Mexicans

“ I know the Mexicans cannot stand before this terrible Anglo-Saxon race, the most formidable and powerful the world ever saw; a race which has never turned back; which, though it number less than forty millions, yet holds the Indies, almost the whole of North America; which rules the commerce of the world; clutches at New Holland, China, New Zealand, Borneo, and seizes island after island in the furthest seas ; the race which invented steam as its awful type. The poor, wretched Mexicans can never stand before us. ”

“ The chief cause of our misunderstanding to-day of the Mexicans is that we have created them in our own American image. With a comfortable sense of fairness we have put ourselves inside the Mexicans, along with our morality, our democracy, and all the rest of our points of view, and accepting therefore that the Mexicans should think, feel, and act just as we would under similar circumstances, we are shocked to find out that they won't do anything of the sort. ”

“ 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 only civilization that the Mexicans can have received from the Old World must have been from some people whose cutting implements were of sharp stone, consequently, as we must conclude by analogy, some very barbarous and ignorant tribe.
From this point we must admit that the inhabitants of Mexico raised themselves, independently, to the extraordinary degree of culture which distinguished them when Europeans first became aware of their existence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before turning our attention to the Mexicans, let me confess that I have many misgivings as to the result. I know that it is the custom to abuse the Mexicans, to affirm that no good thing can, ever did, or ever will, come out of their country. ”

“ By this single abstract from the history of Mexico at that period we may see that, while the British colonies in America were struggling for independence, the Spanish colonists of America were delving in the mines to furnish the mother country with money to carry on her wars. While our forefathers were fighting to free our country from tyranny the Mexicans were riveting yet more strongly the golden chains that bound them to their oppressor! ”

“ It needed a man of his character and ability to knit together its dismembered provinces, and firmly grasp the helm that guided it on its course. On rejecting the bloody and barbarous creed of the Mexicans, refusing to worship God through the sacrifice of his fellow-men, he showed himself to be a long way in advance of those people. ”

“ Let that power and influence which took hold of the natives of Mexico speak and say to those who took hold of the other side: "Here is our work. Mexico as it is today is peopled mainly by descendants of the races we found here. Now show us your work."
The question is which are the greater people, Americans or Mexicans? The question should be, which are the greatest the Mexican or American Indians?
If Mexico continues to improve and the people to advance in the future as they have for a few years past, the question may yet become, which people are the most advanced? ”

“ The Mexicans are an eminently jealous nation: they seem to think that other powers are in league against them, and are jealous of the Spaniards, of the Americans, of Europeans in general, and of each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One traveller represents the Mexicans as a fine race, possessing all the virtues of the rest of mankind, and some peculiarly their own. Others will assure the reader, on their word of honor, that they have searched the vocabularies of the language in which they write, without being able to pick out a series of adjectives strong enough to express the utter turpitude of these degenerate descendants of a degenerate race. ”

“ The gallant Mexicans could not fail to show devotion in return, the more stolid Indians being mollified by the marked intimacy with which she honored one of their own race, as one of her maids of honor. ”

“ To conclude, says the ancient historian, "the character of the Mexicans, like that of every other nation, is a mixture of good and bad; but the bad is easy to be corrected by a proper education, as has frequently been demonstrated by experience." ”

“ The Mexicans have naturally inherited and assimilated Indian lore about plants, animals, places, all kinds of human relationships with the land. Through the Mexican medium, with which he is becoming more sympathetic, the gringo is getting the ages-old Indian culture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Mexicans prayed upon their knees, with their faces toward the east, and performed fasts, penances, and sacrifices like other superstitious nations. We have already mentioned how it was that the Mexicans had so many gods—because they adopted those of the people they conquered; but besides the temples they erected to them they also had a great, cage-like prison, where they confined the idols of many conquered nations! A portion of this chapter will now be devoted to a description of those repulsive sacrifices, without which no important feast or festival was allowed to terminate. ”

“ 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 ”

“ PYRAMID OF CHOLULA. Felipe of Jesus, with twenty-two companions. He is the patron saint of the city of Mexico, which was put under his protection in 1629.
Mexicans generally are the reverse of intrusive, and never, as a rule, admit you into the sacred privacy of their families; but a party of ladies from Puebla, who had come down here to attend mass, and have a little picnic at the same time, made my acquaintance, and invited me to join them. ”

“ Mexicans despite everything, of our ignorance and orphanhood of ourselves, are the sons of the sons of the old grandparents, who patiently wait the time of luminous consciousness and the potential re-encounter. ”

“ Last of all come the Mexicans, shrunken descendants of the Castilian world-finders; living almost as much against the house as in it; ignorant as slaves, and more courteous than kings; poor as Lazarus, and more hospitable than Crœsus ”

“ Nothing is stranger in that strange State than the rapidity with which the soil has changed hands. The Mexicans, you may say, are all poor and landless, like their former capital; and yet both it and they hold themselves apart and preserve their ancient customs and something of their ancient air. ”

“ The contemporary Mexicans, as a consequence of the mental and cultural colonization experienced over these five centuries, cannot fully dimension the size of the tragedy lived by our ancestors and what has meant and means for us as people and as human beings. ”

“ I have said we arrived in Mexico on the eve of Palm Sunday, and next morning we proceeded to consult with one of our newly-made acquaintances as to our prospects for the ensuing Holy Week. This gentleman, a man who took a practical view of things, mentioned a circumstance which led him to expect that the affair would go off with éclat. The Mexicans, both the nearly white Mestizos and the Indians of pure race, delight in pulque. The brown people are grave and silent in their sober state, but pulque stirs up their sluggish blood, and they get into a condition of positive enjoyment. ”

“ Those familiar with the modern Mexican will find it difficult to conceive that the nation should ever have been capable of devising the enlightened polity which we have been considering. But they should remember, that in the Mexicans of our day they see only a conquered race; as different from their ancestors as are the modern Egyptians from those who built,—I will not say the tasteless pyramids,—but the temples and palaces, whose magnificent wrecks strew the borders of the Nile, at Luxor and Karnac. ”

“ The Mexicans were fighting for a country they loved, and for which they had been compelled to fight for generations. Their walls were strong, but at last they gave way before the heavy artillery of the Americans, and their dead covered the battlefield. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The games, dances and illuminations were so varied, the value of the tributes paid by different provinces was so great, that visitors came from all over the country—even the fierce Tlascallans, between whom and the Mexicans existed perpetual enmity. ”

“ Mexicans in talking employ a number of signs which mean as much to them and are as plainly understood as English words would be to us. They speak their sign language gracefully; indeed, they are a very graceful people, and yet they never study it or give it a thought. ”

“ The character of the people, and the nature of the civilisation of this remarkable country, presented many striking contrasts to the customs and institutions of the Mexicans, and they have generally been assumed as of totally independent origin. ”

“ Having great cities of one hundred and eighty thousand houses, the Mexicans had also cannibal gods, whose idols were fed on warm, reeking, human flesh, thrust into their mouths—wars being made purposely to supply victims for them; and with skill to build stately temples, big enough for ten thousand men to dance in their courts, there went the immolation of twenty-five hundred persons annually, in Mexico and adjacent towns alone, and of a far greater number throughout the country at large. ”

“ All these people, of course, belong to the peon class. Mingled with the natives here and there are all types of Mexicans, and a number of Americans drawn here by curiosity add variety to the occasion. The lame, the blind and the halt are there too; for alms are plentiful and Our Lady possesses wondrous powers of healing. ”

“ In addition to the selfish spirit of gain that pervades the intercourse of these visitors, and gives them no character of permanency, or sympathy with the country, they have been accustomed to look down on the Mexicans with contempt for their obsolete habits, without reflecting that they are not justly censurable for traditional usages, which they had no opportunity of improving by comparison with the progress of civilization among other nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is true, the Mexicans made great proficiency in many of the social and mechanic arts, in that material culture,—if I may so call it,—the natural growth of increasing opulence, which ministers to the gratification of the senses. ”

“ The same writer says, "The Mexicans are a revolutionary people more used to a breach of than obedience or respect to law. At times they seem to be incapable of anything which is necessary in deliberative bodies." ”

“ The Mexican revolution—its struggles, endurance and success,—disclose many manly features of national character, and prepare us to appreciate that patriotic and cultivated body of men and women who form the national heart and hope of the republic.
The Mexicans have been so harshly dealt with in the descriptions of foreigners, that they are not always disposed to welcome them beyond their thresholds. ”