AZTEC HEAD IN TERRA-COTTA.
(From Mr. Christy’s Collection.)
CHAPTER VIII.
COCOYOTLA. CACAHUAMILPÁN. CHALMA. OCULAN. TENANCINGO. TOLUCA.
IXTCALCO CHURCH.
A little before dark we came to the hacienda of Santa Rosita de Cocoyotla, another sugar-plantation which was to be our head-quarters for some days to come. We presented our letter of introduction from the owner of the estate, and the two administradors received us with open arms. We were conducted into the strangers’ sleeping-room, a long barrack-like apartment with stone walls and a stone floor that seemed refreshingly dark and cool; we could look out through its barred windows into the garden, where a rapid little stream of water running along the channel just outside made a pleasant gurgling sound. Appearances were delusive, however, and it was only the change from the outside that made us feel the inside cool and pleasant. For days our clothes clung to us as if we had been drowned, and the pocket-handkerchiefs with which we mopped our faces had to be hung on chair-backs to dry. Except in the early morning, there was no coolness in that sweltering place.
In one corner of our room I discerned a brown toad of monstrous size squatting in great comfort on the damp flags. He was as big as a trussed chicken, and looked something like one in the twilight. We pointed him out to the administrador, who brought in two fierce watchdogs, but the toad set up his back and spirted his acrid liquor, and the dogs could not be got to go near him. We stirred him up with a bamboo and drove him into the garden, but he left his portrait painted in slime upon our floor.
The Indian choir chanted the Oración as we had heard it the night before at Temisco, and then came the calling over of the raya. After that we walked about the place, and sat talking in the open corridor. Owners of estates, and indeed all white folks living in this part of the country were beginning to feel very anxious about their position, and not without reason. Ordinary political events excite but little interest in these Indian districts, and so trifling a matter as a revolution and a change of people in power does not affect them perceptibly. The Indians are absolutely free, and have their votes and their civil privileges like any other citizens. All that the owners of the plantations ask of them is to work for high wages, and hitherto they have done this, but for years it has been becoming more and more difficult to get them to work. All they do with the money when they get it, is to spend it in drinking and gambling, if they are of an extravagant turn of mind; or to bury it in some out-of-the-way place, if they are given to saving. If they were whites or half-caste Mexicans they would spend their money upon fine clothes and horses, but the Indian keeps to the white cotton dress of his fathers, and is never seen on horseback. Now this being the case, it does not seem unreasonable that they should not much care about working hard for money that is of so little use to them when they have got it, and that they should prefer living in their little huts walled with canes and thatched with palm-leaves, and cultivating the little patch of garden-ground that lies round it—which will produce enough fruit and vegetables for their own subsistence, and more besides, which they can sell for clothes and tobacco. A day or two of this pleasant easy work at their own ground will provide this, and they do not see why they should labour as hired servants to get more. This is bad enough, think the hacendados, but there is worse behind. The Indians have been of late years becoming gradually aware that the government of the country is quite rotten and powerless, and that in their own districts at least, the power is very much in their own hands, for the few scattered whites could offer but slight resistance. The doctrine of “America for the Americans” is rapidly spreading among them, and active emissaries are going about reminding them that the Spaniards only got their lands by the right of the strongest, and that now is the time for them to reassert their rights.
The name of Alvarez is circulated among them, as the man who is to lead them in the coming struggle—Alvarez the mulatto general, whose hideous portrait is in every print-shop in Mexico. He was President before Comonfort, and is now established with his Indian regiments in the hot pestilential regions of the Pacific coast.