A constantly increasing number of the peon class are moving to the industrial centres. Slowly but surely the leaven is working, and the opportunity for better wages is withdrawing the labourers from the plantations. The railroads, the mines and the factories are paying much higher wages than formerly prevailed, and find it difficult to secure sufficient labourers. Only the selected men can fill these positions for the average peon has not sufficient intelligence. He has a great imitative faculty and can learn a task, but is not a success in an employment that needs the exercise of reason and judgment. In many lines of work more is accomplished at less expense by peons with the rudest methods than by the use of the latest labour-saving machinery operated by peon labourers. Education will no doubt work great changes in the lives and habits of these people, but this will be a slow process in this land of “to-morrow.” The present conditions are interesting to one who desires to see how the rest of the world lives, and it will be a long time before the peon class will change very materially.
There is one class of the Indian worker that deserves more extended mention. This is that time-honoured institution called the cargador. As you meet him at every place throughout Spanish North America it may be interesting to the reader to learn something of his history and his accomplishments. It is not necessary to institute a search for the cargador. At the station you will be besieged by a small army of them and the hotel entrance may be blocked by them. When travelling across the country there is a never-ending succession of these picturesque characters singly and in groups. Sometimes the entire family is along. In such cases the boys, even down to little tots, carry a small package on their backs and the wife and girls balance a basket on their heads. Perhaps all their earthly belongings are contained in these various bundles.
The cargador of Mexico and Central America claims an ancient and honourable lineage. His occupation may be a humble one, but he can trace his ancestry back to the followers of that haughty Aztec emperor, Montezuma, or even to the still older race of the Toltecs. Not many years ago almost everything in these countries was carried on the backs of cargadors. Even now in the City of Mexico the cargador is an indispensable factor in the carrying trade, though there are many express and transfer companies engaged in that business. In the smaller places of Mexico, in the mountain districts, and in Central America he holds his old-time prestige and, with the cargo mule, monopolizes the carrying business.
The strength of these little, brown-skinned cargadors is wonderful. Short in stature and with thin legs and arms they look very insignificant. They cannot lift a very heavy weight, but they can make their fairer-skinned brother cry out in astonishment at the load they will carry when it is once adjusted on their back. The average load for a cargo mule is one hundred and fifty pounds. A cargador will start on a journey of two hundred or more miles with such a load and will cover more miles in a day over a rough mountain trail than a mule. At the station you will see the little cargador pick up a heavy trunk that you can scarcely move and start off with it at a faster pace than you care to walk. They always move in a peculiar jog-trot, and can usually keep it up for a long time. Up and down hill they go at an even pace, and will average about six miles per hour. For short distances some cargadors will carry as great a load as five hundred pounds, a seemingly impossible burden for so slender a body.
The strength in the back is a matter of training extending over many centuries. The Aztecs had no beasts of burden and the baggage of their armies was always carried by cargadors. The Spanish conquerors were obliged to adopt the same methods. Now, although there are mules and burros in great numbers, the cargador is still the great burden bearer and takes the place of the fast freight in the commerce of those sections away from the railway lines. A traveller can take his mule and send his baggage by a cargador, and the latter will reach the same stopping place each night and sometimes ahead of the man on the mule. Many cargadors carry their loads in a frame, supported by a broad leather band across the forehead. When thus loaded they cannot turn their heads and they do not seem to hear well, so that I have feared many times they would be run over by the careless drivers. If there are several together they trot along in the middle of the road in Indian file. If going on a long journey they carry along enough tortillas for the entire trip, and must always be given enough time to make these preparations. Several times a day they will stop and make a fire, prepare their coffee, and eat their tortillas and fruit if it can be obtained. At night they will sleep out in the open air under a porch, if possible; if this shelter cannot be had, then they will lay themselves down to rest under the brilliant starlit canopy of this tropical clime.
A CARGADOR
Many of the Indians are very swift runners. An instance is told in Guatemala of a runner who carried a dispatch one hundred and five miles into the interior and returned with an answer in thirty-six hours, making the trip over mountains and a rough trail at an average speed of six miles an hour, including stops and delays. It is said that fish caught at Vera Cruz in the evening were served at the dinner table of Montezuma the following day at his capital near the site of the present City of Mexico, a distance of nearly three hundred miles by road. This was done by a system of relay runners stationed about a mile apart, and they made almost as fast time as the railway train to-day. Whether this is true or not it is well known that the Aztecs had a wonderful system of communication. The Spaniards were frequently astonished at the rapidity with which the news of their movements was spread. These runners were trained to great speed and endurance from their youth. Hundreds of them were in constant use, and the Aztec emperors were kept in communication with all parts of their empire. The Aztecs also used these runners as spies and they thus took the place of scouting parties in present-day campaigns.
So it is that these cargadors come and go. Each generation is like the last. They are happy in that they want but little and that little is easily supplied. They are contented because they live for to-day and worry not for the morrow. They are satisfied to go through life as the bearers of other people’s burdens.