The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

As a people the Yucatecans are illiterate to a degree which is almost inconceivable. With wealth untold, they care nothing for books or learning. A man worth three millions sterling confessed to us that there was not a book in his house, and that he never read a paper. And he was certainly one of the most intelligent men in the country, and a man, too, who had travelled extensively in Europe. But if the men are supremely ignorant of everything except money-making, and uninterested in aught but the gross sensuality which is the be-all and the end-all of their worthless lives, the women are worse. It is really not their fault; for they are little better, if at all, than odalisques, leading in youth the lives of toys; in age spending their days in over-eating and over-sleeping. Of their colossal ignorance of facts within the knowledge of every National School child, the following is an amusing example. A young Yucatecan lady, daughter of one of the richest of the families in the State, was sent to New York for a trip for her health, and she was to go on to England. She suffered so much from seasickness on the voyage out that the doctors in America said that she must not undertake the longer voyage to England, but must return at once to Yucatan. Her married sister in Merida, talking of her return, said she would come back by land. The family are so enormously rich that it was quite possible for them to contemplate the great cost of the overland trip; but it was pointed out to the señora that the invalid would have many weeks of travel, and would have to make a very wide detour south, to avoid the swamps of Chiapas. "Oh no" sweetly replied the millionairess, "she is to come by diligence via Havana!"

The illiteracy of the wealthier classes is reproduced in a grosser form among the ordinary Yucatecans. They have no thoughts beyond their food, their women, and their drinks. But there is much to be said for the dolce far niente view of life, and one could easily forgive this race of sybarites if they were otherwise agreeable. Really it sounds like an exaggeration, but the Yucatecans seemed to us the most disagreeable folk in the world. They are avaricious to the degree of dishonesty. They will not actually steal, but they will cheat you every time and chortle over it. Quite a big man, a Jefe, who also kept a shop in one town we visited, again and again tried to cheat us out of odd centavos over some trifling purchase. It was incredible, but it was deliberate. They are entirely untrustworthy in business: they will give their word and break it without scruple if it suits their interests. A practical example of this came to our notice in the islands, where there is a good deal of trade with American ports such as Key West. An American skipper told us that he had, at the moment of speaking, no less than one hundred and sixty pairs of women's shoes on his hands, through the impertinent shuffling of his customers. They would ask him to bring them shoes from the States, give the number, and then if the shoes did not quite look what they thought they wanted, they said "No quiero" ("I do not want"), and the poor trader, having paid cash for the footgear, was "landed."

No Yucatecan will pay a debt unless you dun him ad nauseam. It is always "mañana" (to-morrow), and, as the stranger in Yucatan learns to know only too well, mañana never comes. If a Yucatecan owes you five dollars, he will pay you three. For themselves, they are the most remorseless dunners. If you have the misfortune to owe a few dollars, for, say, the hire of a volan, you will have the wretch literally before dawn at your door, beating at it and demanding the money, though he well knows you are stopping some days. It is not so much the demanding of the money, which is, after all, their right, as it is the grossly uncivil way they do it. We found this to be the experience of all foreigners resident in the country, so we were forced to acquit ourselves of having any especially dishonest look. An American told us that, owing a trifling sum to a wealthy woman, the latter came to the hotel and demanded the money with an insolence which was almost intolerable.

Our friend the American skipper, who had traded with the islands for more than ten years, told us that the insolence of the people in matters of trade was extreme. Knowing him to have boots or shirts to sell, they would call from their doors, "Capitan, yo quiero" ("I want"), whatever it was. "Damn 'em," said the little man, "let 'em come up to my store and choose. No, they want me to fag things to their doors, literally put the boots on their feet." Another peculiarity of the people is that they do not recognise a difference of goods. They think the cheapest shoe or cloth should be the standard for all goods.

The Yucatecan women are, there is no denying it, very often extremely lovely. It is just that beauty which one instinctively associates with a people who have brought sexual relations to a fine art of absolute self-indulgence. By one of the only three Englishmen in the country we were told that the state of morality among the Yucatecans themselves, quite apart from the very sad side of the slavery question to which we have referred in the last chapter, beggars description. We can well believe it.

Marriages are contracted at very early ages, sometimes the bride's and groom's years totalling a good deal under thirty. Among the wealthier Yucatecans marriages are nearly always de convenance, and are arranged by the two families: the boy seldom, the girl never, having a say in the matter. Thereafter the child-wife passes into a quasi-seraglio type of life. There are never any men visitors to the house, and such things as wholesome exercise are rigorously taboo to all upper-class Yucatecan matrons. If the doctor orders exercise, the miserable little animated toy of the Yucatecan Croesus drives some miles out of the city, and then stops her carriage and solemnly walks up and down the dusty roadway for the allotted time. No Yucatecan woman of position must ever walk in public: that would be a social faux pas far more serious than to have a child before marriage. The exalted women of Merida very rarely leave their homes till dark, when they drive round the plaza. Occasionally they go shopping, when they remain in their carriages, and the goods are brought out to them by obsequious shopmen. The life they lead is of the most empty and vapid nature. Surrounded by dozens of Indian servants, they loll all the day in their hammocks, listening to such gossip as their women friends or their servants can tell them. A curious result of this harem life they lead is the roaring trade done by Turkish pedlars who travel all over Yucatan. Hours are spent by the rich women examining their rolls of cloths and finery. Once a year the Paris milliners and modistes visit Merida and take the orders of the richer wives.

The women accept their lot in life very philosophically. It cannot be said of them, as Canning said of the Dutch traders, and as might only too truly be said of many English and American women, that "in matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch is giving too little and asking too much." They ask very little but the amorous attentions of their lords and masters, as long as their looks last; when they see themselves replaced with really complete apathy in those special functions. Not that even in their bridal years they have not already been well broken-in by a running fire of infidelities on the part of their menfolk. But they have long been used to that, when as children they have seen the fate of their little Indian girl playmates. Of the Yucatecan woman one might say only too truly, quoting the reported saying of the Empress Eugenie when her rather erratic Emperor brought up to introduce a countess, who was notorious as a royal mistress, and who on this particular evening appeared as "Queen of Hearts" with a large gold heart swinging some way below her corsage, "Madame, vous portez votre cœur très bas." She does, but she really is not to blame. She has been taught nothing better.

The Suffragette question has not yet invaded Yucatan, and lovely woman is content with the life of a lapdog. As well ask the Dudus and Haidees of a Turkish pasha's harem to rebel as these charming señoras, swinging in their hammocks and puffing at their cigarettes. As for housekeeping, they are contemptible in their uselessness. An American lady very kindly volunteered one day to show a Yucatecan lady how to make a cake to which she had taken a great fancy. While our friend was busy mixing the ingredients, she quite naturally said, "While I'm doing this, you beat up the eggs." A look of absolute horror came over the woman's face. "Beat up eggs! Oh! I could not possibly do that. One of my Indian girls can do that for you." But as we have said, they fill the rôle of pretty toys to perfection; and they later prove excellent mothers. They are great breeders, these Yucatecans, and family life is of the closest, the big mansions of Merida often housing four generations. Curiously enough, despite the tropical climate, the Yucatecan woman retains her looks quite late into life very often. Our hostess at the breakfast was the mother of seven children, the eldest a girl of eleven, as tall as herself, and yet she certainly did not look more than twenty-two or three, and so girlish that it was difficult to believe she was a mother at all. But a far more remarkable case was that of a woman who was but forty-six and had had twenty-four sons! We did not see this latter-day Hecuba, but we were told that she was still quite comely.

There is very little rebellion among Yucatecan women at their fate, and we certainly heard nothing at all of divorce. We do not think it exists as an institution, though it is possible that in this, as in all else, the men have their own way and, if they want to, can get rid of their wives. Among the less wealthy families, the marriages are less formal in their makings and the wives do more work: that is really the only difference. Re-marriage among the men is the rule. Most of the elder men appear to have been married at least three times, which rather suggests that the average life for males is longer than for females. This is possibly so. The Yucatecans certainly look a healthy people, though the superfluous fat which is noticeable even in the boys and girls scarcely suggests real constitutional strength. What surprised us greatly was the terrible prevalence of leprosy among the richest classes. It is not an exaggeration to say that you could scarcely find a wealthy family without this ghastly taint; and some of the greatest land-owners and their children are eaten up with it. No steps appear to be taken to isolate the cases, and just before our arrival in the country a young leper, enormously rich, had contracted a marriage with a lovely girl, though he was then in a moribund condition. He had died a few months after his wedding, and while we were in Merida the bride died of the loathsome disease. It is said to have been brought from Spain in the earliest days of the Conquest, and it has remained curiously restricted to the richer classes. You see little or nothing of it among the lowlier Yucatecans, and it appears unknown among the Indians, who, as a rule, are wonderfully free of all skin troubles. The lepers or those threatened with the terrible curse were some of them men of advanced years, and their general health did not appear in any way affected. One old fellow had but just lost two brothers from it, but he himself had so far escaped, though his children certainly looked tainted. Like insanity, it often skips a generation. It was curious to see these sybaritical plutocrats, eager of life's "ecstasy's utmost to clutch at the core," living their apolaustic days out, haunted by this terrible shadow.