In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

In front of the shops and yet under the covered way of the porticos are many tables and booths, and at the tables men wearing these sombreros and long black moustachios play dominoes and drink beer. At the booths quiet-eyed women sell cigarettes and sweets, and all along the curb outside the colored arches of the porticos sit Indian women with their hair hanging to the pavement, breasts exposed and papooses sucking there.

The scene in the plaza at nightfall, when the whole population comes out in parade, is in its way a ballet, unrehearsed and yet faultless. The life of the whole seems to be the band up in the fine stand in the central circle of the square. There stands the perfect little Zapotec conductor facing another Indian who with gourds in his hands waves his rattle with long arms, and on each side of them and around them is resounding brass. A fine discipline has been achieved and a military precision in play. German and Spanish compositions alternate. Marches and Spanish dances seem to have a preference and with joyous clamor and seductive melodies take possession of every man, woman and child in the plaza. Most remarkable are the tatterdemalion crowds of Indians who in cotton slops and bits of old blankets tied together tramp into town and creep out of the dirt and the dust to the inner court of the bandstand. There they crouch and stare, though they get the music in ear-breaking blasts, being far too close. But they love to hear in the midst of it the rattle of the gourd players, the rattle of the rain drops as in their own half-forgotten rituals. Huddled together they stare at the brass, at the gourds, at the Zapotec bandmaster in his perfectly ironed regimentals.

From the inner court of the bandstand go six shady tracks under palms, and scarlet-flowering trees, and orange fruits dripping from boughs, and pomegranate trees; and these tracks reach the broad outer court, round which like mystic shapes the great crowd comes and goes.

Here run the newsboys crying, "Patria, Patria," and the boys with dozens of bottles on their little heads shouting, "Frescos, frescos," and scores of bootblacks with little wooden stools calling to all and sundry "Grasar, grasar." Here walk stately icecream merchants with colored barrels balanced on their heads, and swarthy, sunburned men with sheaves of blankets for sale. Every Indian wears a blanket either slit at the middle for his head to go through or swathed about his body from head to foot as the Arab wears his burnous. Scarlet and orange are the commonest colors of these blankets. They wear their sombreros, the poor ones of straw, the rich ones of felt, Popocatepetls of felt, high-domed, vastly brimmed, embroidered. Here are gray hats all decorated with sailing ships and anchors worked in brown silk. Here are white hats bedizened with silver tinsel sewn on as the Indian women sew beetle-backs and butterfly wings into their embroideries in India. The great hats flock, they shadow the pavement. And all the while tran-tan-tan above it dominates the band.

Little boys carrying sugar canes eight feet long all hung with tiny flags add great color to the scene. The canes are perforated with tiny holes and in each hole is a sugar plum mounted on a long match or wire and each sugar plum has a tiny flag hanging from it. A dozen boys are carrying these resplendent poles; several others are carrying gourds perforated and adorned in the same way.

There are park seats all the way round and there sit the more leisurely of the listeners, and the tired, and watch the world go by. Old dames with trays of pineapple and girls with baskets of pine kernels go from seat to seat selling their wares.

The Zapotec women are straight as pine trees. They wear voluminous cotton skirts but their feet are bare. Above the waist they do not mind how much of their bodies they expose; they wear commonly a slightly embroidered cotton vest cut as low as the rise of their bosoms and leaving their arms bare from just below the shoulders. They have broad, open faces, carved mouths, lined brows, and an enormous flow of raven hair almost to their knees which they allow to hang. They wear earrings of filigree gold and beautiful gold chains round their bare necks. They may be on the point of beggary and yet wear these. The young ones are very beautiful, but quiet-eyed and never lascivious. They hold their heads so far back that if they wore hairpins and dropped one it would always fall clear of their bodies.

Outside the Palacio the sentries march to and fro with bayonets fixed and loaded rifles. The sergeant of the guard has golden bobinets hanging from six golden chevrons. At the changing of the guard bugles sound within the Palace yard in a sort of counterblast to the triumphant choruses of brass coming from the branches of the palm trees and the electric lights of the bandstand. Oaxaca, birthplace of Diaz, birthplace of Juarez, is proud of itself and makes some show under the Mexican sky.

Round and round walks the crowd and there mingle with the Indians American men and women, jaunty men dressed anyhow and women in low-cut evening gowns, simpering to one another and to their male companions. Mexican belles also come out, with highly painted faces and dainty, manicured hands. Girls in their teens join one another and all holding arms walk in strings of sevens and eights. Youths of similar age walk in similar strings. Horsemen with tight trousers and silver spurs dismount and tie up their steeds and join the throng. The Governor himself, the legislature of the State, joins the parade. There is the highest and also the lowest. Bow, bow, bow, come the beggars. You give them centavos or you give them cakes. They wear old dusty sombreros of straw and you put the cakes in the brim. You see beggars with dozens of cakes and tortillas and rolls in the brims of their straw sombreros. The blind beggars walk in tandems; blind mother led by seeing child, sister by sister, grandfather by grandson. There are two pseudo beggars, too proud actually to beg, and they get more alms than all the rest. One is a magnificent fellow with a gigantic straw sombrero. He has lost both legs at the knee, but he must have been very handsome. He has large pads now like the wooden boots put on horses drawing the heavy roller over a lawn, and on these pads he walks like any other man using hip muscles where we use the muscles of the knee. His yellow hat points backward from his head—he carries a bootblack's stool and wherever he goes the crowd makes way for him—a king of the pavement and of all beggars and bootblacks. The other pseudo beggar is a boy with curved spine and twisted body. He walks on all fours and has a basket of matches or sweets hung from his neck. All among the people he jumps like a frog—and whose heart can be so hard as to refuse him when he looks up with angel smile, so sweetly, so appealingly? You pretend to buy, he looks at what you give him, meditatively. He looks up at you smiling, but perhaps a little troubled in expression.

"Adios?" he asks as if it were a question.