I went to Señora Huerta’s reception with the Cardens. N., having paid his tithe in the morning, had fled to the country. There were few present. She received on the lower floor of the Palace in the rooms which were once the intimate apartments of Maximilian and Carlota. They were handsome rooms so far as proportions go, but were done over in doubtful taste in Diaz’s time. The dining-room, where tea was served, looked as if paneled in plaster and painted a hideous brownish yellow; but I am told it is really finished in carved Alsatian oak. On the table was one large silver épergne bearing Maximilian’s arms; how it has managed to remain where it is all these years I know not.
The room where Señora Huerta stood, which used to be Carlota’s boudoir, is now hung with an ugly, brownish-pink brocade; a lovely Gobelin border remains to frame the panels of the brocade, and two exquisite lunettes of the same Gobelin are over the windows. The rooms are only inconveniently reached one through the other. Visitors pass through the Salon Rojo, with its big table and chairs, where the Cabinet sits when meetings are held at Chapultepec, then through the Recamara Azul, hung with blue brocade, in which is an elaborate Buhl bed and dressing-table. Other traces of the ruler with the blond hair and blue eyes are not in evidence.
The President made a speech at tea. I was standing, two removed, on his side of the table, next to Mme. Lefaivre and Sir Lionel. Huerta began by wishing the Diplomatic Corps a happy new year. He went on to say, with his usual genial ignoring of the United States, that Mexico was not the equal of great Powers like England, Spain, France, or Germany; that she had not their many blessings of culture and enlightenment; that she was an adolescent, a minor; but that, like any nation, she possessed a right to her own development and evolution along her own line, and he begged the mercy and patience of the Powers. He got balled up in some astronomical metaphors. One heard vague references to Jupiter and Mars; but he soon disentangled himself with his usual sang-froid. I found his speech, under the circumstances, tragic and touching. He is backed up determinedly against the whole world of Powers and Dominations, but at times he must know that he is slipping, slipping. Mexico can’t exist without the favor of the United States, or at least without its indifference.
Eight years ago, in one of those interregna known to all Mexican statesmen, Huerta was overseer of peons building houses in the new quarter of Mexico City. But mostly his avocations have required courage and knowledge. He was for years head of the Geodetic Survey, and was at one time inspector of the “National Railways.” He was first discovered in his native town by a passing general who needed some one for secretarial work. Having taken the fullest advantage of the very poor schooling of his native town, he was ready when opportunity came. He was taken to Mexico City, where he was brought to the attention of Diaz, through whose influence he entered the Military Academy. After this his qualities were speedily acknowledged and he became an important figure in the military history of Mexico.
He once told N. that when, during de la Barra’s incumbency in 1911, he was sent in to Morelos to suppress the Zapatistas, the Cientifico party offered him many inducements to aid in their reinstatement as rulers of Mexico. He added that he had preferred to remain faithful to his constitutional oath. The same thing occurred during the brilliant campaign he carried out in the north for Madero against Orozco. He said, “I could have done it easily then, because I had control of the army and the arms, but I remained faithful to Madero, as representing constitutional government.” Later on, he said, he became convinced that Madero was not capable of the business of government and that disaster was unavoidable.
How well I remember going once to Chapultepec to see Señora Madero. She was in bed in the room next the Salon de Embajadores, consumed with fever and anxieties, twisting a rosary in her hot hands. She told me, with shining eyes, of the news received that very afternoon of the success of Huerta’s northern campaign against Orozco, and added that he was their strongest general and muy leal (very loyal). How quickly any situation here in Latin America becomes part of an irrevocable past!
N. sent a telegram to Mr. Lind in answer to his letter, begging him to give the President his most respectful wishes for a happy new year. This afternoon we received the new Italian minister.
The cook departed an hour ago, leaving word that her sister is dying and that she will be back in eight days. They are apt to take time for grief in this part of the world, and food for an Embassy is a mere detail. The galopina (kitchen-maid), seen for the first time—a pale, high-cheeked Indian girl, with her hair hanging down her back—answered my every question by a most discouraging, “Quién sabe?” The women servants seem to be forever washing their hair, and though it would doubtless be unreasonable and useless to forbid it, the sight has an irritating effect. Everybody who has really lived in Mexico has at some time or other had food brought in by females with long, damp, black hair floating down their backs.
We motored out to the Country Club, where Elim and I followed some golfers over the beautiful links. The short grass was dry and springy, the air clear and cool, without a breath of wind. As we motored home we found ourselves enveloped in an indescribable glory—a strange light thrown over everything by a blue and copper sunset. The luster-tiled roof of the little Chapel of Churubusco was like a diamond held in the sun—the rest of the church gray and flat. All this is historic ground for us as well as for the Mexicans. Over the golf-links and in the fields between the Country Club and Churubusco, our men, on their way up from Vera Cruz in 1847, fought a desperate fight before pressing into Mexico City. It is said we lost more than a thousand men here, and there are grass-grown mounds beneath which pale and bronze heroes lie together in death. In the old Aztec days Churubusco had a temple dedicated to the war-god Huitzilopochtli, and Churubusco is the word the Spaniards produced from this rather discouraging collection of letters.
Burnside has just come to say that a lot of “scrapping,” as he calls it, is beginning again in the north. I don’t know why we say “beginning again”—it never stops. He told me about the three hundred Morelos peasant women taken from their families and sent to Quintana Roo, the most unhealthful of the Mexican states, lying south of Yucatan, where it is customary to send men only. The women had been convoyed there with some idea of forming a colony with the unfortunate men deported to that region for army service. On their arrival there was a mutiny and a scramble for the women by the soldiers. Such disorder prevailed that the officials shipped the women back to Vera Cruz and dumped them on the beach. Almost every woman had a baby, but there was no food, no clothing, no one responsible for them in any way. They were merely thrown there, separated from their families by hundreds of miles. It was one of those tragedies that countless Indian generations have enacted.