homes, only to repeat the program to-morrow. When the train stops for dinner you leave your wraps and luggage in the seat and pass into the dining room, while a rurale locks the car door and stands guard till your return.
Never a word do these silent men say. For hours they stand looking through the car door to see that no harm comes to anything or anybody. No one ever hears of train robbers in Mexico, but there is a reason for all this. A country that has been accustomed to its annual revolution and whose whole list of presidents and emperors nearly have died a violent death, must needs be ruled by an iron hand.
And it has not been more than fifteen years since bandits ruled the country and dictated terms to the government. As late as February 15, 1885, a commission of officers was sent from Zacatecas by the government to make a treaty with the bandit chief, Eraclio Bernal, and they returned unsuccessful. The bandit said he would disband his men under these conditions: “Pardon for himself and band, a bonus of thirty thousand dollars for himself, and to keep an armed escort of twenty-five men, or to be put in command of the army in the district of Sinaloa.” That is the answer the chief sent to the government; and I have seen an express wagon leave the train with the mail and express, with enough armed men to fill the wagon, to escort it through the streets of a city of seventy-five thousand inhabitants. This condition remained until President Porfirio Diaz hit upon a plan that it took a thief to catch a thief, so he sent word to the bandits that if they would quit robbing and come in, he would make them all officers with a salary, and they could still patrol their old haunts and keep the other fellows down, and they accepted. Now these men are guarding the very trains they used to rob. They are born horsemen and can ride a horse ninety miles a day on the trail. They are the best horsemen in the world, and can throw the lasso and shoot as well as ride. On a wager you can put a rurale in chase after a steer and he will throw the riato over either foot you name, and never check the speed of his horse.
They are a law unto themselves, and independent of municipal authority. The rurales may find a man breaking open a freight car, and they take him behind the depot, try him, dig his grave and shoot him into it, and the case is settled. No court or civil law will ever go behind their acts, and that stroke of President Diaz has given the country its prosperity. The wrong-doers know that the rurales are everywhere, and that their vengeance or justice is swift and sure. There is a tacit understanding that jails and criminals are expensive, and dead prisoners are inexpensive; therefore, if a man’s crime is worthy of death, he is shot immediately, and all convicts are turned into the army to do the dirty work of the camp. Should he try to escape, a hundred men know that they will be commended who shoot him first, so there is no wasted sentimentality with crime, it is simply an option, be good or be dead.
Ten years ago a man dared not travel without an armed escort, and now the same men he feared are his armed escort. When a great celebration is on hand and the military is wanted to parade, nine-tenths of the admiration is bestowed upon the rurales. Centaurs they are, with their caparisoned horses with every piece of metal about saddle and bridle of solid silver. His own dress is characteristic. With his yellow buckskin clothes with silver buttons, silver spur and tall sombrero with silver spangles and monogram, he is an object to win your admiration. Go where you will, in mountain and valley, hillside and plain, you will meet the rurales (they always go in pairs) with their ever ready rifle and lariat, looking for evil doers. Neither money nor time nor patience is wasted on criminals, and you never hear of mistrials, or appeals, or “deferred till next session.” Their court dockets are never crowded. The official shooter with his Winchester goes from court to court and shoots the prisoners as fast as they are condemned.