I spent a quiet evening reading the fascinating book Don L. Garcia Pimentel sent me yesterday, Bibliografia Mexicana de lo Siglo XVI. I am impressed anew with the wonderful work done by that handful of friars, Franciscans and Dominicans, who came over immediately after Cortés and began with the Conquistadores the work of Spanish civilization in the new world. Their first acts, as they made their way through the country, were to do away with the bloody sacrificial rites which disgraced and discredited the Aztec civilization. They built everywhere churches, hospitals, and schools, teaching gentler truths to the Indians, who gathered by thousands for instruction in the beautiful old patios to be found in front of all the colonial churches.
One might almost say that Mexico was civilized by that handful of friars, sixteen or seventeen in all, who came over during the first eight or ten years following the Conquest. Their burning zeal to give the true faith to the Indians dotted this beautiful land with countless churches, and an energy of which we can have no conception changed the gorgeous wilderness into a great kingdom. Padre Gante, one of the greatest of them, who arrived in 1522, was related to the Emperor Charles V. He had been a man of the world, and was a musician and an artist. He had his celebrated school at Tlaltelolco, now the Plaza de Santiago, which, shabby and shorn of all its ancient beauty, is used as the city customs headquarters. He wrote his Doctrina Christiana and baptized hundreds of thousands of Indians during his fifty years’ work. He not only taught them to read and write, but started schools of drawing and painting, at which he found them very apt. They already possessed formulas for all sorts of beautiful colors, and had their own arts, such as the glazing and painting of potteries, the making of marvelous garments of bright birds’ feathers, and of objects in gold and silver, of the finest workmanship. In the museum one can see beautiful old maps of Mexico City when she was Anahuac, the glory of the Aztecs, painted on cloth made from the maguey.
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas worked with Fray Gante, and they were greatly aided by the first viceroys. Fray Motolinía came later, and his Historia de los Indios is the reference book of all succeeding works on Nueva Espagna. The friars tried by every means to alleviate the miseries of the Indians, and hospitals, homes for the aged and decrepit, orphanages and asylums of all kinds were established. The generation which immediately succeeded the Conquest must have been a tragic spectacle, exhausted by resistance and later on by the pitiless work of rebuilding cities, especially Mexico City, which was done in four years—to the sound of the whip. The viceroys were responsible only to the Consejo de las Indias, in far-away Spain, and their success came naturally to be judged by the riches they secured from this treasure-house of the world, at the expense, of course, of the Indians, though many of the viceroys tried honestly, in conjunction with the friars, to alleviate the Indian lot. Seven or eight volumes of hitherto unpublished works are waiting for me from Don Luis Garcia Pimentel, to one of whose ancestors, Conde de Benavente, Motolinía dedicated his Historia de los Indios. I have simply steeped myself in Mexicana—from the letters of Cortés, the recitals of Bernal Diaz, who came over with him, down to Aleman and Madame Calderon de la Barca.
Well, it is getting late and I must stop, but the history of Mexico is without exception the most fascinating, the most romantic, and the most improbable in the world; and the seed of Spanish civilization implanted in this marvelous land has produced a florescence so magnetic, so magical, that the dullest feel its charm. All that has been done for Mexico the Spaniards did, despite their cruelties, their greeds, and their passions. We, of the north, have used it only as a quarry, leaving no monuments to God nor testaments to man in place of the treasure that we have piled on departing ship or train. Now we seem to be handing back to Indians very like those the Spaniards found, the fruits of a great civilization, for them to trample in the dust. Let us not call it human service.
January 24th.
Von Hintze came in for a while this morning. Like all the foreign representatives, he is weary of his work here; so many ennuis, so much waiting for what they all believe alone can be the outcome now—American supremacy in some form.
Shots were heard in town last night. Dr. Ryan, who is making his home with us, thought it might be the long-threatened cuartelazo (barracks’ revolution), and went out to see, but it turned out to be only a little private shooting. The Burnsides have gone to live at Vera Cruz.
January 26th.
Only a word before beginning a busy day. I must go out to Chapultepec to see that the luncheon of twelve, for Hanihara and Cambiaggio, is all right. The town is filling with Japanese officers from the Idzuma, lying at Manzanillo. There will be a veritable demonstration for them, indicating very completely the anti-American feeling. There is an enormous official program for every hour until Friday night, when they return to their ship.