Insurgent Mexico

by John Reed

CHAPTER III

LOS PASTORES

The romance of gold hangs over the mountains of Northern Durango like an old perfume. There, it is rumored, was that mythical Ophir whence the Aztecs and their mysterious predecessors drew the red gold that Cortez found in the treasury of Moctezuma. Before the dawn of Mexican history the Indians scratched these barren hillsides with dull copper knives. You can still see the traces of their workings. And after them the Spaniards, with flashing, bright helmets and steel breast-plates, filled from these mountains the lofty treasure-ships of the Indies. Almost a thousand miles from the Capital, over trackless deserts and fierce stony mountains, a tiny colorful fringe of the most brilliant civilization in Europe flung itself among the canyons and high peaks of this desolate land; and so far was it from the seat of change that long after Spanish rule had disappeared from Mexico forever, it persisted here. The Spaniards enslaved the Indians of the region, of course, and the torrent-worn, narrow valleys are still sinister with legend. Almost anybody around Santa Maria del Oro can tell you stories of the old days when men were flogged to death in the mines, and the Spanish overseers lived like princes.

But they were a hardy race, these mountaineers. They were always rebelling. There is a legend of how the Spaniards, finally discovering themselves alone, two hundred leagues from the seacoast, in the midst of an overwhelmingly hostile native race, attempted one night to leave the mountains. Fires sprang up on the high peaks, and the mountain villages throbbed to the sound of drums. Somewhere in the narrow defiles the Spaniards disappeared forever. And from that time, until certain foreigners secured mining concessions there, the place had an evil name. The authority of the Mexican government barely reached it.

There are two villages which were the capitals of the gold-seeking Spaniards in this region, and where the Spanish tradition is still strong: Inde, and Santa Maria del Oro,—usually called El Oro. Inde, the Spaniards romantically named from their persistent dream that this new world was India; Santa Maria del Oro was called so on the same principle that one sung a Te Deum in honor of bloody victory—a gratefulness to heaven for the finding of red gold, Our Lady of the Gold.

In El Oro one can still see the ruins of a monastery—they call it now, vaguely, the Collegio—the pathetic little arched roofs of a row of monkish cells built of adobe, and now fast crumbling under hot suns and torrential rains. It partly surrounds what was once the patio of the cloister, and a great mesquite tree towers there over the forgotten headstone of an ancient grave, inscribed with the lordly name of Doña Isabella Guzman. Of course, everybody has entirely forgotten who Doña Isabella was, or when she died. There still stands in the public square a fine old Spanish church with a beamed ceiling. And over the door of the tiny Palacio Municipal is the almost erased carving of the arms of some ancient Spanish house.

Here is romance for you. But the inhabitants have no respect for tradition, and hardly any memory of the ancients who left these monuments. The exuberant Indian civilization has entirely obliterated all traces of the conquistadores.

El Oro is noted as the gayest town of all the mountain region. There are bailes almost every night, and far and near it is a matter of common knowledge that El Oro is the home of the prettiest girls in Durango. In El Oro, too, they celebrate feast days with more ebullience than in other localities. All the charcoal-burners and goat-herds and pack-train drivers and ranchers for miles around come there on holidays,—so that one feast-day generally means two or three without work, since there must be one day for celebrating, and at least another for coming and returning home.

And what Pastorellas they have in El Oro! Once a year, on the Feast of the Santos Reyes, they perform Los Pastores all over this part of the country. It is an ancient miracle play of the kind that used to take place all over Europe in the Renaissance,—the kind that gave birth to Elizabethan drama, and is now extinct everywhere in the world. It is handed down by word of mouth from mother to daughter, from the remotest antiquity. It is called "Luzbel," the Spanish for Lucifer, and depicts Perverse Man in the Midst of His Deadly Sin, Lucifer, the Great Antagonist of Souls, and the Everlasting Mercy of God Made Flesh in the Child Jesus.

In most places there is only one performance of Los Pastores. But in El Oro there are three or four on the night of the Santos Reyes, and others at different times of the year, as the spirit moves. The cura, or village priest, still trains the actors. The play takes place no longer in the church, however. It is added to from generation to generation, sometimes being twisted to satirize persons in the village. It has become too profane, too realistic, for the Church; but still it points the great moral of medieval religion.