The chief club and sport centre of the wealthy Mexicans is the Jockey Club, in a handsome old building in the plaza of Guardiola, and it is considered a mark of distinction by the foreigner to be invited as visiting member to this institution. The British and the American Colonies each have comfortable club-houses, the Spanish their casino, and the French and Germans their respective centres.
The Army of Mexico consists of some 28,000 officers and men, efficient and disciplined, on a footing far superior to the dilapidated soldiery that the traveller generally observes in, and ascribes to, Spanish-America. The rank and file have that remarkable power of performing long marches and heavy work on short rations, which characterises the Spanish-American native soldier in times of stress. Their officers receive an excellent training, and the military schools are considered to take high rank as such. Every citizen, by law, is obliged to serve in the army, but this is not necessarily carried out, and needless to say the upper class, except as officers, do not figure therein. A picturesque and remarkably efficient body of men are the rurales, exceedingly expert horsemen, who range the country, and whose work of the last few decades has entirely wiped out the prevalent highway-robbery of earlier years. Mexico's Navy is small: she does not require a large one, and it consists at present of two training ships, five gunboats, and two transports.
| MEXICAN ARTILLERY: A WAYSIDE ENCAMPMENT. |
The cost of living in the capital, like all other cities, varies much according to style, but in general it may be considered high. Even native produce is not cheap necessarily, whilst imported goods are very expensive. Correspondingly high is the rent of houses or flats. The houses of Mexico City are very generally constructed and let as viviendas, or flats, usually of about six rooms to each floor, a time-honoured arrangement among all classes. Such a flat, according to its position, costs from £5 to £15 per month; and a private house, such as in England would rent at, say, £200 per annum, or, say, £300 in the United States, brings £50 per month in Mexico City, whilst the rents in the suburbs, and those of business establishments are scarcely less. Such property is always expected to yield 12 to 15 per cent. per annum upon the investment. The values of landed property or real estate in the city have risen in an unprecedented manner of late years, from a few cents per square yard a few years ago to 30s. or 50s. per square yard at present, and they are still rising. The cost of building is also exceedingly high. These conditions refer, of course, to the capital. Elsewhere values are often exceedingly low.
The capital and the Federal District, which is that containing the city and its suburban towns, are administered by Ayuntamientos, or Municipal Councils, with Boards of Health and Department of Public Works. The city is policed by mounted and unmounted gendarmes, a total of some 2,300, and travellers may bear witness to the vigilance and courtesy of these officials. Whilst the ordinary gendarmes are recruited from the Indian class largely, they are efficient. The British traveller finds them as obliging as London police, in their more humble sphere, and the American is startled at the possibilities of official courtesy after the rude and aggressive policemen of the United States. The water-supply of the city belongs to the Federal authorities, and is being augmented from the springs of Xochimilco, as the present amount per capita of 137 litres is not sufficient. The new works will ensure a per capita supply of 400 litres, for a population of 550,000 inhabitants. The lighting of the city and suburbs is by electricity, and is efficiently performed, giving the capital the reputation of being an excellently illumined community. A Canadian Company, the Mexican Light and Power Company, holds the contract for this work. The drainage and sewerage of the capital form a fine modern sanitation system, which has recently been completed at a cost of nearly six million pesos; and these works, in connection with the great drainage canal and tunnel already described, form one of the most perfect systems in the world, and a point of interest to visitors.
The system of electric tramways embodies more than 100 miles of line, and gives an efficient urban service as well as furnishing communication with the suburbs and residential towns, as Tacubaya, San Angel, Tlalpam, Guadalupe, and others. There are still some 40 miles of mule-car in operation, such as a few years ago existed over the whole system. The mules were kept going at a gallop over these lines by the incessant thwacking and shouts of the drivers, and the modern system, if less picturesque, is more humane and speedier. The Mexicans, both upper and lower class, are inveterate travellers—many of the latter simply journey on the cars for amusement—and, picturesque and ill-smelling, they crowd the third-class coaches on every journey. In the year 1907 a total of nearly 65 million passengers were carried. The enterprise is in the hands of Canadians—The Mexico Tramways Company, in connection with the Mexico Electric Tramways, Limited, a British corporation. The great plaza, the Zocalo, presents an animated scene with the numerous starting and stopping cars on their incessant journey; and the figures of the saints upon the cathedral façade gaze stonily down upon the electric flashes from the trolley line, whilst the native peon and Indian on the cars has not yet ceased wondering what power it is "that makes them go"!
Life in the City of Mexico for the foreigner contains much of varied interest and colour, although he or she will have to support with philosophy much that is incident upon its peculiar character. The hotels often leave a good deal to be desired, yet they are sufficient for the transient visitor, and the more permanent resident prefers to take up his abode in a hired house. The former palace of Iturbide, a building of handsome architectural form, with a patio of noteworthy style, forms one of the principal hotels. It has been shown that the Republic contains a considerable foreign population, and in addition there is a constantly floating one, brought about largely by American tourists from the United States. The Americans and Spaniards are by far the most numerous among the foreign element, and Great Britain is represented mainly by the fine works of public utility constructed by British contractors, and by other railway and banking interests. British commercial enterprise in Mexico has almost entirely fallen away of recent years, and has been supplanted by American and German activity. Various reasons are assigned to this loss of a once paramount commercial pre-eminence; possibly the real one lies in the diverting of British enterprise to various parts of the British Empire, and also to a slackening of activity from the great centres of British industry as regards foreign lands, which seems to be apparent of recent years. Capital does not venture forth so easily as it did some decades ago, from the shores of Albion, due to a variety of causes.
A noticeable feature of Mexican business life in the capital is what may be termed the Anglo-Saxon—or rather Anglo-American—invasion, for of Britons there are but few in comparison with the ubiquitous American from the United States; and smart, capable-looking men from New York, or more generally from Chicago, or Kansas City, or St. Louis, or other great commercial centres of the middle west, have set up numerous offices and enterprises. They have brought a good deal of wealth into the country, in the form of capital invested in mines and railways, and Mexico has welcomed her primos, or cousins from the North, both for their gold and for their spirit of enterprise. The class of American business-man who goes to Mexico has much improved of late years; and these hijos del Tio Samuel, "sons of Uncle Sam," as the Mexicans sometimes jocularly dub them, are more representative of their country than the doubtful element of a few years since. The junction of these two tides of humanity which roll together but never mingle—the Americans and the Mexicans—affords much matter for interesting observation. The American influence on Mexican civilisation is partly good, partly bad, but it cannot yet be considered more than a drop in the ocean of change in the deep-seated Spanish individuality of the Mexican people.