Mexico and its Religion Part 16

CHAPTER XXIII.

The new City of Mexico.--The Discoveries of Gold.--Ruins at Mexico.--The Monks, and what Cortez gained by his Piety.--The City of Mexico again rebuilt.--The City under Ravillagigedo.--The National Palace.--The Cathedral.--A whole Museum turned Saints.--All kneel together.--The San Carlos Academy of Arts.--Reign of Carlos III--The Mineria.

The city of Mexico, as rebuilt by Cortez, was but an humble affair. The small amount of plunder realized from the city destroyed; the necessity for large remittances to secure peace at the Spanish court; the general poverty and dest.i.tution of the Indians inhabiting the surrounding villages, and the narrow limits of the Aztec empire, were great impediments in the way of erecting a magnificent city. On a small scale, he resembled Santa Anna in the activity with which he could organize an army after defeat, or resuscitate affairs when apparently irretrievable. He knew how to improve the most slender means to the accomplishment of ulterior purposes. Perseverance is not one of the leading characteristics of the Spanish race, yet it is surprising to see how much they will often accomplish with what would appear to us totally inadequate means. Such was eminently the talent of Cortez.

Surrounded by disappointed men, who had been lured to the country by magnificent pictures of its resources, he still went on extending his conquests among the surrounding tribes.

Fortunately, the most precious of all metals is obtained by the most simple process, and the gold-washings of the Mescala and other parts of the south, which the Indians had but partially wrought, received more attention as soon as they learned how readily the precious metal could be exchanged for the gewgaws of the Europeans. Gold dust was greedily exchanged for its weight in bright silver coins, and an ounce of gold was not unfrequently given for a bright-colored handkerchief. In a few months the means for the organization of a community were obtained from the gold-diggings. Nothing tends so much to elevate the lowly as the discovery of gold-washings, in which individual effort, and not machinery, is the ruling power, and the producer of wealth. But even a gold country has its evils; for nowhere have I ever seen so many disappointed men as at the very place where an abundance of gold could be had for simply washing it out of the mud; and nowhere have I seen so large a proportion of unemployed men as on the spot where the wages of labor were fabulously high. Still, with all these drawbacks, the city of Cortez rapidly progressed under the stimulus of gold discoveries, until he found the wildest of his dreams falling short of the reality.

THE MONKS IN MEXICO.

The new city did not occupy the exact position of its Indian predecessor, but was cl.u.s.tered around the still remaining navigable ca.n.a.ls, upon the southern border, while the main portion of the old city, which lay toward the northern limits of the island--where to this day such an abundant supply of earthen G.o.ds is to be found by digging--was left a ma.s.s of ruins. These were not, by any means, the ruins of fallen stone walls, or capitals, or columns, but shapeless ma.s.ses of earth, which proclaim most unmistakably the kind of magnificence which distinguished the ancient capital of the Aztec empire.

The monks, who scented gold as buzzards scent carrion, began early to discover the growing wealth of this new city, and soon a party of a dozen Franciscans, in sackcloth with downcast visages, approached the city. They came, not as religious teachers, but as spiritual scavengers, who had consecrated their lives for gold to clean out the road to heaven for the vilest sinners. Cortez, who had been the greatest sinner, was now the greatest penitent. The whole city was moved at the coming of these holy men, who carried the cross before them, but forgot not the cards and the dice in their pockets--who daily, in the ma.s.s, consecrated spiritual bread for famishing souls, and at night spent the wages of their piety at the gambling-table. To the surprise of his fellow-profligates, and to the astonishment of the Indians, Cortez, walking bare-footed, led the procession that escorted the monks from near the spot where his brigantines had sailed among the corn-fields of Iztapalapan to the little chapel he had partly finished, and which now stands in the yard of the Franciscans.[50] He was so zealous in the performance of his devotions and his penances that he won the affections of the holy fathers to such a degree that he ever found faithful supporters in the powerful order of Saint Francis in all his troubles at the Spanish court. The question of his sincerity mattered little to them. It was the benefit of his public example which they, above all things, desired in their search after golden treasures.

To get gold and to gratify their vices was their pious calling. Though they boast of having baptized some 6000 Indians, this argues nothing, except as it tends to show the numbers of the Indian population of the valley; for, as a badge of their subjugation, the Indians received Christian baptism; and truly it has been said of them, "They feared the Lord, but served their graven images."

We have now a sadder tale to tell; one that philanthropists have grieved over so often. Gold-washings are soon exhausted, but they frequently lead to the discovery of silver mines, which become so profitable as to drive away the very memory of the gold-washings. Thus the fact that gold-washings ever existed in Mexico, or even in Brazil, is almost forgotten, and the places where those washings were rests in vague tradition.

But while gold is procured by the most simple process, to extract silver requires science, and an immense expenditure of labor and machinery, in delving to the very bowels of the earth, and in separating the slight percentage of pure silver from the ma.s.s of ore.

In this exhausting labor, which is often a.s.signed to convicts, Indians were employed until they gave up the ghost. The conquerors had appropriated to themselves the best-looking of the Indian females, while their husbands--for Indians marry very early in life--were consigned to the mines as laborers and carriers in the bowels of the mountain. From this promiscuous intercourse, so early introduced, has arisen the present mixed-blood population of Mexico. The offspring of sin, they are a nation of sinners. The pure Indians are the descendants chiefly of the unenslaved tribes, like the Tlascalans and Tezcucans, who carried on the subsequent wars of Cortez, and the whites are mostly descendants of later immigrations.

In a former chapter we have seen that the evils which California suffered in the first years of its existence afflicted Mexico down to the time of the great inundation of 1629; and from the pen of an eye-witness we have given a picture of the state of society at that time. But during the five years that the water rested on the city, its superabundant wealth disappeared; many of the n.o.bility and gentry withdrew to Puebla, carrying with them their treasures and their vices, while mult.i.tudes of the poorer cla.s.ses perished. So that when the Virgin of Guadalupe, in her great mercy to an afflicted people, caused the earth to open and swallow up the great excess of waters, they had become a sobered and a more moral population. It is from this abating of the waters in the year 1634 that we have to date the origin of the present city of Mexico; for the foundations of all the buildings except those about the Cathedral were so much softened by five years of soaking that they could not be relied on; and a new city grew up upon new foundations. This is the Mexico of the present day; a city more elegant than substantial, and dependent more upon the plaster and colored washings of its walls than solid masonry for its apparent durability.

THE VICEROY RAVILLAGIGEDO.

It was the great Vice-king Ravillagigedo, toward the close of the last century (1789), who gave the finishing strokes to the city, and established its reputation as the finest city on this continent while the vice-kingdom continued. It was then one of the best-lighted cities to be found, while in its paving he expended the large sum of $347,715.[51] We have seen, in our own day and in our own large cities, the popular applause which follows the rigid enforcement of wholesome ordinances; and it may be well supposed that in a city like Mexico, such an unusual proceeding would elevate the fearless magistrate in popular estimation, and make him the subject of all kind of apocryphal anecdotes.

The best of the anecdotes ill.u.s.trating his sternness in enforcing city ordinances is the following: A police officer once reported to him the case of the occupants of a house who had neglected sweeping in front of their premises. He informed him that the family had consisted of a widowed mother and two daughters, but that the mother had died during the previous night, and that, instead of sweeping the street as usual, the daughters sat at the door weeping, and soliciting money of pa.s.sers-by to bury the dead body. "Return," said the viceroy sternly to the officer, "and stand at the door until there are twelve shillings (a dollar and a half) in the plate, and then take it, and bring it and the offenders to me." The officer did as directed. "Deliver the money to the munic.i.p.al treasurer, in payment of the fine for violating the city ordinance," said the vice-king to the officer, "and then return to your duty." He then turned to the orphans: "I hear that your mother is dead, and that you wish to obtain the means of burying her. Here is an order on your parish priest, who will bury your mother, and here is a trifle for yourselves," he said, handing to each of them a gold ounce. They went their way, blessing the man that had succored them in their necessity. This early example of the rigid enforcement of city ordinances has never been forgotten in Mexico, where, considering its limited means, for its revenue[52] does not exceed $400,000, including its landed rents, its government is well sustained, and its laws better enforced than in many of our own cities. Its police consists of a military patrol,[53] who, oddly enough, perform the duties of lamplighters.

THE NATIONAL PALACE.

The National Palace is an immense structure, which occupies the eastern front of the Grand Plaza, and is sometimes foolishly called the Halls of the Montezumas. It contains within itself all the offices of government, besides the barracks of the President's guard. Besides being the city residence of the President himself, it contains the two halls that were formerly occupied by the two legislative bodies, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, while such a burlesque of our free inst.i.tutions existed in Mexico. In this palace also was the National Mint, so long as any body would trust the nation with his silver bars to coin; but, now that the mint is farmed out, it is removed to a private establishment. In this building are all the archives of the vice-kingdom and the republic, and he who would study the history of the past must diligently labor here.

The Cathedral is upon the northern side of the Grand Plaza, and is said to occupy the site of the great _teocalli_, and to have a rocky foundation. Whether this last a.s.sertion is really true, I have no means of verifying, but there must be something unusual about its foundations, as its towers are the only ones that I know of in the city that do not lean a little. Ninety years was this vast edifice, or, rather, pile of edifices, in building, and the amount of treasure expended in its construction seems to a stranger to be fabulous. The best of its many fine views, or, rather, the one I admire the most, is the one from the entrance to the National Palace, though the one most commonly given is that from the front of the Munic.i.p.ality building, which occupies the entire south front of the Plaza.

IMAGES IN THE CATHEDRAL.

The interior of the Cathedral is certainly imposing, but I had so early in life attached the idea of the Gothic architecture to every thing magnificent in the way of churches, that this Moro-Spanish style fails to produce an effect commensurate with the merits of the building.

Again, images are not a.s.sociated with my early ideas of divine worship; and when, pa.s.sing from side altar to side altar, I feel that I am only looking at wax figures, they produce no solemnity in me. And when I afterward learned, or thought I learned, that the showman of the strolling museum got his "wax figures" at the same shop, or from the same moulds in which were cast the images of the saints, they call up the idea of Punch and Judy.

Before these images I have seen hundreds of worshipers prostrate, repeating their prayers with the most profound reverence, while the sight of the image filled me with boyish glee that I could hardly suppress. The identical image that was labeled Bluebeard in the museum is now Saint Peter. The "Disconsolate Widow" is now "the Weeping Virgin." Charlotte Temple, and the baby that never knew its father, is now Mary and the infant Christ. Macbeth, looking as though he had the toothache, is Saint Francis. Oth.e.l.lo is here a saint; and the sleeping Desdemona is now the sleeping Virgin. The monster that poisoned six husbands, and sits meditating the death of a seventh, is now dressed in the latest Paris finery, and is a saint. The old miser, who laid up such h.o.a.rds while he starved himself to death, is here placed among saints; the clothes are different, but there is the same forbidding visage. Here, too, are the Queen of Sheba, the Babes in the Wood, the Belle of the West, the Terrible Brigand, and Sir William Wallace--all transformed into images of saints, before whom the people bow down with the most profound reverence, and to whose intercession they commit the salvation of their souls.

I do not know whether the showman or the priests are to blame for my irreverence, or whether it is the fault of the system itself. The argument in favor of the adoration of images is that they make impressions on the senses which aid devotion; but, if the impressions made on my senses are to be considered, the whole tendency is to debase the immortal Maker of heaven and earth below the level of humanity, "and to change the image of the incorruptible G.o.d into an image made like to corruptible man." There was abundant proof of this in the tabernacle of our Lady of Remedies above the great altar of the Cathedral. There sits enthroned this cast-off bauble of some nursery, emblazoned with jewels enough to supply the means to educate the whole population of Mexico. To this piece of dilapidated wood and plaster of Paris are conceded attributes of G.o.d Almighty: to grant rain in times of drought; health in times of pestilence; a safe delivery to women in peril of childbirth; and before it, in times of public calamity, the highest dignitaries walk in solemn procession.

Nothing disgusts an Anglo-Saxon more than to witness the mental degradation of the descendants of the Castilians, the slaves of superst.i.tion, craft, and imposture. From generation to generation they have lived in constant fear of the secret agents of the Inquisition, and of the evil spirits that are ever plotting against the peace of good Christians. The permanency of the laws of Nature, the very foundation of all self-reliance and courage, is believed to be at the caprice of every one of a legion of saints, each of whom has been canonized on proof of working a miracle. Truth, and honesty, and chast.i.ty are subordinate virtues, and only a slavish devotion to his conscience-keeper can sustain a believer in the hour of greatest necessity.

There are important truths to be learned in Mexico, and even in this immense pile of buildings devoted to superst.i.tion. Among these is the perfect equality that should exist in a place of worship. Here the rich and the poor meet together upon a level; the well-dressed lady and the market-woman are here kneeling together before the same image. The distinctions of wealth and rank are for the moment forgotten. While I was looking on and admiring this state of things, I saw a market-man on his return homeward with an empty hen-coop on his back. He walked boldly up, and knelt among the body of worshipers, told his beads, and then started up and trudged on his homeward journey. This equality is only for an hour, and hardly so long; yet it is an hour daily, and must have its effect in this country of inequalities in reminding the most humble that this inequality is only for this world, and that at the termination of life all will stand upon a common level.

THE SAN CARLOS.

The San Carlos, or Academy of Arts, is now in a flourishing condition, on account of the success of the lottery that supports it. The number of students here gratuitously instructed in different branches of art is quite large. Here, too, it is refreshing to see equality triumphant; the child of the _peon_ and of the prince sit side by side, and on the days of public exhibition, the crowds that throng its halls are admitted gratuitously, and are of as miscellaneous a character as are its pupils. The pictures of _Pangre_ are the present great attraction, and every new production of his genius gains him additional applause.

The works that Humboldt so much admired are still here, but since his time there have been added several marbles of considerable merit.

This Academy of San Carlos is one of the many monuments of that greatest of the kings of Spain since the Conquest, Don Carlos III., though not brought into full operation until the reign of his imbecile successor, Carlos IV. All the monuments of which Mexico can boast at this day are traceable to the reign of the only enlightened Spanish prince of whom Spain can boast in a period of 300 years. Nearly a hundred years have elapsed since the foundation of this academy, and it has not yet produced a man of the first cla.s.s either in painting or sculpture.

The College of Mines, the finest building in this city, is another exhibition of the liberal spirit which governed in the reign of Don Carlos. Under this prince a new code of mining laws had been digested, strikingly resembling the present miner's rules in California. Their immediate effect was almost to double the production of silver, while the Mineria was both a school to impart scientific knowledge in relation to mining, and a bank to advance money to develop new mineral enterprises. Its support now rests upon the tax it is authorized to levy of one shilling upon every mark ($8) of silver produced.

[50] As it is an unimportant question whether Cortez first built a chapel for the Franciscans back of the Cathedral, or the one in the yard of the Franciscans, I here repeat the popular tradition.

[51] HUMBOLDT, _Essai Politique_.

[52] As my readers may be a little curious to know how the city government is sustained, I translate the statement of city revenue of 1851.

There were in that year 379 licensed _pulque_-shops, yielding a revenue of $65,297 538 retail grocer shops in which liquor is sold by the gill 25,609 8 breweries pay a city tax of 1,697 132 cafes, fondas, and eating-houses pay 4,418 Tax on grain and bread consumed in the city 53,762 Public diversions, $3103; permitted plays (not gambling), $3221 6,324 Tax on ca.n.a.ls, $6798; tax on coaches, $20,157; markets, $56,130 83,085 Donation of the proceeds of a bull-fight 830 Gifts, in bread and meat, to the prisons 4,561 A tax of one dollar on the slaughtering of 21,984 beef-cattle 21,984 16,404 calves were slaughtered, paying six shillings tax 12,303 145,040 sheep, at one shilling and sixpence 27,194 9394 pigs paid five shillings tax, or 5,870 42,734 swine, full grown, paid six shillings 32,055 7750 goats and kids, at one shilling and sixpence 1,453 Tax on property entering the city gates 1,878 Licenses to slaughter to individuals 136 The water rents of $20,000 were consumed in repairs.

The tax on fish yielded $390 The balance of the revenue consists of certain city properties.

_Expenditures._

The heaviest items are for the public prisons $69,863 For the hospitals of the insane 48,000 Lancasterian schools 3,600 Lights and city patrol 52,422 Exhibition of flowers and fruits in November last 1,831 Salaries of school-teachers, and rent of houses for schools 4,812 Religious worship in Hospital of San Hippolito, and for vaccine matter 2,282 Cleaning the streets by night and by day 21,378 Salaries 31,472 Dinners and festivals 151

The city has a debt of $617,978, and has, as a set-off, a claim against the supreme government for $1,700,000 of its funds seized from time to time, and for keeping prisoners.

[53] The arrests in the year 1851 were 212 men and 182 women for infractions of police regulations; 1256 men and 1944 women for excessive drinking; 384 men and 120 women for robbery; 180 men and 84 women on suspicion of robbery; 120 men and 25 women for picking pockets; 15 men and 3 women for murder; 728 men and 246 women for affrays and wounds; 209 men and 85 women for carrying forbidden weapons; 36 men who had escaped from prison; 39 men and 17 women for false pretenses; 354 men and 403 women for incontinence and adultery; 311 men and 318 women for the violation of public decency; 64 delinquent youth for the house of correction--making a total of arrests for the year of 3918 men and 3430 women; besides, they have protected 315 persons apprehensive of a.s.saults from evil-doers. _And they have freed the city from the plague of 6048 dogs!_ Just as many dogs arrested as human beings. These statistics furnish an inadequate idea of the number of knife-fights that are of so common occurrence among the _peons_ about the _pulque_-shops, in which women and men show an equal skill at stabbing in the back.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The National Museum.--Marianna and Cortez.--The small Value of this Collection.--The Botanic Garden.--The Market of Santa Anna.--The Acordada Prison.--The unfortunate Prisoner.--The Causes of that Night of Terror.--The Sacking of the City.--The Parian.--The Causes of the Ruin of the Parian.--Change in the Standard of Color.--The Ashes of Cortez.

MUSEUM.--BOTANIC GARDEN.--MARKET.

The National Museum has its weekly exhibitions, and attracts as great a crowd of the common people as does the Academy of Arts. Here as perfect equality reigns as in the San Carlos or in the Cathedral. The first object of interest is the large collection of stone idols which have been dug up from time to time in and about the Grand Plaza. There are dog-faced idols, and apish G.o.ds, and unearthly things, besides the sacrificial stone, and a rude attempt to represent a G.o.ddess. Whether or no this was a sort of Aztec Lady of Remedies I did not learn. The Aztecs might easily have produced these works without exhibiting much civilization; but I have heard it surmised that they must have been among the plunder of more civilized tribes.

On the two opposite sides of the first hall we entered, I saw spread out the pictorial chronology of two dynasties that had pa.s.sed away--the vice-regal line of potentates standing over against the royal line of Aztec emperors. The portraits of the vice-kings, from Cortez down to the last of his successors, stretch entirely across one side of the hall, and about the same number of Indian caciques are daubed upon a piece of papyrus that is fastened upon the opposite wall. It requires the greatest possible stretch of liberality for one accustomed to Indian efforts of this kind to dignify such intolerable daubs with the name of paintings. And yet this is the picture-writing of the Aztecs, with which the world has been so edified for centuries. If there is or ever was an Iroquois Indian that should undertake to stain so miserably, I verily believe he would be expelled from his tribe. To make it manifest that this was intended for a chronological record of the imperial line, black lines were daubed from one of these effigies to another. From a printed label in Spanish affixed to this wonderful relic, I learned that it was intended to represent the wanderings of the Aztecs from California.

It is usual for North American Indians to store up traditions of the extensive wanderings of their ancestors, and if one is asked to represent the tradition on bark, he would produce very much such an affair as this, though with a somewhat greater resemblance to the human form. Another picture represents Marianna, the mistress of Cortez, with her rosary, and Cortez with his fingers in much such a position as boys place them in when they wish to convey the idea that they have perpetrated a joke--a very satisfactory method of representing the piety of Cortez. Close by the pious couple is the representation of a scene which they seem to have come out to witness. A bloodhound is represented tearing an Indian to pieces, while a Spaniard is holding on to the end of the dog's chain.

The banner under which Cortez fought, or rather one of them--for he had two--is here preserved in a gilt frame. It represents the Virgin Mary portrayed on crimson silk. In this hall is also a miniature representation of a silver mine, with the workmen at their several branches of labor. The remains of the vice-regal throne are here piled up in a corner.