DIVISION OF POPULATION—WHITES—INDIANS—AFRICANS—LEPEROS—RANCHEROS—CHARACTERISTICS—INDIFFERENCE—PROCRASTINATION.—FEMALES—BETTER CLASSES—THEIR SOCIAL HABITS—ENTERTAINMENTS.—LEPEROS—THEIR HABITS—EVANGELISTAS—THIEVING.—THE RANCHERO—HIS CHARACTER AND HABITS.—THE INDIAN RACE—AGRICULTURISTS—TRADITIONARY HABITS ADHERED TO—IMPROVIDENCE—SUPERSTITION—DRUNKENNESS—INDIAN WOMEN—SERVILE CONDITION—LOCAL ADHESIVENESS—PEONAGE—WHIPPING.—PLANTER-LIFE—ITS SOLITUDE AND RESULTS.—MUHLENPFORDT'S CHARACTER OF THE INDIANS.—INDIAN TRIBES AND RACES IN MEXICO.—TABLE OF CASTES IN MEXICO.
AN adequate and proper classification of the Mexican population, for descriptive purposes, may be made under the general heads of: Whites, Indians, Africans, and the mixed breeds, who are socially sub-divided into—1st, the educated and respectable Mexicans dwelling in towns, villages or on estates; 2d, the Leperos; and 3d, the Rancheros.
The whites are still classed in Mexico as creoles, or, natives of the country; and gachupines and chapetones, who are Spaniards born in the Peninsula. The Spanish population yet remaining in the country, its immediate descendants, and the emigrants from Spain, form a numerous and important body. Her Catholic Majesty's Consul General in Mexico derives a lucrative revenue from supplying this large class of his countrymen with annual "protections," or "cartas de seguridad," granted by the Mexican government, but procured from it through the instrumentality of this functionary.
The Spaniard no longer holds his former rank in the social scale of the ancient colony. There are many wealthy mercantile families in the republic, who owe allegiance to the crown; but among the mechanical classes there are numbers of poor Castilians whose fate would be melancholy in Mexico, were they not succored and protected by their wealthier countrymen.
The Mexican native, in whose veins there is almost always a few drops of indigenous blood, is commonly indolent and often vicious. The bland climate and his natural temperament predispose him for an indulgent, easy and voluptuous life; yet the many
faults of his character may be fairly attributed to the want of education, early self-restraint and the disordered political state of his country which has produced a bad effect upon social life. With quick and often solid talents, the Mexican citizen is not devoted, early in his career, by thoughtful parents, either to intellectual pursuits or to that mental discipline which would regulate an impulsive temperament or fit him for the domestic, scientific, or political position he might attain in other countries, under a different social régime. He recollects that in the best days of the colony his family had been distinguished, powerful and rich, and he finds it difficult, in his present impoverished state, to forget this traditionary position. Accordingly, he acts upon the memorial basis of the past, as if it were still within his grasp or control. This renders him thriftlessly improvident. Mexicans still speak of the epoch when they or their parents "swam in gold," or dispensed ducats to the dependants on whom they now reluctantly bestow coppers. Besides this, their indolent indifference, which almost amounts to Arab fatalism, makes them not only subservient to the past, but idolaters of a hope which is quite as fallacious. According to their belief, better times are continually approaching. Something, they imagine, will shortly occur to improve their broken or periled fortunes. "Paciencia y barajar,"—"patience and shuffle the cards," is a maxim on the lips of every one who is overthrown by a revolution, loses his friends, incurs censure, or finds himself starving for want of a dollar. If you enquire as to their prospects, their friends, their interests, or, indeed, in regard to almost any subject that requires some reflection for a reasonable reply,—they answer with the habitual—"Quien Sabe!"—"who can tell!" which in the vocabulary of a common Mexican is the—"quod erat demonstrandum" of any social or political problem.