Readings from Modern Mexican Authors

by Unknown

JULIO GUERRERO.

Julio Guerrero was born on April 18, 1862, a day notable in Mexican history, in the City of Mexico. His parents were José María Guerrero and Luisa Groso, both natives of Durango. His father, a lawyer of eminence, was for fifteen years a Judge of the Supreme Court; a pronounced Liberal in politics, he was a friend and trusted adviser of Benito Juarez. The young Julio was sent to Rhodes’s English Boarding School, then to the Escuela Preparatoria (National Preparatory School). He, later, studied in the Escuela de Jurisprudencia, receiving his title of Licenciado by acclamation, on October 4, 1889. In that same year, he was one of the founders of the Revista de Jurisprudencia y Legislacion (Review of Jurisprudence and Legislation), upon which he is still a collaborator and to which he has contributed many articles. His most important literary work is El Genesis del Crimen en Mexico (The Genesis of crime in Mexico). The title of the book scarcely accords with its content. It is really an analysis of the Mexican society and character. Rarely does any student see, so clearly as does Guerrero, the actual condition of his own society; still more rarely does one so clearly state it. In some of his conclusions and views Guerrero differs profoundly from us, but we are forced to admire his sincerity and earnestness. His book met a notable reception. Under the presidency of Porfirio Parra, a group of the leading members of the scientific societies of Mexico, devoted ten consecutive meetings to its consideration and discussion, the author himself being present. During the recent political agitation by the partisans of Limantour and Reyes, Guerrero established and edited a monthly journal, La Republica. It was ardently liberal and democratic in spirit and dealt vigorously with live questions. It was suppressed by the government, after fourteen issues. Guerrero has not abandoned his propaganda and will shortly establish another journal for the propagation of his ideas. He has much matter ready for printing. Of this, undoubtedly the most important is his Reformas projectadas (Proposed reforms), in which the question of the Presidential succession is discussed. Guerrero is a good thinker, intense in his convictions, vigorous in their expression. Our selections are from the Genesis del crimen. Guerrero’s style is not always beyond reproach and his punctuation is absolutely his own. In translation, we have followed both with care.

THE MEXICAN ATMOSPHERE.

As a psychical phenomenon, natural to so pure an atmosphere, there have developed in Mexico those faculties, which require perfect eyesight. Mexican photographs have attracted notice in New York, and Mora conducts, in competition with the best photographers of that metropolis, a profitable business, being quite in vogue with the American aristocracy. The photographic views of the central plateau are distinguished by the sharpness of their outlines, shadows and details and are exported to Europe and the United States, constituting, in those regions, of less clear vision, an irrefutable proof of the perfection of our landscapes transferred to their canvases by Velasco and other painters of scenery; when he desired to exhibit his paintings of the Valley, in the exposition of 1889, he found opposition on the part of Meissonier, who believed it impossible that there should be such sharp and vivid detail and coloring in a real landscape. Proofs of a different order, and entirely practical, of the sharpness of outline, are given by our professional hunters, who with a miserable musket, sally from their pueblos in the morning in search of game and invariably return with two animals. In the battalions, good shots form seventy-five per cent of the troop, with certainty of aim at five hundred to a thousand metres distance. The wild Indians of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Nuevo Leon, shoot their arrows at a five-cent piece thrown into the air; and boys on the streets and in the villages strike the bulls-eye with their sling-stones at a distance only limited by their strength. In billiards and bowling, in the suburbs, with badly rounded balls and illy-leveled tables, they make shots as brilliant as if both balls and tables were all they should be.

The arts of drawing have developed as rapidly as the political and economical conditions permitted; and in all America, Mexico has been the only country which has produced a school, so numerous, distinguished, and original have been her painters. Their works have almost been exhausted, by exportation to Europe as paintings of Spanish artists of the great Seventeenth Century, but students still come, from the republics to the south, sent to here study the masterpieces which we still retain, since the number of the national painters, of whom some work of merit remains, rises to one hundred and sixty-one. The art they practised was catholic and aristocratic, religious subjects and portraits; consequently it decayed with the colonial regime and fell with the decline of power of the clergy; but, in the lack of demand for such art, the national æsthetic spirit took refuge in popular modeling in clay, rags, or wax, and produced in the figurines of Guadalajara and Puebla an artistic school, only inferior in product and spontaneity to that of Tanagra in ancient Greece.

In the feather-mosaics of Michoacan, in its lacquer rivaling those of China; in the carving on the walking-sticks of Apizaco, atavic manifestation of the ancient Mexican wood-carving which found beautiful expression in the choir-stalls and benches of the churches; in the floral decorations of the Indians of Mixcoac and Coyoacan; in the sculptures of the façades of houses—which are at times caryatids worked, without a single false blow from the chisel, after the blocks have been set in the wall; in the gold and silver filagree, and even in the mural paintings of the pulquerias or in the realistic illustrations of the newspapers, there is revealed the artistic talent, though frequently without technique, of a nation, living in a medium propitious to vision; and in which the line, the shadow, and the tints, are seen without blur or dimmed by haze, since there are, on the average, one hundred and five absolutely clear days in the year and among clouded days, those with mists are rare; and when these do occur they last but an hour or two in wintry mornings.

GOVERNMENTAL DIFFICULTIES.

This social phenomenon was aggravated by the distribution of villas within the territory of each of the provinces, later converted into states; since in many cases it happened that the villas were so much the nearer to their respective capitals, as these were nearer to the capital of the republic; and vice-versa, the villas were distant from their capitals in proportion as these were distant from the national centre; both consequences of the political division established by Galvez; since, as he based it upon the unequal distribution of population, the more remote provinces must have a more extended territory and more widely separated settlements; thus, the density of population decreased, from the centre outward, in every direction. And as the social development in a province, converted later into an autonomous state, depended on the frequency and importance of the relations between the capitals and their respective districts; it resulted that the culture influence of the capital, weakened by its remoteness from a state, was still further weakened in the villas, by the great distances which separated them from their governmental centres. And this phenomenon was repeated in a third degree, in the interior of each political subdivision, in the operation of social and political influence of any villa upon the lesser settlements subordinated to it.

Ah well, as all the cities of the independent colony were at different distances from the capital, they were at different stages of national development; consequently all had different and often conflicting interests, necessities and aspirations. The political program, philosophical ideas, literature, ideals and models of art, social usages, moral principles, interpretations of law, cut of dress, and even the vocabulary and phrases of polite society, which—as useless, ugly, harmful, absurd, or disagreeable—had been banished from the capital were found in the provincial cities; and those, which were there proscribed, had taken refuge in the villas and secondary towns. In matter of government the same thing was repeated and those acts by which it displays itself—military equipment, judicial decision, tax levying, seizure of contraband, pursuit of bandits and savages, organization of authority, conspiracies, masonry, political intrigues,—in fact, every political phenomenon which, depended upon or originated in the capital, was repeated in the states, with an imperfectness, so much the greater as the distance separating them from it was greater; and, as the conduct of government depended upon this phenomenon, it at last resulted that the co-ordination and harmony between the states and the centre depended on the time necessary for the communication of official orders. Accord between those who constituted the governing classes of all the cities, villas, and subordinate populations, was, consequently, not only difficult, but was often impossible, and, sometimes, useless. Thus, the country was geographically constructed and populated for an inevitable anarchy; an area within which every union of states, provinces, cities, religions, races, or political parties, had to be theoretical and unstable.