The great day of the elections—the 26th—passed off, not only without disturbance, but without voters or votes! The candidates so talked of during these last days were conspicuous by their absence. Felix Diaz was afraid to come to the capital, though all “assurances”—whatever that may mean—had been given him. In Vera Cruz he stayed at a second-rate hotel, next door to the American Consulate—the Stars and Stripes, doubtless, looking very comfortable from an accessible roof-to-roof vantage-ground. He has missed, fatalistically, it would seem, the occasions whereby he might have become ruler of Mexico. He is a gentleman, rather in our sense of the word, and the name he bears is linked to the many glories of Mexico, but this is, probably, his political burial. Already opportunity has called him thrice—Vera Cruz, in 1912; then Mexico City, in February, 1913; now again at Vera Cruz, in October, 1913; and still another wields the destinies of Mexico.
The chers collègues prophesy that we shall be here until next May, when probably new elections will be held. The consensus of opinion is that I might as well get the much-discussed drawing-room curtains and the rest, though I can’t feel enthusiastic about ordering a lot of things that may come in only as I go out. The dining-room continues to strike me as a terribly bleak place, like all north rooms in the tropics.
I must say that one has very little hunger at this height, where the processes of digestion are much slower than at ordinary altitudes. When one has eaten a soup of some sort, a dish of rice garnished with eggs, bacon, and bananas (which any Mexican can do beautifully), or one of the delicious light omelettes—tortilla de huevos—topped off by some of the little, wild, fragrant strawberries almost perennial here, and over which wine is poured as a microbe-killer, one’s “engine is stoked” for twenty-four hours.
There have just been the usual parleyings about the brandy for the turkey—the guajolote, the Indians call him—the ancestral bird of Mexico. The Aztecs ate, and continue to eat, him; and good cooks have the habit of giving him the following happy death: on the morning of the day on which you are to eat him, you generally hear him gobbling about. Then there is the demand for whisky or brandy “por el guajolote, pobrecito.” The unfortunate (or fortunate) bird is then allowed to drink himself to death. This is the effective way of rendering him chewable, it being impossible to hang meats at this altitude. The flesh becomes soft and white and juicy. But try a gravel-fed guajolote that has not gone to damnation!
The food question is difficult here, anyway, and personally I am unable to wrestle with it. The far-famed tropical fruits of this part of the world are most disappointing, with the exception of the mango, with its clear, clean, slightly turpentiny taste. There are many varieties of bananas, but scarcely a decent one to be had, such as any Italian push-cart is stocked with in New York. The chirimoya has a custard-like taste—the chico zapote, looking like a potato, has also, to our palate, a very unpleasant, mushy consistency, and everything is possessed of abnormally large seeds at the center. The beautiful-looking, but tough, peaches that adorn our tables come from California; also the large, rather withered grapes.
III
Federal and Rebel excesses in the north—Some aspects of social life—Mexico’s inner circle—Huerta’s growing difficulties—Rabago—The “Feast of the Dead.”—Indian booths at the Alameda—The Latin-American’s future.
October 29th.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs is now in the drawing-room, from which I have fled, having asked to confer with N. He has been frightened at the intervention outlook and probably has come to try to find out what Washington really has in store for Mexico. He said the other day that the suspense was paralyzing to the nation.
The British vice-consul at Palacio Gomez, Mr. Cunard Cummings, came for lunch. He has had a thorough experience with both rebels and Federals at Torreon, and has terrible stories to tell of both sides. You don’t change Mexican methods by draping them in different banners. In fact, it isn’t the banner, here, but the kind of hand carrying it, that makes the difference. He told us how one night the rebels shot up the hospital in his town, crowded with wounded whom he and the doctors had left fairly comfortable. The next morning, when he went back, his attention was first caught by something dark and sticky dripping from the balcony, as he went into the patio. Up-stairs a dreadful sight was presented by the overturned cots, the broken medicine-bottles, and last, but not least, the human horrors.