Harry L. Foster

“ Pedestrians idled beside the lake, watching the procession, and listening to the orchestra, with that rare enjoyment of really good music that characterizes peon and aristocrat alike. Here, as in the small-town plaza, the Mexicans were finding a pleasure in their park such as no American ever finds in the parks of the United States. Here, as everywhere in Mexico, a public garden was not merely a place for the perambulation of baby carriages by nursemaids, but an institution of which even society took full advantage. ”

“ Our launch bumped and grated over the rocks as we plunged through the shallow falls, but the current swept us on, and we came finally into deeper pools below, where the women, straggling along the shore-trail, rejoined us, and crawled over one another as each sought to find her own baggage among the mixture of sacks, bundles, baskets and boxes, and to extract therefrom the ingredients for breakfast.
Each passenger foraged for himself. For three days we chugged downstream through rank green jungle with bits of fog clinging to its edges, through shallows and rapids, through drizzling showers. ”

“ If all of these republics have their turbulent moments, they quickly recover.
After the flight of Tinoco, Costa Rica settled quickly into its accustomed routine. Through the narrow Moorish streets the oxen plodded slowly behind the driver’s goad-pole, their noses to the ground, their massive shoulders swaying from side to side. In the coffee fields outside the capital the peons laughed and chatted as they filled their baskets with red berries. In the plaza the military band played on Sunday evenings, while youths and maidens strolled beneath the palm trees. ”

“ In the manner of a Gringo who first passes the Mexican frontier, I walked cautiously, glancing behind me from time to time, anticipating hostility, if not actual violence.
In the dusk of early morning the low, flat-roofed adobe city of Nogales assumed all the forbidding qualities of the fictional Mexico. But the leisurely immigration official was polite. The customs’ inspector waved me through all formalities with one graceful gesture. No one knifed me in the back. And somewhere ahead, beyond the dim line of railway coaches, an engineer tolled his bell. ”

“ With Mexican kindliness, they always included me in the conversation, although I spoke their language abominably. Had a foreigner murdered English as I murdered Spanish, I should not have had the patience to listen to him. Yet they listened avidly, knitting their brows sometimes in their effort to guess the meaning. If they smiled, their smiles were kindly. They were pleased that the foreigner should try to learn their language. If they disliked Americans in general, they were quickly ready to like any individual American who would meet them half-way. ”

“ So are the two acquaintances—familiar to every one who has lived in Mexico—who meet upon a narrow sidewalk, embrace demonstratively, and stand there for another half hour, enjoying one another’s professions of love and admiration to such an extent that they force all other pedestrians to step out into the gutter.
It is a personal politeness which must be rigidly observed, no matter how much inconvenience it may cause the general public. One finds it everywhere in Mexican life—and this discussion might be extended to apply to the life of the neighboring countries given to revolution. ”

“ In the distance rose lofty mountains, verdant with forest and jungle, towering up and up toward the filmy white clouds. Over it all was the bluest of skies. This was the land which admiring Spaniards, years ago, christened “Rich Coast,” and no country has ever been more aptly named.
Limón itself was merely an average East Coast port—a city of rickety wooden houses behind a large banana wharf, with a population of Jamaican blacks imported by the Fruit Company, which owns this Caribbean shore. ”

“ The desert seemed a trifle more forbidding than the one we had crossed the day before. When we were in the open our gunmen laughed and chatted together; when we approached the forests of yucca and mesquite, I noticed that they grew silent and watchful. But no sound came from the vast expanse of wasteland except the peaceful song of the locusts.
At rare intervals we passed a native village—a cluster of mud hovels surrounding an aged white church—and our advent created a sensation. A host of mongrel dogs but slightly removed from the coyote stage hailed us with furious yelps. ”

“ When one travels through Mexico one is amazed to discover that the Mexicans do not appear a cut-throat lot.
The great masses of Indian and semi-Indian population appear quiet, simple, peaceable folk. Now and then, after the tequila has flowed freely, some of them may beat their wives or cut their neighbors’ throats, but this is not their regular pastime. In fact, most Old-Timers in the country deny that crime is any more frequent there than at home.
Why then, the traveler always asks himself, can these people not elect a president without bloodshed? ”

“ Loving flattery, he is lavish in its bestowal. Being vain, he is eager to make a good impression, and frequently proves generous and hospitable. Being indolent, he has infinite leisure for entertainment. At all times he is friendly, agreeable, and courteous.
To-day, several years after my first visit to Mexico, when I have lived among the natives of twenty-six different lands, and met travelers from many others, there is no people whose company I have enjoyed more than that of the Latin-Americans. And no one individual who proved a more pleasant companion than the little Mexican General. ”

“ Most mining properties are situated in barren, desolate regions. That of the Rosario Company, the largest silver mine in Central America, is situated in a glorious valley, and from its neat white buildings one looks down upon a misty wilderness that stretches away through countless lower valleys, with a silver ribbon of water curling through them toward the sea. Despite its isolation, and the one rough mule trail that connects the mine with the rest of the world, it roared with industry. ”

“ During the three centuries of their rule, there was much progress in Mexico—as the world of to-day judges progress, which means the growth of European institutions—but the Spaniard held the Indian in subjection which in many cases became slavery.
Into the soul of the Indian crept a spirit of rebellion. He rose and cast out the Spaniard. He chose his own leaders, usually from the mestizo or mixed-breed population, only to discover that they were as ready to exploit him as the Spaniard had been. Blinded by the eloquent promises of one politician after another, he marched in every revolution. ”

“ And we found ourselves stranded in the filthiest hole in Mexico. Manzanillo’s streets were of thick sand, inadequately paved in spots with refuse or garbage, over which hovered millions of flies, and about which a host of black buzzards were picking and quarreling. The whole town was perched upon a narrow landspit between the murky bay and a still murkier lagoon, and backed by low hills whose scraggly jungle-growth the tropic sun had burned to a crisp. ”

“ The charming woman writer in particular—who makes a brief trip to the more modern cities of Chile and the Argentine, meets only the aristocracy, and completes her book as a bread-and-butter letter to the delightful people who fed her tea and cakes—is inclined nowadays, in her impulse to jolt out of his complacency the reader at home, to picture all the Latin-Americans as infinitely superior to our own crude selves. ”

“ Every visitor to Guatemala makes the trip to Quiriguá, not to see the plantation, but to observe the famous Maya ruins hidden in the neighboring jungles.
Like most famous sights which every one travels far to see, they prove extremely disappointing. Their only beauty is that one has to ride horseback through a swamp to reach them, and that they are so completely surrounded with tropical forest, which forms an ideal setting. ”

“ The coffee-kings gather there nightly to keep their wealth in circulation, and to bask in the smiles. They drink somewhat immoderately, as in Mexico, and wait patiently to the closing hour, only to learn that the girls’ own parents call to take them straight home. But the coffee-kings are ever hopeful. They come back night after night. And the cafés possess a gayety that adds to the city’s attractiveness.
Neither revolution, nor earthquake, nor disappointment in love can dampen the good humor of these countries. ”

“ Naked children ran races with the engine. The ox-drivers, leading their patient yokes with a barbed pole, wore only a straw hat, a pair of pants, and a machete—a big two-bladed knife—wherewith to hack their way through the undergrowth. The women were garbed in what appeared to be a thin, loose-flowing nightgown. The houses were of cane and thatch, festering usually in pools of filth. Swarms of pigs came out at each stopping-place to nose about in search of the melon-rinds or fruit-skins that passengers might contribute to their welfare. ”

“ Men were mere appendages in Tehuantepec—a somewhat desirable comfort in a tropical climate—but not at all necessary. The soldiers stationed here looked peculiarly contented, and the older women all wore strings of twenty-dollar gold pieces as mementos of the day when the gold-rush to California led across this Isthmus, yet to the casual observer, these Indian maidens were the least flirtatious to be seen in Mexico. If they could find a man—a fairly permanent, dependable man, who could be counted on to remain at home and keep house—well and good. ”

“ They question our philanthropic motives in Nicaragua. They are always wondering where the lightning may strike next.
So firmly convinced are most of our neighbors that we are what they always describe as “the grasping Colossus of the North,” that when our government exercises forbearance, they merely suspect us of cowardice. When Woodrow Wilson for many years let Mexico literally get away with murder, his idealism was misunderstood. For a time Latin America looked upon the United States as a braggart that never executed its repeated diplomatic threats. ”

“ In the clear mountain air each picturesque detail of the vast landscape stood out distinctly—the peaked hat of a little Indian plodding solemnly behind his burro—a herd of cattle grazing leisurely upon the coarse bunch-grass, mere brown specks against the yellow hills—a lonely white chapel with two slender towers and a massive dome, standing by itself without the suggestion of a possible worshiper within miles and miles—an infrequent hacienda with a host of tiny laborers’ shacks grouped about a crumbling ranch-house that once had been a palace. ”

“ As I recall that first conversation with Herminia and Lolita, it ran somewhat as follows:
Were we from the United States? Ay, what a wonderful country must be the United States! How they would love to go to a land where women enjoyed such freedom! And American men respected women more than did the Mexicans. But how long were we remaining in Mazatlán? So short a time! Why did we not stay longer? Did we not think Mexican girls as attractive as American girls? ”

“ The road itself scaled precipitous heights, and twisted around narrow cliffs, where the least mistake of a chauffeur might send a car tumbling over and over into infinity. It was all ruggedly beautiful, particularly as we climbed into the coolness of six thousand feet above the sea, where the hills were covered with pines, but it was a cruel country—such a country as discourages agriculture and effectually prevents the transportation that might open up its vast store of mineral wealth—a country suited only for warfare and revolution. ”

“ One could scarcely walk the streets without shooing buzzards out of the way. Sooty black in color, with ashen-gray neck curved to suggest hunched shoulders, they hopped about with rocketing step, pouncing with hoggish squeals upon rotted carrion, and squabbling among themselves over its possession. One was tempted always to try the pistols on them, but they were protected by law, for without their services in disposing of the mess which Latin-American servants are accustomed to toss from the kitchen window, cities like Manzanillo would be altogether uninhabitable. ”

“ Like most of the mines in Mexico, El Progresso was not the sort where one had merely to walk out with a pick and chop large pieces of silver off a convenient mountain side; before a single speck of mineral could be extracted, it had been necessary to transport across the desert a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of machinery; every bit of it had been brought over the long trail on truck or muleback, and the journey of every train had meant the possibility of a fight with Indians. ”

“ Then they crept forward upon their knees—ragged little brown devils, unwashed, unshaven, and unlaundered—many of them still a trifle pulque-sodden from a fiesta of the night before. This noise and display thrilled them as no solemn service could thrill them. As they crept forward, with arms extended, expressions of rapt ecstasy almost ennobled their villainous faces. Their sins were forgiven! To-morrow, with that odd mixture of idealism and materialism so characteristic of their race, they would start sinning again with a clean conscience. ”

“ We assume that he should appreciate our kindliness and love us as the big brother we consider ourselves to be. On the contrary, he not only dislikes us as a nation, but distrusts our motives. He looks upon us—and frequently with good cause—as hypocrites who pat him upon the back as a prelude to selling him American products. In our missionary efforts he sees only a colossal national vanity. ”

“ Each race has developed its own ideas as to what is important in human conduct. The Anglo-Saxon, being by nature blunt and frank, regards truth as a supreme virtue. When he discovers something wrong, he sets about correcting it. The Latin-American, being by nature suave and courteous, regards truth as an irritating and offensive bad habit. When he discovers something wrong, he politely ignores it.
From our viewpoint, the Latin-American appears shallow and superficial. He lives a life of pretense, completely satisfied so long as outward effect is properly maintained. ”