HACIENDA CHILDREN
INDEPENDENT INDIANS
As we wrote in an earlier chapter, so complete is the isolation of the two sexes publicly, that the casual visitor would conclude that the Yucatecans were a most moral race. You never see youths and girls walking together. Such a sight as Hyde Park, for instance, presents on a summer evening, a couple, sometimes two, on each seat, carrying on a passionate courtship, regardless of the passers, you would never see in Yucatan if you lived there fifty years. More than that: you never see a husband out with a wife. An American who had known the country for ten years told us that he had never seen a young fellow and girl walking together in the evening. Of course, the richest girls never walk at all; and their lovers are found for them. The poorer maidens find their own at a precociously early age. If trouble results, the lover can adopt one of three courses. He can marry the girl; pay a fine of five hundred dollars to her father; or go to prison for five years. These Draconian rules obviate our degrading system of affiliation summonses. The utmost cynicism prevails in all sex questions, and it would probably be hard to find a Yucatecan father who would not be ready to sell his daughters, so long as the price was high enough. And it is really sale, not merely the worldly method of England and America of getting a rich suitor and a fat settlement for a girl. The fathers pocket the money.
Courtship is a formal affair conducted always before one or both parents. If a youth fancies a maid, he calls at her house and, scarcely noticing her, talks to her father about anything in the world but his errand. This must go on for many nights till he is allowed by etiquette to mention his desires. If he is an eligible parti, he is then admitted to the family circle as son-in-law elect. There are two stages in the wedding; first a publication of it, somewhat equivalent to our banns, which constitutes the formal betrothal; and then the ceremony, at which there are no bridesmaids or groomsmen. By law the civil ceremony alone is legally binding, but in practice the religious service is also often held. How loosely this all works in practice can scarcely be realised till it is known that money unlocks every door in this venal land. Men can do just what they like in Yucatan if they can pay. On one of the islands a young American trading on the coasts, with the full approval of her parents who slept in the next room, spent every night with an unmarried girl, though they all knew that he was himself married. These temporary alliances are easily arranged, if you satisfy the father's demands, which are by no means exorbitant from all accounts.
In Merida this venality has reached such a pitch as to be really hardly credible. There is one old ogre, whose name we must naturally suppress, who has a charming wife; and keeps five mistresses formally, not counting those informal ones represented by the dozens of slave-girls on his ranches. But all this is not enough. He buys young girls from their parents, most of them well-to-do folk, and when he has ruined and tired of them, he assigns them as wives to one of his countless dependents with a small dowry. Quite scientific, is it not? And that man is regarded with veneration by every Yucatecan. They would all like to be as rich as he and do likewise. Meanwhile, at least they have daughters to sell, black-eyed, black-haired, plump-limbed Hebes, fresh enough and dainty enough to whet the appetite of even the most jaded ogre, the most glutted of purse-proud Yucatecan Joves.
All this is really no one's business, and to the stranger does not matter a pin. We are not Hot Gospellers intent on preaching morality. Yucatecan vices affect Yucatecans alone. The ogres are pleased, the avaricious fathers are pleased, and the girls are doubtless willing victims of this combination of greed and lust. All this is no one's affair if—and it is a very large IF—all this very agreeable self-indulgence was only at the expense of freemen and equals. But when a whole race is forcibly prostituted to the avarice and lasciviousness of an upstart people, trespassers in the land; when womanhood, as pure and sweet as any which the Almighty God has created for the world's honour, is trampled under swinish feet; when a barbarous serfdom stops not at murder in its unrestrained tyranny, then of a truth it is time for some one to raise his voice against such race exploitation. We do so here, and on our return to London we addressed to the President of Mexico a letter telling him the truth. To this letter His Excellency made no reply. It is more than likely it never reached him, was suppressed by an official. Be that as it may, we now consider ourselves at liberty to publish it, and we do so here as the fitting close to this review of social Yucatan.
To His Excellency
Señor General Diaz, MexicoMost Excellent Sir and General,
We travelled out to Mexico with the purpose of exploring North-Eastern Yucatan and studying the wonderful ruined cities there.