It is not, however, among the higher classes of city-dwellers that one should seek for the most characteristic aspects of the life of a nation. These city-dwellers, and especially the female moiety of them, are apt to be mere imitators of other cultures, shaping their lives, as their costumes, in obedience to the dictates of some other land, higher in the scale of fashion. It is to the country, the terris as distinguished from the urbis, that one must go to obtain the truth of female life in Mexico or any other land; for, though fashion may hold sway here also, it is less apt to overcome national taste and custom.
Female life on the great estates of Mexico, the haciendas, in the first days of the republic was in a measure characteristic and individual--more so, at least, than at any time since the days of the first coming of the Spaniards. To some extent there was a continuance of the customs of the race which had dwelt in Anahuac before the coming of the invaders, the customs being modified by the conditions and needs of the new time. Among the upper classes, there was no costume peculiar to the country, save that nearly all wore the graceful veil in lieu of the hideous European headdress of the period. There was, however, then as now, a decided love for garishness of color among the Mexican women, and there was but little display of taste in the direction of costume.
The mistress of a large hacienda was somewhat in the position of one of the European "ladies of the castle" in feudal days; but as a rule--though, of course, the stated rules had many exceptions--she did not occupy herself in the same manner as did the feudal chatelaine. She was apt to be ignorant and lazy; she passed the greater part of the day in idling upon the azotea, as was called the roof-garden which crowned most of the long and low houses of the Mexican country estates, perhaps rolling and smoking her cigarettes,--for the Mexican ladies were inveterate smokers,--or perhaps writing a papelcito to be sent to her lover in appointment of a tryst. This latter if she were young and handsome; if she were old--and no daughter of Anahuac passed the Rubicon of forty and retained her beauty in even the most modified form--she might reflect on her sins, which probably gave her some little uneasiness, or she might rehearse them into the ears of her confessor, or she might do aught that called for no exertion, of mind or body. Of the latter she would never be guilty, and the former she abhorred to an almost equal extent. There were, however, marked exceptions to the rule of inactivity of body in the persons of certain señoritas who could ride like Comanches and throw a lazo almost as well as their lovers and brothers, and who delighted in the display of these, their chief and perhaps only accomplishments. These ladies, however, were in the minority; the rule of Mexican female life was passivity, not to say sloth.
As in the case of their predecessors, so with the women of modern Mexico, consideration has been accorded chiefly to those of the upper class. There was, however, until recently a very large and significant class in Mexico called peons, who might be said roughly to answer to the servitors of European feudal times. This class was composed chiefly or entirely of those of native Indian blood, the descendants of the races enslaved by the Spaniards and set free so late in the history of Mexico as even now hardly to have lost in all respects the characteristics of slavery. These peons form the servitor class on the great haciendas, and are almost retainers of the wealthy proprietors. Their women are of widely different type from the señoras who form the bulk of the upper classes; and the same difference which exists to-day was even more determined in the days of the youth of the Mexican republic. So constant, indeed, have been the individualities of this people that it matters little whether we look at them in the past or in the present; as is generally the case with classes which represent the lower strata of the population and are from their very unimportance in the social scale less affected by outer influences and therefore more steadfast to national type, the peon class has altered but little in its peculiar customs and characteristics, these being modified only as is rendered necessary to meet the changes in material conditions which have from time to time occurred. In this peon class are encountered many recurrent and persistent customs of the Aztec civilization; but as these instances do not strongly affect the life of the women they may be passed over. That which it is needful to note, however, is the fact that always in the history of feminine Mexico it is these women, of truly native stock, who have formed the characteristically native class. It is they who have had and held a settled and constant tradition and custom; it is they who have conserved an individuality which has come down to them from mingled cultures--from that of the Aztecs, with their paradoxical civilization and nature, and that of the Spanish intruders, with their Latin characteristics modified by new environment. The mingling of these cultures produced the true Mexican individuality.
Yet, though individuality was at the time of the foundation of the republic to be found most decisive in the peon class, it may be broadly said that at that period the Mexican woman was generally characteristic and individual. She reproduced and accentuated many Spanish traits; she was gay beneath a mask of propriety, immoral--the rule of generalities must be remembered--under the cloak of a profound piety, vengeful and jealous under the garb of a real love, and in all ways was the emphasis of the Spanish woman of her time. She was more than that, however; she had her national and even racial traditions and characteristics which parted from the Castilian culture at certain points and turned to the old fount of the Aztec racial influence. She was more profoundly superstitious than her Spanish sister, and she was more concerned with outer guise in all matters of morality or religion. She would not for the world miss her accustomed attendance at mass, but she did not fail to recognize the opportunities offered by the ceremonial, with its genuflections and its periods of rest, for the transmittal of notes of amorous inspiration, and many was the billet d'amour which was slipped by a tiny hand into a broader palm as the respective owners thereof bowed in apparently deep reverence at the elevation of the Host. Among the higher classes, the Mexican señora and señorita were far less educated and cultivated than their Spanish kindred; yet among the lower classes--not the peons, but the shopkeeper class in the cities, the small landholders in the country--education of a kind was further advanced in Mexico than in Spain. Most interesting in certain ways, though least individual of all, was this middle class, wearing as their festal costume, "white embroidered gowns, with white satin shoes and neat feet and ankles, rebozos, or bright shawls, thrown over their heads;" while the peasants on the same occasions were dressed in "short petticoats of two colors, generally scarlet and yellow, with thin satin shoes and lace-trimmed chemises." Stockings, it may be noticed, are not referred to in either case; sixty years ago they were not considered at all de rigueur in the costume of a Mexican woman of any but the very highest class and, if we are to believe all travellers, not even invariably among the señoritas themselves.
The Mexican woman of the dawn of the republic was a type--indefinite, even elusive, amid the crowd of southern Latin nationalities, yet possessing some distinctive traits of manner, custom, and nature, and by these to be distinguished from her Italian, Spanish, or even South American kinswomen. But the individuality which she possessed, never strongly marked, soon began to fade before the incursion of a northern culture, with its novel ideals, standards, and requisites. When the United States was at war with Mexico, the type of the latter culture was at its most distinctive stage; and, though there were not a few of the women who were enamored of the methods of the northern invaders and became Ayankeados, as sympathizers with the foe were contemptuously termed, yet, as a rule, the women of Mexico proved true daughters of Anahuac in their hatred of the enemy of their native land. But these passions passed away with the coming of peace; and the Maximilian episode served to bring Mexico into somewhat closer relation with the civilization of her northern border neighbor. Still the national culture, if so it can be called, remained practically unaffected for years after the founding of the republic; for the purely Spanish families had been banished in large numbers, and the Maximilian rule was too brief to effect a new Latin invasion.
But there was an invasion lowering upon the horizon of Mexico, though foreseen perhaps by few, which was destined to prove most effectual in influencing the future of the Mexican woman--the invasion of the Anglo-American in peaceful guise, armed with scrip and not with stave, and bearing the axe and spade in his hands. The wealth of Mexico began to attract the attention of the citizens of her northern neighbor, and they kindly hastened to relieve her of as much as she found at all burdensome and they themselves decided the discomfort of that burden. The typical American, the American par excellence, he of the United States, invaded Mexico once more, though this time in search of dollars, not glory; and under his influence, perhaps yet more under that of his wife and daughters, the feminine civilization of Mexico lost its individuality in its acceptance of standards which were unfitted to its conditions and unacceptable to its traditions. The woman of Mexico forgot her history and her very nature, and became, in the majority of cases, a mere imitator of Anglo-Saxon and Gallic fashion and custom. Once she smoked her dainty cigarette with entire nonchalance; now, even though her English and North American sisters have found a charm in the nicotian incense that is offered to the god of social converse, your Mexican woman, having long since been told solemnly that "Las Americanas do not smoke," has thrown away her little roll of paper and tobacco, and has become "proper" according to standards with which she should have nothing in common. She has doffed her rebozo--that which might have been termed the national garment of the Mexican woman--and has accepted the less graceful and becoming garments of European fashion. In all outer guise, she is steadfastly setting herself to become a mere imitation, if not a caricature, of the belles of other civilizations; but within she is still the child of the South, the daughter of a race of Indians, dashed indeed with Spanish blood but preserving many of the Indian characteristics intact; and these do not agree with normal culture. For it must be remembered that in Mexico there is to-day, owing to the wholesale expulsion of the Spaniards at the establishment of independence, hardly a family of unmixed blood; and those who do claim uncontaminated descent from the Spanish hidalgos are looked upon with utmost disfavor almost--ostracized, indeed. On the other hand, the Mexicans have come to look upon Americans of the North with respect and even affection, and to welcome them to their country and often to their homes. The result, of course, has been partly to establish a heterogeneous culture, neither Spanish, Indian, nor American, and yet a commingling of all three, at least in outward form. But beneath the veneer of the new culture the Mexican woman preserves the characteristics which have been hers for centuries and which in their greater part came down to her from her Indian forebears. She is still passionate, jealous, vengeful, sudden and violent in all her impulses, most of which are founded upon that which she calls her love, but which, as a rule, is but passion. Her traditions do not agree with her surroundings as she would fain make them; and the question as to which will finally survive in permanent conquest is one that can be answered by time alone, that convenient arbitrator to which to refer all vexed questions of this sort. To that tribunal may be left the questions for the future which have been suggested to thoughtful readers concerning the Mexican woman.