For a day the soldiery swaggered all over town, but the next morning their generals—now in business-like khaki—rounded them up and marched them to the railway station, where all passenger traffic had ceased and all cars had been commandeered for transport.
They passed beneath my hotel balcony—a motley crew of evil-visaged little fellows, with cartridges glistening from many bandoleers—cheering and singing. Behind them came a nondescript mob of slatternly women, old and young and middle-aged—the soldaderas, or camp-followers, who transport the baggage, cook the food, perform whatever other services a soldier may require, and sometimes assist in the actual fighting, occasionally with a rifle, but usually with sticks or stones, wherewith they engage in combat the soldaderas of the enemy. Barefoot, bedraggled, unwashed, they were bent under loads of fruit-baskets, blankets, saddle-bags, water-jars, and even live chickens.
A few of the marchers glanced up at my balcony to hurl a last curse at the gringo. Then they vanished around the corner, bound northward to the scene of battle. Tapachula resumed its atmosphere of peace, quite as though Mexico were untroubled by one of its chronic insurrections.
VI
One must not assume that a Mexican revolution is a comic opera affair. The least conspicuous uprising sows something of death, destruction, and a loss of feminine virtue in its wake. But Mexico is large and sparsely populated, and can stage a dozen revolutions at once without disturbance of its general calm.
The De la Huerta revolt raged principally in central Mexico. For a few months the republic was aflame from Vera Cruz to Manzanillo. But Obregon had the best generals. The United States, taking the quickest means to bring about order, allowed him to buy arms denied the revolutionists. The Huertistas, beaten and dispersed, fled southward into the jungles of Tehuantepec, fighting sporadically along the railway I had just traversed, until completely disbanded. American newspaper readers settled back in their easy chairs with the self-congratulatory comment, “There’s another revolution over! Those Mexicans must be a cut-throat lot!”
VII
When one travels through Mexico one is amazed to discover that the Mexicans do not appear a cut-throat lot.
The great masses of Indian and semi-Indian population appear quiet, simple, peaceable folk. Now and then, after the tequila has flowed freely, some of them may beat their wives or cut their neighbors’ throats, but this is not their regular pastime. In fact, most Old-Timers in the country deny that crime is any more frequent there than at home.
Why then, the traveler always asks himself, can these people not elect a president without bloodshed?