Puebla is an old town built by the Spaniards. It is more Mexican than Mexico City. There are more sombrero’d people and more flocks of laden burros, and more houses with little “patios,” than in Mexico. The shops are more attractive because they contain Mexican things, instead of, as in Mexico City, inferior foreign goods, in a desire to be cosmopolitan. There are more old tiled houses in Puebla. Fewer people speak English. No one in the hotel understands anything. This evening Louise tried to explain to a group of five that we wanted mineral water. They did not understand until she made a noise of a bottle exploding.
Monday, August 1, 1921. Puebla.
We caught a 10 o’clock train to Cholula. It was terribly crowded, but we managed to get a front seat in the second car.
Halfway along the line, the front car ran off the track. It took at least an hour and a half hard work on the part of a crowd of Indians, to get it back again. They all looked so clean in their white linen pajama suits (they look like this) tied round the waist with a faded and fringed blue or red sash, and the absurdly big sombrero hat, and bare feet. One wonders how a working man can wear white, it seems so impractical, and yet these men looked cleaner than Dick when he is in white, at the end of a day! How can they dig as they do, with naked feet on the iron spade?
We sat down on the grass in a broiling sun and watched their efforts to reinstate the car. Presently, on his private trolley, arrived the “traffic superintendent,” a young stalwart American, who threw off his coat, displaying a khaki shirt and a large revolver in his belt. There was no mistaking him for anything but an American. He was the rather brutal, square-jaw’ed type. He contained in his face everything that the Latin and the Indian lacked: force, determination, power to command. Moreover, he was broad-shouldered and a head taller than anyone else. When he lifted a crowbar and attempted to do any work himself, the Indians fell back and watched him openmouthed! I said things to myself about the Anglo-Saxon race.
He heard me call Dick, and asked me instantly if I were English. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to. I asked him if he had been in the war, and of course he had, been at Chateau Thierry, and in every other fray. He said he was working for an English company (which the tramcar system is), and that nearly all the superintendents and heads of the English lines were Americans. I was surprised at this, for we had good colonizers, and if we can get on with natives in India, South Africa, Australia, Nigeria, etc., why not with Mexicans. I told him so. He explained that the Mexican is quite different to work with and very difficult; that he is very sensitive and touchy, and that he will only work with good will, “as a matter of fact” he said, “I have not their good will as you can see by my hip,” and he patted his revolver. “Why not?” I asked. “They’re Bolsheviks!” he explained, and unfortunately for me, at that moment, the car went back onto the rails and there was a rush for the seats. We secured our same front row, but another man came and sat next to us, who had not hitherto been there. I disliked the look of him, and before we had gone very far, it was evident he was drunk. He was not an Indian, but the world-wide white type that can be revolting and repulsive. The look on his face made me feel quite sick. I felt if I had a revolver it would have been an awfully good thing to shoot him, because nobody could have minded, and it so obviously would have been a helpful thing to do. When he bent across Louise and bought a couple of bananas off the Indian on my left, and offered them to Dick, I said firmly “no.” So he looked at me, a terrible look, and threw the two bananas out of the window, and the change he got back from paying for them followed the bananas. He then turned round and entertained the whole car behind us, at our expense. Though, what he said we could not understand.
Arrived finally, two hours late, at Cholula, he was walked off by four seemingly very devoted friends. I doubt not they purposed to rid him of the rest of his money instead of letting him fling it into the grass.
In the middle of the village street we stood still and looked up and down. It was one o’clock. We had brought no food with us and we knew not where to go, nor whom to ask. A fellow traveller, respectably dressed, a Mexican farmer probably and who could speak about five words of English came to our rescue: “What you want...?” he asked.
A restaurant? He shook his head! A Hotel? He came from Cholula but had never heard of such a thing. Tourists brought their food with them, he made us understand. “But I will ask” and he went into the chemist shop. Surely, there was a restaurant, down the road. We tracked it down, he came with us. The street was formed by perfectly straight barefronted houses. It might have been an Irish village, but looking through doorways there seemed to be contained in it a whole world of gardens and patios. We entered one of these, as directed, and found ourselves in a clean bare yard. We went to the first door on the yard, but it was a bedroom. The second door was the restaurant, the third combined kitchen and chicken house. An old wizened, bent woman came forward to greet us, and two pretty young Indian girls. Could she give us food? She could.
Soon?