Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

The republic supports an army of forty-five thousand men, and every town and city is a garrison, and has its military bands. Since the people support the army, they think the army is theirs, and they make claims upon what they claim as theirs. Every town has its military band, and many of them have three or four, and three evenings of each week and all of Sunday afternoon and evening the bands must play for the people. This is a rule without exception, and they are good bands and play fine music. The bands number from forty to eighty performers each, and in large cities there is no evening without music, alternating with different parks, but on Sunday they are all on duty, and with the band comes the social feature of the people. Around the band stand is a circular asphalt walk, possibly an acre in circumference. While the band is playing, the parents and duennas and chaperones are seated.

The young men four or five deep are promenading on the outer circumference of the circle and the young ladies on the inner, but going in the opposite direction. Here are possibly a thousand young people thus enjoying themselves, the young men talking to each other and the young ladies to each other, but never opposite sexes to each other. Their social customs are as unchanging as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and for a young man to speak to a young lady in public would be a breach of etiquette never forgiven, and a young lady would not dare walk two squares on a public street unattended by a duenna, unless she was going to prayers. She would run the risk of her social standing. There is no doubt that they do throw “sheep-eyes” at each other in the promenades, but speak, never. At 10 P.M. the band plays its last number, and the duennas gather up the young ladies and the young men gather up themselves and they all go home and talk about the glorious time they had.

The young and unmarried never mingle. Should a young man have seen his fate among these promenaders he may not say so to her. He finds out where she lives and “plays the bear”—that is he passes along the street on the opposite side and gazes longingly at her balcony. This he does many times and many days. Of course she pretends that she does not see him, but at the same time she is earnestly looking for him every day. If she goes to the window he may stop. Further encouragement is given by her disappearing from the window and returning with a smile a la Juliet, and the young man goes home and pats himself on the back and throws bouquets at himself for his great success. Perhaps he will keep up this bear business for a year, perhaps two, and has never spoken to the little angel. Sometimes he will get under her window with his guitar with twelve strings and burden the night-wind with his made-to-order songs, and if she does not pour a pitcher of water on his head he has made so much headway that he would be justified in thrashing any other fellow who should hang around the premises playing bear, “haciendo del orso.”

He is supposed now to have made enough headway to be allowed to call and get an introduction and he must find a mutual friend who can do it for him. He arranges the matter, and at last is admitted and introduced to the señorita in the presence of the mother and father and duenna, and he never, no never sees her alone. He invites her to the theater, and when the carriage calls the whole family is dressed and ready to go, and he never sees her except in their presence. If there is no objection on the part of the parents, and if Barkis is willing—and she generally is—the marriage takes place, and “they live together happy ever afterwards” as the story books say. Their courtship seems to be in accumulating all the imaginable difficulties possible, and always presumes that the parents will be unwilling and must be outwitted, and this invents plots and counter plots ad infinitum. Of course the parents know, and the young folks know they know, but it is the custom to invent difficulties and they can not depart from custom. A married woman’s sphere is but little different from the unmarried; she can accompany her husband on the street is one advantage. She is pretty as paint can make her and as ignorant as hermits usually are. A woman’s world here has two hemispheres—the home and the church, and she lives and dies knowing no more.

A woman who makes claims to aristocracy must not under any circumstances earn a penny or she loses caste immediately. If she teaches or embroiders for the church or for charity she is excused, but for herself, never. Sometimes poverty clips the wings of these high-flyers, and it becomes a serious struggle between starving and losing caste. In such cases they will sometimes ostensibly give music lessons for charity, but collect for it on the sly and still preserve their social standing.

With the great middle class, all this is different—they live in another world. They make no pretense to tinsel aristocracy, and have their living to make and they make it with no limitations whatever beyond their capacity, and for intelligence and business, a wife from this class of Mexican women is worth seventy-nine of the bluest blood aristocracy I have seen in Mexico. They have a fair education in Spanish, and both French and English are taught in the schools now, and I have found them able to converse in all three, and could buy and sell with as good a margin for profit as men.

Of course there are three classes here, and the third class will be treated of in a separate chapter. The only bearing they have here is that they are servants to the other two, but their social standing does not count for much, Very few girls in this class are unmarried at thirteen or fourteen years of age, and twelve year old girls as mothers is as common a sight as pig-tracks, Maturity comes early in the tropics, and a woman is a wrinkled back-number at thirty.

The marriage ceremony does not trouble these people much. They have not the money to buy the license, and so they omit the legal ceremony. On a hacienda near San Luis Potosi, a peon lost his wife. He came to the boss and asked for a mule to take the body to the cemetery, and also asked for two dollars. He explained that he might bring back another wife with him, so he wanted to be prepared for emergencies. After three hours he brought back another wife, and his household machinery never missed a cog.

Feast days without number give this happy people the opportunity of enjoying themselves and resting. Not resting because they are weary or overworked, but resting on general principles. The Ethics of Rest is a science they have appropriated unto themselves. They do say that men who love music and flowers will never make cowards or traitors. “La Fiesta de las Flores”—the feast of flowers, is held on Friday before Holy Week; “Viernes de Dolores” or Sad Friday. This fiesta was once held on La Viga when every boat on the lakes took part in the decoration of everything and everybody, but Fashion has now decreed that it be held in the Alameda. The Alameda is the Charing Cross of Mexico. It is a park of forty acres that was once the site of the Inquisition, where Indians were barbecued because they did not accept the Catholic religion. The Inquisition held its last auto-da-fe and burned its last conspicuous victim, Gen. José Morelos, in the Plaza as late as November, 1815!

The Alameda has been the birthplace of gunpowder plots, and St. Bartholomew’s days and revolutions all and sundry for many, many years, but now it is a peaceful pleasure park, beautiful with fountains, and aviaries of rare birds and redolent with orange blossoms and whatever the ingenuity of man can add in the list of charming flowers and shaded walks and shrubs that never know the sere and yellow leaf, and here on Viernes de Dolores, before daybreak the throngs pour in a steady stream of Indians from across the mountains and the dwellers from the plains and the lake dwellers are there and everybody has flowers. The patient burros have come laden with flowers till only their ears are seen. From away down on the coast, Jalapa has sent two carloads of flores, and everybody buys flowers and decorates and makes himself pleasant. No one must fail to do homage to Flora, the goddess of flores, and so garlands and wreaths and merry-makers make possible for the first time the extravagant displays I have so often seen on the drop-curtains of the opera house and thought were so impossible. The fountains were festooned and draped with the rarest of fragrant flowers, and rarer orchids, and every available place on person or thing was adorned, and two bands played alternately, and from early morn till late at night was one vast holiday.