3. The City of Jalap
Cortes marched up to it from the sea. Montezuma's messengers met him with golden ducks, discs of the sun in gold, large stones of jade, gifts of plumed armor and golden arrows, and they prayed him to go away. Jalapa was the chief city of the Totonac Indians—it was a city of flowers; there were silver houses there. There were blood altars. Cortes said "No," he would not go away till he had delivered in person a message which he bore from the King of Spain. That message he invented—but he had a message nevertheless, obtained out of the book of Fate, and in due time he delivered it. His message dissolved the Aztec Empire and laid low the greatest cultural achievement of the Indians. Anahuac became New Spain.
Four hundred years have just passed since that conquest was achieved, but the Mexicans have not marked it with festivity. Cortes' bones have been driven from cathedral to cathedral and his memory has become unhallowed.
Jalapa, famous for centuries for the export of jalap, is to-day very different from anything it ever was in the past. It is the capital of a Bolshevik State. Nowhere during the ten years revolutionary struggle which followed the fall of Diaz did the proletariat gain more control than in the State of Vera Cruz, and Jalapa is its capital. It should be understood that the United States of Mexico are very much disunited in politics. In five or six of them, such as Tlaxcala, there are actually two legislatures, old and new régime, trying to sit at the same time. But it is safe to say that the majority in all Mexico is Radical and very decidedly anticapitalistic. Where the distribution of the land among the peasants has not been carried out there are continual armed raids. The Mexican landowners and bourgeois are busy organizing a "Fascisti" movement, but that has little chance of success unless the President of the Republic favored them. Obregon, however, is an enigmatical personage. He is anticapitalistic but he is ready with Federal troops to quell riots of the proletariat. His popularity with the masses is waning, but his ability to govern the country shows itself more and more powerfully. The trial of his strength comes between now and the 1924 elections. Mexico depends on him almost as it depended on Diaz. When he goes from power the revolution in its fury may easily break out again.
Jalapa, in which we spent some ten days, is a city of "Red" demonstrations. The "Agrarians" and the Coöperatists parade with their blood-red banners and violent inscriptions. They occupy the Town Hall or the Governor's Palace, and their leaders harangue the crowds from the balconies; the Governor himself lends a hand. Men with red flags climb the steeple of the cathedral and whenever a strong break of oratory is made from the Town Hall balcony below, they ring the cathedral bells with a grand clash.
What is the matter? The workmen of the Maritime Zone have boycotted an Oil Company on which depend for fuel all the railways of the South and most of the factories. Half Mexico is in danger of economic paralysis. It was so all the winter of 1922-23. The company, an English one, was holding out against a proposed seventy-five per cent increase in wages, wages to be paid daily, premiums on dismissal, etc. Wages paid daily is a great feature of the Labor demand, the idea being to make it more easy to go on strike.
There has also been a no-rent campaign, whole populations refusing to pay rent. When in Vera Cruz you decide no longer to pay rent you hang out a red flag from your window. There is also here, as in most of the States, a strained relationship between the Indian peasants and their former masters the landowners.
Against Red rule, the newspapers of Mexico have arrayed themselves, especially Excelsior, Mr. Lloyd George's Mexican platform, and El Dictamen, both run in favor of capitalism and "common sense." But one of the latest phenomena has been a boycott of these papers in the Maritime Zone largely organized by the Governor of Vera Cruz himself.
It is lucky for the people of Jalapa that the currency of Mexico is federally controlled and is of gold and silver. Otherwise one can imagine the inflation of paper money that would take place in a State run on the lines of that of Vera Cruz. As it is, the disorganization caused by strikes has raised the cost of living to almost double that of the quieter States of Oaxaca and Puebla.
How important this condition of affairs is may be judged from the fact that Vera Cruz is the key of the Republic. Mexico has been three times conquered and its capital taken, by Spain, by the United States, and by France; and all three campaigns started from Vera Cruz. Did not the American soldiers in 1848 play baseball in Jalapa with the President of Mexico's wooden leg? That was the time of one-legged Santa Ana. Now is the time of one-armed Obregon. Despite the great army of Mexico to-day one cannot help feeling that in case of foreign intervention via Vera Cruz and Jalapa there would not be enough moral power to resist invasion.