Before the commandancia which faced the plaza, six musicians were playing upon a marimba, the sweet-toned Central-American xylophone, standing shoulder to shoulder, all tattered and barefoot, playing so swiftly that their sticks were but streaks of light, yet playing with perfect rhythm, with beautiful harmonies, and with a verve that would have delighted the most blasé jazz-lover on Broadway. The horsemen paused to listen. The Tehuana girls lingered at the curb. Army officers in the bright uniforms of peace-time, were strolling through the plaza, flirting with the señoritas.
Mexico was quiet, and charming, even on the verge of revolution.
IV
The De la Huerta revolt of 1924 was but a comparatively small incident in Mexican history.
It will probably be forgotten by the time this book appears in print. Yet it is fairly typical of such affairs. And it is rather significant of current political tendencies which are likely to continue long into the future.
To understand it, as to understand everything that happens in Mexico to-day, one must glance into the past.
This originally was the land of an empire which combined savagery with civilization. The Aztecs normally were peaceful tillers of the soil, cultivators of flowers, and builders of monuments, yet they could fight courageously upon occasion, and were addicted to human sacrifices. To this empire came a handful of Spanish adventurers bent upon conquest. They were great warriors, these Spaniards, but they conquered mainly through their cleverness in playing one group of Indians against another. During the three centuries of their rule, there was much progress in Mexico—as the world of to-day judges progress, which means the growth of European institutions—but the Spaniard held the Indian in subjection which in many cases became slavery.
Into the soul of the Indian crept a spirit of rebellion. He rose and cast out the Spaniard. He chose his own leaders, usually from the mestizo or mixed-breed population, only to discover that they were as ready to exploit him as the Spaniard had been. Blinded by the eloquent promises of one politician after another, he marched in every revolution. The Spaniard had brought to Mexico the political doctrine that a governor is not the servant but the master of his people. Whoever gained office promptly forgot his promises.
To the foreigner, the one bright spot in Mexican history is the reign of the Dictator, Porfirio Diaz. He pacified a disorderly country. He built fifteen thousand miles of railway, established telegraphic communication throughout the republic, placed Mexico upon a firm financial basis, and raised it to a foremost rank among nations. He gave the Indian prosperity, but failed to educate him; he kept him in subjection as stern as that of the Spaniard. And rival politicians, whispering to the Indian that Diaz had sold his country to the foreign promoter, found him ready for more revolution.
Then recommenced the old story of one president after another. In the blood of each was that strain of the Spanish adventurer who had come to Mexico to reap a fortune at the expense of the native. The first to keep his promises to the Indian was Carranza. Under his new constitution, previously mentioned, the peon enjoyed so many rights, and the capitalist so few, that foreigners ceased to invest.