Am waiting for the auto. Elim and I go out to the del Rios’ garden at Tlalpam for a picnic; the del Rios are in Europe. The day is heavenly beyond compare and the Ajusco hills (in which the Zapatistas operate) are soft and blue in the near distance. We all miss Mr. James Brown Potter very much. He was the witty, unfailing life of all those picnics of my first Mexican visit.
Villa has just set up a somewhat uncertain dictatorship in Chihuahua, in which state he, so to speak, graduated in banditry. He began his public killing career not too badly, according to the story, by shooting a man for seducing his sister. It was probably the best act of his life. He is now in the prime of life and “ready for anything.” Even in Diaz days, Villa was a proscribed bandit; but with a few followers, well-mounted and knowing every trail and water-hole in the country, he was uncatchable. He subsequently went over to Madero. The women flee the towns that he and his men enter. I suppose there is no crime that he has not committed, no brutality toward wounded, sick, and prisoners and women. With it all, he may be the heaven-born general that some assert, but God help Mexico if he is! In Chihuahua, Luis Terrazas, one of the nephews of Enrique Creel (who was ambassador to Washington, Minister for Foreign Affairs, etc.), is being held for five hundred thousand dollars ransom. Mr. C. came to see N. the other day, looking very much put out. N. thought he perhaps reflected that five hundred thousand dollars was a large sum, and was wondering if it was worth it.
However, it is always convenient to suppose that people held for ransom will get along all right, even if the money isn’t forthcoming. N. promised Mr. C. that through the most indirect of channels he would have it brought to Villa’s attention that he’d better be careful on account of unfavorable impressions in the United States. One wonders and wonders where Villa, Aguilar, Zapata, and all the brigands get their endless guns and ammunition. Of course the foreign Powers think we supply it or let it be supplied.
Intervention in Mexico is an accomplished fact, it would almost seem, though not a shot has been fired by us. And what is done cannot be undone.
VIII
The sad exodus from Chihuahua—Archbishop Mendoza—Fiat money—Villa’s growing activities—Indian stoicism—Another Chapultepec reception—A day of “Mexican Magic” in the country.
December 14th.
This evening, as I was coming through the Zocalo motoring home from the Country Club, I found the Palacio decked out in the national colors, to celebrate the clausura of the Camara, which will not open until April 1, 1914. Huerta has all extraordinary powers vested in himself, and is going to run the whole “shooting-match.” Thick défilés of carriages and autos, full of richly dressed people, were on both sides of San Francisco, the most brilliantly, extravagantly lighted street I know. The Embassy motor was allowed to run quickly between the two lines. The town seemed so animated and prosperous that one can’t realize the horrors underneath.
The cantinas have been closed on Sunday for several months—a wise act of Urrutia, then Minister of Gobernación. The people thus buy food, instead of pulque, on the Sabbath, and can work on Monday—San Lunes, as the first, often idle, day of the week is called. The pulquerías, with their sickening, sour smell, abound in all the poorer quarters, and are distinguished, besides the smell, by fringes of many-colored tissue-paper hanging from the tops of the doors. Their names—El amor divino, Hija del Mar, El Templo de Venus, etc., seem to be enticing.
The Italian minister, Cambiaggio, is “biding a wee” in Havana, having been stopped by his government.... It is the question, always recurring, of not having a new minister arrive who, by presenting his credentials, places another stone in the Huerta arch....