On another occasion they flamed out against Dr. Daniel M. Molloy, of the Rockefeller Foundation, because the name of Rockefeller suggested to them another capitalistic invasion. This Foundation has been active throughout Central America, particularly in combating hook-worm, wherewith nearly all the barefoot inhabitants are infected. It suppressed a yellow fever epidemic which swept throughout these countries in 1918. It has built hospitals, improved water supplies, taught hygiene, and worked in many other ways for the betterment of the various republics. The ignorant peons, indifferent to hygiene, had always regarded sickness and disease as something inevitable, to be accepted with fatalistic patience. In infant mortality, Mexico surpasses all the world’s civilized communities, while its total death-rate is thrice that of the United States, and it is safe to assume that the Central-American republics—in the absence of statistics—keep pace with Mexico. The educated classes have never made much effort to relieve this situation. In Tegucigalpa a recently appointed director of a government hospital had to begin his work by removing forty-two cans of garbage left in the hospital patio by the last director. The Rockefeller Foundation there, in employing a new native physician of high standing in the community, discovered that he had never studied bacteriology and had but a vague idea that any diseases were caused by germs. In lands where such conditions prevail, the Foundation should have been hailed as a God-send, especially since it came largely at its own expense. But a newspaper in León published daily editorials attacking Dr. Molloy, and insisting that Rockefeller would presently be demanding oil concessions. When no such demands were forthcoming, the editor found another argument in the fact that Dr. Molloy was advocating new methods in sewerage disposal.
“Aha!” he shouted on his front page. “We see the nigger in the woodpile. This gringo is a secret representative of a manufacturing firm that hopes to sell us American plumbing devices!”
IX
At the time of my sojourn in Managua, there was a temporary lull in such attacks, for the city was indulging in its semi-annual outburst of culture.
The aristocrats of Central America are very fond of theatrical entertainment, and some of the republics have built national theaters, but such is the expense of bringing artistes from Europe that performances are rare, and usually subsidized by the government.
Frijolita, who had danced before all the crowned heads of Europe, had recently been performing in Tegucigalpa. The Honduran government, having paid her expenses to the country, had allowed her to get out as best she could, wherefore she was now about to dance in the neighboring capitals. All Nicaragua felt honored. Every poet in the country tuned his lyre, and prepared to sing her praises.
In Central America nearly every one who can write is a poet. The composition of verses is a universal indoor sport among the young men. On Sunday each newspaper devotes a page to the unremunerated labors of the local bards. Guests at the hotels, seeing me scribbling in a note book, always inquired whether I were writing verses. Every one who can afford the luxury, prints privately his musings, which no one else ever seems to read. When it became known that Frijolita would dance, the editors themselves took a crack at versification, and published their outpourings neatly boxed on the first sheet.
I shared my hotel room with Bosco, the tenor, and Maestro, the orchestra conductor. Frijolita, stopping at the most expensive hotel, had dispatched them to the sort of hostelry where itinerant travel-writers were forced to stay, and they were much incensed. But to our room came the minor devotees of art from the Nicaraguan population to bask in their glory, and both Bosco and Maestro entertained them with stories of Frijolita’s absurd temperament, and with sly comments upon her age, suggesting that she had not really danced before a crowned head since Napoleon Bonaparte went into exile.
Bosco was a cheerful person. He was small and rotund, but he sang divinely, and was not stingy with his accomplishment. In the early morning he poked a bleary countenance from his mosquito-net and greeted the Indian servant-maid with an aria. Then he would stroll out into the patio in his pajamas, carrying his guitar, to serenade the other ladies of the establishment.
Maestro was a withered, elderly person, once famous but fallen into obscurity. He was taciturn and unsociable. His one love was his fiddle. He would stroll away by himself to the back regions of the hotel, where he found inspiration in the banana trees and the rubbish heap, and there he would evoke weird squeals from his instrument in an effort to perfect what he described as a new technique.