In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

Puebla, the third largest city in modern Mexico, has grown up near Cholula—one of the few cities that has no Indian history behind it. Puebla was built by the Spaniards and exclusively populated by Spaniards. There at least the Indian woman was not a bride. Something purely Spanish was bred there—as a racial bulwark against possible foes. It remains to-day the most Spanish of all the cities of Mexico and therefore the most conservative and the most unalterably Catholic.

Puebla is a beautiful and quiet city, largely adorned by the brightly colored tiles which are a feature of its architecture. Façades of terra cotta and gold, purple and yellow tiled domes, are common features of the churches. Around the great Cathedral are pillars supporting a hundred angels and each angel holds an electric light which is generally burning all day as well as all night. Mimosa and palm trees grow over the cool green lawns of the Plaza and lilies bloom beside many fountains. There is some military parade, as at Tlaxcala, and upon occasion "reactionary" demonstrations. The industrial life is greatly hit by revolutionary economics, and it seems impossible for the city to get back to the prosperity which it used to enjoy.

Like Jalapa, Puebla is an important strategic point. It has been the scene of many battles, and a short walk outside the gates of the city brings you to the old trenches of Frenchmen and Spaniards. In the American War of 1846-1848 the plaza of the town was occupied by a little army and many wounded and sick, and the Americans defended it against all comers, talking and bluffing as well as firing and barricading, for a whole month, when they received reinforcements and were able to withdraw.

This can be said for Puebla and its more purely Spanish population—it is more honest, more dignified, less drunken than Mexico City or Vera Cruz or any of the cities where the Indians are in strength.

The way to Mexico City from Puebla tells something of the debauch of the people. It is over a hundred miles and the country is rich either for pasture or for the cultivation of grain. Rainfall is abundant. Heat and cold are seldom in extremes. But you see no herds grazing there, and few, very few, cornfields. Instead, there are interminable vistas of cultivated cactus, the maguey, raised merely for pulque, for the drink that stupefies the nation that takes to it. The freight cars marked "pulque only" block the lines. At the railway stations women in scores come to the trains with pulque bottles. The only rich are the owners of the pulque farms, and you see them on silver-mounted saddles, pricking their fine horses with silver spurs. They are on the one hand and a vast ragged sodden population on the other.

Thus to San Juan and the Pyramids of the Sun and the salt lakes and the canals and the floating gardens, to Texcoco and Chalco and Xochimilco, to Iztapalapa and the metal-shod causeway by which Cortes marched to the city. Iztapalapa is a sad place now, like a sort of Arab village except for the visiting tram car which comes out from the great metropolis, loops a loop at the Plaza, and returns through the dust and dirt to the Zocalo, the square of the great pyramid in Mexico City.

Near where Montezuma and Cortes met now stand ugly but powerful and suggestive national monuments—of Indian warrior and squaw, designed for the Zocalo but felt by the Mexicans to be too indelicate for a prominent public place. The Mexicans of to-day are proud of their Indian blood but do not care to be reminded too realistically of what the Indians were. The squat, broad-nosed, large-mouthed, pendulous-cheeked faces, the short legs, the barrel-shaped bodies, the feather ornaments, the war clubs and darts, do not appeal to the mind of the modern Mexican who would rather think of his ancestors as debonnair, Frenchified, with faces and bodies like those of Greek or Roman heroes.

Montezuma regaled the Spaniards very well, not only feeding them and gilding them with presents, but bestowing upon each soldier a bevy of wives. There was not one who had less than ten wives. Cortes could not find his men, they were lost among the young squaws. He was obliged to limit the numbers of female servants—but Montezuma hearing of the trouble arranged special quarters for the harems of the soldiers. Cortes himself was much embarrassed by the number of princesses he was called upon to marry. He had his troubles with the women—did he not push his first wife down a well—and according to the historians made great scruple against taking new ties. However, he took to himself the peerless Marina, who helped him greatly in his conquest of her brother Indians.

The Aztecs, it appears, had no code of morals kin to those current in the Old World. Sensual lust was not a violent passion amongst them. They bought and sold their women, lived polygamously, but women were not centers of voluptuousness. This, it seems, has remained. The Mexican is not hot-blooded over women. He is comparatively cold, and the women are demure and chaste. The contrast, for instance, between Cuban and Mexican is considerable; the mixed blood of Spaniard and Negro is very lustful, the mixed blood of Spaniard and Indian is cold and self-sufficient in the matter of sex.

One reads of the bestowal of beautiful girls upon the Spaniards, but the beauty was doubtless exaggerated. It is difficult to find much feminine beauty among the Aztecs now. There is a moment of unearthly beauty, just a moment, early in the teens, and then the Aztec girl goes heavy and repulsive-looking; her coal-black hair becomes coarse as a horse's mane, her bosom spreads, dirt gets the better of her body. The Mexicans of all classes are remarkably indelicate and dirty. As for their children, a foreigner might be tempted to caress them or play with them, but a glance at the faces causes him to draw away his hands from unwashed skins and sores.