Mexican people

“ In every circumstance they proved to be animated by the noblest impulses of our common nature, and one of the happiest discoveries I made during those days of a bewildering bewildering struggle with a new civilization, was that, despite the representation of many of my own countrymen, fidelity, tenderness, and untiring devotion were as truly Mexican characteristics as American. It is doubtful in my mind if the people of any country lavish upon strangers the same warmth of manner or exhibit the same readiness to serve them, as do our near-at-hand, far-away neighbors, the Mexicans. ”

“ The independence of Mexico has not yet accomplished much for these people, yet they are content. Would that the great question of our own Indians might be settled, and that they could regulate their lives in as useful and peaceful a manner as their dusky-hued brethren in the land of the Montezumas! The Mexican Indian is by inherent custom an agriculturist, and notwithstanding the fact that the conqueror imposed upon him burdensome and distasteful labors—among them that of mining—he at the first opportunity returned to his favorite vocation, to which he still adheres at the present day. ”

“ You know, like myself, the Mexican character—a strange composite of all good and bad instincts, about which it is impossible to form a decided opinion."
"Why, my dear count, the Mexicans are like every people that has been for a long time enslaved. After remaining children for ages, they grew too fast, and had the pretension of being men, when they scarcely began to comprehend their emancipation, or were in a position to derive any benefit from it." ”

“ It is true that education that we Mexicans have inherited from our ancient grandparents, in the last decades of the 20th century has gradually been lost in in the Mexican society; however, it can still be found in indigenous and peasant communities. The foundations and roots are solid and alive. Five hundred years of demeaning our education has undoubtedly borne colonial fruits. But we have not lost as people and as a civilization this valuable cultural heritage. ”

“ It was not long that this quarrelsome people could live together without fighting amongst themselves, and ten or fifteen years after the founding of the city the two parties—the Mexicans and the Tlatelolcans—separated, the latter going to a still smaller island near the main one. The Mexicans, however, kept the god, and, though their neighbors were more progressive at first, were in the end triumphant. Though for a while each faction had a separate government and its king, the Mexican is the one that finally absorbed the other, and whose history we shall mainly follow. ”

“ But the character and habits of the Mexican people unfitted them for the rational enjoyment of free institutions; and they became the easy prey of the military despots, who by turns harassed and oppressed them. The descendants of the Spaniard, while they have retained many of the more noble traits of their ancestors, they have acquired all the baser passions and characteristics of the different races with which they have amalgamated. [1] They are passionate and vindictive, treacherous and cruel, indolent and selfish; and their bravery is an impulse rather than a sentiment. ”

“ Such is the character of the dealings the Mexican people have had to contend with until to-day they have no confidence whatever in the white people by whom they are surrounded, and it is something almost unknown in their history, it is something strange for them to be placed in a position whereby they would be dealt with honorably and uprightly by white people. ”

“ The truth is that the Mexican is a human being and that he is subject to the same evolutionary laws of growth as are potent in the development of any other people. The truth is that, if the Mexican does not fully measure up to the standard of the highest type of European, it is because of his history, a most influential part of which is the grinding exploitation to which he is subjected under the present regime in Mexico. Let us go back to the beginning and glance briefly at the Mexican as an ethnological being and compare his abilities and possibilities with that of the "free" American. ”

“ The superior grades of the Mexican people are descended from the Spaniards who settled in the country before the revolution the rest are half-castes and native Indians. The men are for the most part short in stature, and deficient in muscular power ”

“ This prediction, that the Mexican people needed but "peace and the stimulus of foreign emulation" to bring out their latent energies, is being realized. Mexico is taking a distinguished stand among nations, from which it will soon become impossible for her to recede. I myself, having broken bread and eaten salt with almost every class in Mexico, can truthfully subscribe to the sentiments expressed by the last-quoted author, and do so unhesitatingly. There is more truth in the Mexican's protestations of good will than strangers are ready to credit ”

“ As their guest during my stay in Santa Rosalia nothing was more interesting than to watch these genuine American children transformed into veritable Mexicans. So thoroughly identified were these little people with the land of their adoption that in their daily play not one word of English was spoken; every movement, tone, gesture, and expression was entirely Mexican, even to their games and plays and reboso-wrapped dolls. The baby, christened Charles, repudiated his baptismal name and clung with infantile pertinacity to its Mexican synonym of Carlos, refusing to answer to any other. ”

“ There is no people who take less interest in the rare features of their beautiful country than the Mexicans. Nature charms them not. A Mexican dwelling with a garden around it is a rarity—a lawn or a shrubbery is never seen ”

“ There is doubtless a great affinity between the races of Mexican Indians (the native Aztecs) and the Arabian tribes; there yet remains much of the Eastern type in the aspect of the people—their diminutive figures, their aversion to labour, their fiery irritable tempers, and their flowing and often poetical redundancy of language. The physical weakness of the modern Mexicans is extreme ”

“ But they mark a people, not decadent, but evolving. The Mexicans are at the beginning, not the end, of their civilisation; the rise, not the fall, of their life. Here is the material of a vigorous and prolific race which may be destined to bulk largely—like the whole of Spanish-America—in the future régime of the civilisation of the white man.
The "era of glorious progress"—to use the Mexican term—which the long dictatorship of the present famous President of Mexico inaugurated is a theme which occupies the Mexican mind and pen very largely. ”

“ So many things must be consulted and considered that in other countries have no relation whatever to business; but without which everything is tame and void of interest to the Mexican. It is necessary to study carefully the language, customs, habits and sentiments of the people ”

“ Now in these two extracts we see illustrated the previous statement regarding the heterogeneousness of the population, since, although both speak of the Mexican, each describes a radically different type; the first evidently the Indian, the latter the Creole or Mestizo of the upper ranks. One should be careful to discriminate between the various classes of people. I have had my attention called to the fact, that those who have known the Mexicans longest speak of them in the highest terms. Of such well-informed observers was Brantz Mayer, author of several books on Mexico. ”

“ I go, then, to the head of the Mexican army—an army the off-spring of a free people—and joined with it, I will fulfil my utmost duty in opposing the enemies of my country. I will die fighting, or lead the valiant Mexicans to the enjoyment of a triumph to which they are alike entitled by justice, by their warlike character, and by the dignity and enthusiasm which they have preserved, of a free nation. The war is a necessity of immediate importance; every day's delay is an age of infamy ”

“ Visiting is exacted with frequency, and on all occasions of interest to a family, and with all the old-fashioned Spanish formality — of manner, at least, yet the conversation falls, as a rule, into society gossip. With the rise of inferior and colored persons, by means of political influence and military intrigues, parties present a greater mixture than formerly. Nevertheless, the innate politeness of the Mexican, and his natural suavity of manner, permit a comparatively easy adaptation of tone. ”

“ If Mexico had no other great charity than this, the fact of its existence, and that it has been allowed to carry on uninterrupted business through civil wars and changes of government, revolutions and counter revolutions, speaks volumes in favor of Mexican foresight and forbearance. ”

“ Since 1521 Mexicans have been instilled to feel contempt and pity for the cultural heritage of the old grandparents. Each mexican to "progress economically" or "improve socially” has to stay away as much as possible from his roots and deny their —mother culture—. The way is to speak, dress, eat, work, eat, consume; in short, be as the conquerors. Take on the face of the colonizer and put make up on the millennial face of our own culture, until it is apparently erased. ”

“ It so falls out that the misguided wretch sees, or is led to believe that he sees, a way to escape, and attempts to run. Now no true Mexican would seek to establish a precedent so contrary to all the traditions of the country as to indulge in rapid locomotion, except in a case of life and death, and where his own was the life at stake. ”

“ Trembling on the verge of two races, his eyes looking towards the land of his progenitors, the enshrined Spain of his dreams, with something of race-nostalgia—if we may be permitted to coin the term—yearning for the distinction of the white skin and traditions of European civilisation, yet bound to the life of and race of his own patria by reason of the native blood within his veins, the Hispanic Mexican has cultivated a sensitive social spirit which tinges his character and action in every-day life. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII. GUAYMAS.
The Mexicans are only children, though terrible children we allow, on whom it is impossible to calculate, no matter in what way. Their deplorable conduct, under all circumstances, since they succeeded in constituting themselves an independent nation, proves that, unless an entire change takes place in their character, no more is to be hoped from them in the future than they have effected in the past.
Curious, fickle, cowardly, rash, distrustful, cruel, and superstitious—such is the Mexican. ”

“ The spirit of the times is felt by the Mexican leaders, and it will not be long before, through their efforts, the Republic of Mexico will be as much the home of the free and the brave, in the sense used in the United States, as the latter. I repeat it once more, Americans who mind their business, who behave like sensible men, and treat the Mexicans with the respect they deserve, will find a splendid field for enterprise in Mexico. ”

“ From these conditions results one of the most striking contradictions in Mexican life. The mestizos have developed as the owners of the greater number of small properties in the republic, they have monopolized many lines of small trade, they are the middlemen. They hold the great majority of public offices. But they have no unity of interest and feeling with the laboring classes. Mexico, it is true, has no hard and fast race line such as is found in the United States. ”

“ Sixty-five per cent of the inhabitants are pure Indians; 15 percent are pure Spanish, Americans, English, and other foreigners. The remaining 20 per cent are mixed Indian and Spanish. It is this mixed 20 per cent that, according to the stay-at-home American notion, constitutes the Mexican, and practically the totality of the Mexican population. ”

“ There was nothing to make the generation living forty years after the expulsion of that system, when it was forgotten, and republican life and language had become a part of Mexican nature — there was nothing, I say, to awaken in these latter-day Mexicans a desire for the restoration of an order of things which they never had known, and never had been taught to venerate. ”

“ The queer-looking half-Chinese natives towards Vera Cruz! The dark faces and the big black eyes on the coast of Sinaloa! The handsome men of Jalisco, with a scarlet blanket folded on one shoulder!
They were of many tribes and many languages, and far more alien to one another than Frenchmen, English, and Germans are. Mexico! It is not really even the beginnings of a nation: hence the rabid assertion of nationalism in the few. And it is not a race.
Yet it is a people. There is some Indian quality which pervades the whole. ”

“ Speaking of negroes, there are a less number in all Mexico than in any one State of this Union. In the plaza pretty flower-girls with tempting bouquets mingle with fruit venders, lottery-ticket sellers, and dashing young Mexican dudes, wearing broad sombreros heavy with cords of silver braid. Occasionally there passes some dignified señora, whose head and shoulders are covered with a black lace mantilla, imparting infinite grace to her handsome figure. How vastly superior is that soft, drooping veil to the tall hats and absurd bonnets of northern civilization! ”

“ Hence a lack of depth and earnestness which is revealed to the world in the inconsistencies of the government, with its additional traits of conceit, bombast, and irresolution — all tending toward those weak and half-way measures that have promoted anarchy. The Mexican — the mestizo being now dominant and representative — has remained in a state of adolescence, as indicated by his capricious, thoughtless, and even puerile traits. While tenderly susceptible, he can be ferociously cruel ”

“ The large class of useless, lazy, indigent, ragged, and wretched objects in the streets of a Mexican city impresses the stranger that there is no good among them. But there is a large and industrious population possessing kindly and gentle impulses, the women practicing, as far as possible, the tender charities of the cultured higher classes. ”