A wealthy Yucatecan who has travelled much is credited with saying, "After Merida give me Paris." There is really much to be said for his patriotic view. Merida is a beautiful city. The vista down the long street from our balcony, with the gay colours of the girls' dresses, the snowy whiteness of the men's clothes, the smart brass-decked skeleton cabs, the soft yellow of the houses (all houses in Merida are by order painted yellow to prevent the unpleasant sun-glare which white walls would mean), here and there a waving crown of green peeping over the housetops from some garden-patio, made a right pleasant picture against the deep blue of the cloudless sky. But Merida owes none of her undoubted beauty to her buildings. There are but three worth mention, and this not from any architectural merits but solely because of their historical interest. These are the cathedral, the bishop's palace, and the house of Francisco de Montejo, conqueror of Yucatan. They are all in the Plaza.
The cathedral is a gaunt pile of plastered mediocrity, with naked façade flanked by two turreted towers, lair of the accursed bells which had marred the tropic beauty of the morning. It was completed in 1598 and cost some £60,000, equivalent to-day to perhaps a quarter of a million. Within, there is little worth seeing except the twelve immense columns which support the roof. The hangings and drapings are as tawdry as is the much begilded altar. The pulpit is dusty, dirty and old, and is reached by wooden steps literally rotten and in holes. But if there is nothing worth seeing there is something which is very astonishing. On each pillar is hung a notice which reads: "Sirvanse no Escupir en el Pavimento de este Templo" ("You are requested not to spit on the floor of this church"), and on the flooring of the plain yellow-wood seats, and all along each aisle at the entrance to the pews, are spittoons! Yes, it sounds incredible, but they are there—right up to the altar-rails a vista of earthenware abominations such as disfigure the sanded quaintness of the bar-parlour of an old village inn. In a later chapter on Yucatecan manners we shall have more to say of the habit thus officially countenanced by the Church. That perspective of spittoons from door to altar-rail in Merida Cathedral has probably no parallel in any country.
The bishop's palace adjoins the cathedral, and bears the date 1757. It is so hideous in its flat stuccoed plainness that it is really wonderful that even the Yucatecans do not rebel and raze it to the ground. Beneath it entrance is obtained by a large double wooden doorway to a vestibule—opening into the bishop's garden—which forms a Lady Chapel, where on a trestle, such as those upon which the cocoanut and sweetstuff men do their roaring trades on Bank holidays at Hampstead, an iron tray covered with small spikes is provided for the faithful to stick a tallow dip—value one centavo (a farthing)—in front of a plaster image of the Virgin.
The house of Montejo—now the property of one of the many branches of the Peon family, the wealthiest of all Yucatecans—bears the date 1541, and is thus the oldest building in Merida. The façade is fine, and the doorway is a typically Spanish representation of militarism plus bigotry—two knights, armed cap-à-pie, being engaged in the congenial occupation of trampling underfoot two Indians who "take it lying down," as, alas! their descendants are still doing.
Life in Merida is as artificial as—indeed more artificial than—that of Mexico City. The latter, owing, as we have said, her fashions and her veneer of civilisation to Paris and New York, is assisted by her size in still being much herself. Not so Merida. No self-respecting Yucatecan wants to be himself. All of them are pathetically striving all the time after a culture which they do not understand, and which fits them as ill as his dress suit fits the hired butler at a suburban dance. "Scratch the Russian and you find the Tartar." Most Yucatecans are the vulgarest of parvenus, and by the least scratching you find the savage. They are ashamed of their Indian past, and by an exaggerated class-arrogance they try to widen the gulf between themselves and the Indians, as the purse-proud woman thinks she will be mistaken for a lady if she calls every servant a "slut." They love to emphasise their superior wealth by dubbing their lowlier brothers and sisters mestizos and mestizas. The truth is the Yucatecans form but one class, and they are all mestizos. There are few pure Indians in the capital, and those are the domestic servants of the wealthy families.
You do not see the great contrasts of wealth so marked in Mexico City. The whole town has an air of prosperity, and it is not an air merely—it is a fact. During the past twenty years the group of large henequen growers—about a score—have divided among themselves as a result of this "green gold," no less than 800,000,000 Mexican dollars. And this vast sum has percolated through the whole place. Merida is a Monte Carlo for extravagance and extortion. There is no social standard but £ s. d. A man is or is not great socially in proportion to his banking account. Nowhere in the world probably is money so absolutely God as here. We shall show later what moral effect this fact has had upon the citizens, and through them upon the whole of so-called civilised Yucatan. Corruption and venality are rampant. Few races have stamina enough to resist the corroding influences of sudden wealth. The silver mines of Mexico proved the knell of Spanish imperial greatness. Lord Beaconsfield said once, "Only a great man can stand power." In Yucatan wealth is power, the only power, and the Yucatecans stand it very badly.
In this city of mushroom millionaires everything is naturally very dear. Food is practically all imported. We had been told that at our hotel it was impossible to get a square meal for less than five dollars (ten shillings). It was not quite so bad as that, but for half that sum it is true enough you could only get just such a snack as an honestly hungry Briton would regard as a wholly inadequate quick-lunch-talk-business-while-you-eat style of meal. Few of the Yucatecans eat out of their own houses, and thus restaurants—at any rate of the cleanly and better class—are few and far between. Those which do exist are literally dens of robbers. The traveller in Yucatan—as indeed in all Mexico—has to learn what to a Briton, accustomed to more or less trust his fellow-man, is a very unpleasant lesson, namely that you can trust no one. The only safety on ordering a meal is to first drive a bargain. You must know down to the smallest roll or condiment what your repast is going to cost you. No Merida hotels or restaurants ever attach prices to their menus. They know a trick worth two of that. Each restaurateur is a gastronomic Procrustes who cuts his prices according to "the cut" of his customers. An article served at twenty-five centavos to one diner will at the next table boom to fifty at the discretion of the subtle waiter. It is very hard to always remember to do this unpleasant bargaining before you take your place at a table. But you are literally lost if you do not. On this glorious Sunday morning we were successfully caught in a place where they charged four shillings for three glasses of lemonade and three or four fly-blown cakes. The cakes you would get anywhere for a penny, and lemons could be bought in the street outside at six a penny.
The streets of Merida are full of life and bustle, the cleanliest of bustle. Even the blind beggars (blindness is rather common) who crouch against the walls, with their plaintive cry of "Pobre Ciego," are as neat as a new pin. Smartly varnished mule-drawn tramcars tinkle their way to and from the suburbs. Outside the railings of the cathedral sit all day a line of Indian women in front of baskets filled with cakes, flattish, appetising-looking, sometimes as much as two or three feet across. Under the arcades of the Municipal Palace, which forms the north side of the plaza, is a motley scene of life. Here are tiny cigar-booths; small drinking-counters whereat are dispensed hour after hour to thirsty crowds "refrescos," drinks of squashed fruits—the deliciously sweet guanabana, limes, cocoanut water, pineapple or whatnot—and iced waters; withered beldames with baskets of sweets; lottery-ticket sellers and itinerant booksellers; while at the small round tables set in the doorways the Yucatecan loafers drink coffee or the native spirits, and from within the shaded rooms is heard the eternal click-click of billiard balls (billiards, the French game without pockets, is a mania in Yucatan) as the young Yucatecans crowd round the green tables. The edges of the arcaded pavements are occupied by large chairs on daises; lolling in the chair the Yucatecan lad who will polish your boots for fifteen centavos. The Yucatecan jeunesse dorée are dandies if nothing else, and this must be the reason why there are more bootblacks to the square mile in Merida than in any capital we wot of. But the lordly bootblack who waits for you to come to him is not half as picturesque a figure as the peripatetic bootboy. All day long these little roguish-eyed rascals wander round the plaza carrying their boot boxes and begging you to let them kneel in front of you and make your boots like looking-glasses. The boys are all so pretty and have got such winning smiles that you are insanely inclined to have your boots blacked every quarter of an hour. Joking apart, boot-blacking has been reduced to a science in Merida, and the operators put out of joint the noses of the London Boot Brigade.
Time was when Merida was far more picturesque than she is to-day. In the old city, when few of the citizens were grand at reading, streets were, as indeed they were once in London, known by their signs. Thus at one corner there was a wooden image of a flamingo; this was Flamingo Street. Another was the street of the "old woman," the corner being decorated with an effigy, highly coloured, of a bespectacled dame. There was a Tapir Street adorned with a representation of that queer pig-deer which still haunts the swampy forests of Southern Yucatan and Chiapas; a Crane Street, and so on. But all this is a thing of the past. America has invaded Yucatan even to her street-naming, and Merida, with her 48th and 63rd Streets, with the street-numbers reduplicated on the corners thus: 503, 62nd Street, 503, is as maddening and intricate as New York. Only one of the old signs remains, that of the elephant.