Prisons—Crime.
The prisons of the city of Mexico are in a wretched condition, and, although it has often been proposed to introduce some of the modern penitentiary systems of Europe and the United States, we are not aware that any thing has been done to effect this desirable end. The Accordada is the common prison of Mexico. In front of one of its wings, at a low window protected by stout iron bars, are laid, every morning, the dead bodies that have been found throughout the city during the night. Every day these frightful evidences of murder or violent death are exposed to the gaze of citizens as they pass onward towards the western limits of the city. Sometimes five dead bodies have been seen at one time in this Morgue of Mexico;—and, on days succeeding festivals, the number is sometimes largely augmented. These unfortunate wretches are the victims of quarrels, or sudden fights;—and the front of the deadly window is commonly crowded with women and children—the relatives of the victims who come thither to seek after or to gaze their last on friend, father or husband.
Loathsome as is this exhibition on the exterior of the Accordada, the interior of this edifice is scarcely less frightful. Like all large Spanish edifices it is quadrangular. A strong military guard watches the gate, and a gloomy stairway leads to the second story, whose entrance is guarded by a massive portal. Inside of this, a lofty room is filled with the prison officers and a crowd of subalterns engaged in writing, talking, smoking and walking, whilst the clank of chains, the shouts of prisoners and the constant din of a disorderly establishment, add to the disgusting sounds and demeanor within.
Passing through several iron and wood barred gates, you enter a lofty corridor, running around a quadrangular court-yard, in the centre of which, below, is a fountain of troubled water. The whole of this area is filled with human beings,—the great congress of Mexican crime,—mixed and mingling, like a hill of busy ants swarming from their sandy caverns. Some are stripped and bathing in the fountain;—some are fighting in a corner;—some making baskets in another. In one place a crowd is gathered around a witty story-teller, relating the adventures of his rascally life. In another, a group is engaged in weaving with a handloom. Robbers, murderers, thieves, ravishers, felons of every description, and vagabonds of every grade or aspect, are crammed within this dismal court-yard; and, almost free from discipline or moral restraint, form, perhaps, the most splendid school of misdemeanor and villany on the American continent.
Below,—within the corridor of the second story,—another class of criminals is kept; and yet, even here, men under sentence of death, are pointed out who are still permitted to go about without restraint.
In one corner of the quadrangle is the chapel, where convicts for capital offences are condemned to solitude and penance, during the three last days of their miserable life; and, at a certain hour, it is usual for all the prisoners to gather in front of the door and chant a hymn for the victim of the laws. It is a solemn service of crime for crime.
The women are not generally seen in the Accordada, but their condition is but little better than that of the males. About one hundred of the men, chained in pairs like galley slaves, are driven daily, under a strong guard, into the streets as scavengers; and it seems to be the chief idea of the utility of prisons in Mexico, to support this class of coerced laborers.
There can be no apology, at this period of general enlightenment in the world, for such disgraceful exhibitions of the congregated vice of a country or capital. Punishments, or rather incarceration or labor on the streets, is in reality no sacrifice, because public exhibition deadens the felon's shame, inasmuch as such inflictions cannot become punishments, under any circumstances of a lepero's life. Indeed, what object in existence can the Mexican lepero propose to himself? His day is one of precarious labor and income;—he thieves;—he has no regular home, or if he has, it is some miserable hovel of earth and mud, where his wife and children crawl about with scarce the instinct of beavers. His food and clothing are scant and miserable. He is without education or prospect of social improvement. He belongs to a class that does not rise, for his class is ostracised by hereditary public opinion. He dulls his sense of present misery by intoxicating drinks. His quick temper stimulates him to quarrel. His sleep, after a debauch, is unrefreshing, and he only wakes to encounter another day of uncertainty and wickedness. What, then, is the value of life to him, or one like him? Why toil? Why not steal? What shame has he? Is the prison, with certainty of food, a greater punishment than the free air with uncertainty? On the contrary, he regards it as a lighter punishment, whilst he is altogether insensible to its moral degradation.
Mexico will thus continue to be infested with felons, as long as its prison is a house of refuge, and a comparatively happy home to so large a portion of its outcasts.[38]