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In fine, and ever due, wholly or in part, to the atmosphere, the Mexican of the Central Plateau—and so much the less as the altitude of the region where he lives is greater—has never been able to count upon the future, either for his life, or for his health, or for his fields, or for his mines, or for his daily bread; and the apparent lack of uniformity in the phenomena of nature, experienced through generations, has developed in him finally a standard of judgment, composed of simple coexistences, which, in turn, has forged the fixed belief that all in nature is uncertain and capricious. As a logical consequence, there has arisen an unconquerable tendency toward the only manner in his power for reproducing in the same unpredictable form the contingencies of fortune and misfortune of life, so far at least as concerns wealth and misery—that is, to gaming; and thus may be explained the extent of this vice in Mexico.
MEXICO’S LOWEST CLASS.
A, (a). Unfortunate men and women who have no normal or certain means of subsistence; they live in the streets and sleep in public sleeping-places, crouched in the portales, in the shelters of doorways, amid the rubbish of buildings in construction, in some meson if they can pay for the space three or four centavos a night, or stowed away in the house of some compadre or friend. They are beggars, gutter-snipes, paper-sellers, grease-buyers, rag-pickers, scrub-women, etc. With difficulty they earned twenty or thirty centavos daily; now they may receive more, but the general rise in prices leaves them in the same condition of misery. They are covered with rags, they scratch themselves constantly, in their tangled hair they carry the dust and mud of every quarter of the city. They never bathe themselves save when the rain drenches them, and their bare feet are cracked and calloused, and assume the color of the ground. In general, they do not attain to an old age, but to a precocious decrepitude, worn out by syphilis, misery, and drink.
The men and women of this class have completely lost modesty; their language is that of the drinking-house; they live in sexual promiscuity, get drunk daily, frequent the lowest pulquerias of the meanest quarters; they quarrel and are the chief causes of disorders; they form the ancient class of Mexican leperos; from their bosom the ranks of petty thieves and pickpockets are recruited, and they are the industrious plotters of important crimes. They are insensible to moral suffering, and physical suffering pains them but little, and pleasures give them little joy. Venereal disease and abortion render the women of the group refractory to motherhood; paternity is impossible on account of the promiscuity in which they live; these two natural springs of altruism destroyed, they are indifferent to humane sentiments and egoistic in the animal fashion.
Everywhere they may be seen, the repulsive feature of our streets. In speaking they reveal a dwarfed intelligence, as sadly ruined by their life as is their body. Their ideas are rudimentary notions derived from the common talk of the streets, comments on public events—the escape of one criminal, the sentence of another, the deportation of their companions, the capture of some “crook.” They are godless, with feeble superstition regarding the saints depicted on their scapulars or the medal of the rosary, which they wear beneath their filthy shirt. Their number is enormous; they constitute the dregs of the laboring classes, and their presence betrays the vortices of vice, where the outcasts of civilization are dragged down.
ALEJANDRO VILLASEÑOR Y VILLASEÑOR.
This well-known journalist was born in Mexico, July 15, 1864. His education was gained in the Colegio de la Sociedad Católica (School of the Catholic Society), the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (the National Preparatory School), and the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia (National School of Jurisprudence). He received the title of Advocate, July 7, 1887. While still a student, in 1885 and 1886, he assisted upon the staff of the Boletin de la Juventud Católica (Catholic Youths Bulletin). In March, 1889, he became associated with the editorial management of El Tiempo (The Time), with which he still continues. He has also written many articles for other leading periodicals. In October, 1895, he founded La Tribuna (The Tribune), which was not a financial success. An article in this was the cause of his imprisonment in the famous city prison of Belem.
Señor Villaseñor y Villaseñor is a member of various learned and literary societies and has participated, as a delegate, in several important congresses. Among the latter is the First Catholic Congress held in the city of Puebla, in February, 1903.