Gringo

“ Salvador has the smallest foreign colony of any Central-American country. Since it is entirely a coffee country, and since Central-Americans are essentially coffee planters, it has little need for outsiders.
It judges the gringo largely by the occasional deluges of tourists who make the brief automobile journey up from the port of La Libertad during their “Go-from-New-York-to-Frisco-through-the-Panama-Canal” trip. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Each superintendent had his own cottage; there was a large hotel for the lesser gringo employees; the local hospital was the largest and best-appointed in Central America; everywhere one observed that orderliness and modernity wherewith the Anglo-Saxon is constantly abolishing the local color of all foreign lands. ”

“ He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, his pistol, and his knife. “How clumsy these gringos are when it’s about a girl!” thought Luis. “Any fool could fool them. Now I should take much care to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comical gringo!—Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. ”

“ Gringo employees of higher rank command generous salaries and are well housed, with all the comforts that can conveniently be transported to this lofty region. Coming, for the most part, directly from England or the United States, they take naturally to the artificial heat which the natives rarely adopt. ”

“ Like most persons with the inferiority complex, the Latin-American is extremely sensitive. He resents, even more than the humiliation of gringo assistance, the assumption of loftier worth which usually characterizes the Anglo-Saxon.
This assumption, to us, is often quite unconscious. If we are aware of our national self-satisfaction, most of us try to hide it when traveling in the southern republics. Our diplomats and business men seek valiantly to proclaim our great admiration of our neighbors. ”

“ There’s something about Mexico. You can’t explain it. And as soon as Carranza gave place to Obregon, I went back.
“I’m cashier now at a mine in Durango. It belongs to that chap Werner we met in Mazatlán. Once in a while the peons get drunk and shoot each other up, but as a rule everything’s quiet. There’s an air of peace and calm and ease and leisure that you don’t find at home. At first it gets a gringo’s goat. Then he accustoms himself to it, and likes it. ”

“ The Americans, for their part, have given up dubbing the Mexicans as "greasers," and have acknowledged the pleasing and refined civilisation of their southern neighbours. The North American, or Americano, is often known in Mexico as the "Yankee"—not used in an offensive sense, but as a convenient designation. This is varied by the still less distinguished term of "gringo," and indeed, both these terms are employed, not only in Mexico, but thousands of miles below, in South America—Ecuador, Peru, Chile. ”

“ Graces doubt them! who ever knew a lithe young creole to turn her pretty toes away from whirling waltz or contra-danza. "Where shall we dance?" At Lola's, or Mariana's, or Ampara's—it matters not. "But the music?" Pshaw, you gringo! as if those well-fingered old harps and guitars were not ready tuned for the occasion, and the old night owls of musicians ever watchful, playing around the girls, like pilot fishes about the sharks. Vamanos pues! The well-known faces are shortly assembled in a neighbor's dwelling ”

“ If, during the many months intervening between the conception and the completion of this volume, the author has wearied of his task, or has doubted the wisdom or expediency of it, he has constantly derived consolation from the reflection that, in helping to make Mexico better known to the world at large, he is but lending his aid to a progressive movement, that is not to end until the American—the hitherto hated "Gringo"—shall have pushed his engines to the extremest portion of that Greater South ”

“ Nicaragua is a lowland of tropical heat. It has the least invigorating climate in Central America. The natives are not particularly blessed with energy or industry, and are consequently rather eager to blame their lack of initiative to the stifling effect of their subserviency to the United States.
Individually they are quite ready to be friendly to any American. Collectively they love to damn the gringos. And the newspapers of Managua and León cater regularly to their taste by soaking every Yankee who attains prominence in the republic. ”

“ But as to the protection of American property, there can be but one right course. Either it is not worth protecting, or it is, whether it be in Nicaragua or Mexico. Practically all Central-Americans to-day, although too polite to voice their opinion, look upon us as something of a bully who picks on the weaker republics.
XIV
That they are so friendly, despite their fancied grievances, is a tribute to the natural kindliness of these people.
Even in Nicaragua, although the press may attack the gringo, the people as a whole are cordial to any individual American who will meet them half-way. ”

“ Here and there a Spanish landowner, one of the real settlers of southern California, who still frown upon the “gringos,” as they style the Americans, swarthy of face, erect of figure, strutted past like a soldier on parade. Quaint Mexican women, bareheaded, barefooted, garbed in loose gowns of brilliant coloring, stepped in and out, following their lords and masters—thin-faced, evil-eyed, cigarette-smoking “greasers” in grimy linen suits and wearing huge, silver-trimmed, and costly sombreros—in most cases, more hat than man. ”

“ And did nothing foolish—like going into Mexico and South America.
I'm hoping that you will go to the mine soon. You must hunger and thirst for the mountains—Carlt likewise. So do I. Civilization be dinged!—it is the mountains and the desert for me.
Good-bye—if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats197 old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia! ”

“ Los Gringos used to laugh at the Mexican and his cloak, and not long after they came the 'Greasers,' as the Americans called the young men born here in California, began to wear the ugly clothes the Gringos brought out from Boston. And so the times changed, children, and our people learned to do everything as the Americans did it and to work hard and save money instead of dancing and idling away the time. ”

“ Don Andres Picardo's head vaquero. He camps here to keep an eye on the cattle. Some fellows from town have been butchering them right and left and doing a big business in beef, according to all accounts. Manuel hates gringos like centipedes, but I happened to get on the good side of him—partly because my Spanish is as good as his own. An Americano who has black hair and can talk Spanish like the don himself isn't an Americano, in Manuel's eyes. ”

“ All that night I followed the trail, and by morning found myself over the Border and in Mexico. It was here that I decided to execute a bit of strategy. In my kit I had, in accordance with a half–formed scheme which had come into my mind before I set out, placed some Mexican–looking garments. As I spoke the language well and [125] was dark enough to be taken for a Mexican anyhow, I didn’t think I’d have much difficulty in making myself out a native of the country in which I then was.
“You can readily see why I adopted this precaution. Mexicans always have, and always will, hate the Gringoes. ”

“ Considering the size of Central-American republics, one feared lest the train overrun the boundary lines and trespass upon the sovereignty of Salvator or Honduras. But it stayed within its own domain, turning eastward, and climbing out of the coffee-covered Pacific slopes to the pine-clad heights of central Guatemala, landing us in the evening at Guatemala City, 4870 feet above the sea.
III
To the American at home, all Central America is a heat-stricken jungle. He invariably greets the returned traveler with, “I’ll bet you’re glad to get back to God’s country!” ”

“ Guatemala contained a large colony of foreigners. There were many Germans engaged in the coffee business on the Pacific slopes, many Americans from the banana plantations of the Caribbean Coast, a few exiled European noblemen who had come with the remnants of their former fortunes to live as long as possible without working in a country where living was cheap, and several Old-Timers, all with the rank of General, who had fought in the various past revolutions of Central America, and were now resting upon their laurels. ”

“ New Mexico, it must be remembered, is more Indian and Mexican than American by a proportion of three to one, and includes a sprinkling of negro and Chinese. The Indian lends a touch of the primitive; the Mexican brings Spain into the picture. In doorways painted sky blue or lavender, swarthy women gossip, in mantilla and fringed black shawl. Against a shady wall, in sash and sombrero, all but too lazy to light the inevitable cigarette, slouches a Mexican who should be working. ”

“ Seven different States or entities to-day comprise this zone of territory of Central America, washed on the one hand by the Caribbean and on the other by the Pacific, whose people dwell in one of the most beautiful and interesting part of the earth's surface—Guatemala, with its coffee plantations and lavish fruits, Honduras of the rugged surface, and British Honduras, Nicaragua with its great lake, Costa Rica, the one-time "Rich Coast," Salvador, most populous and advanced of all, Panama, the land of the famous Canal. ”

“ This journey lengthened out into a long, desultory ramble, beginning with Cuba, and, after Mexico, concluding with the most remote, novel, and characteristic of our own possessions on the Pacific slope. There is unity of subject, and even a certain pathos, in the recollection that this latter was once Mexican territory also. Its most obvious basis of life is still Spanish, and it may be sentimentally considered a kind of Alsace-Lorraine—a part of the sister republic when it was well-nigh as large and powerful as ourselves. ”

“ All of South America save Brazil and the two Guineas, all Central America, Mexico, the entire territory west of the Mississippi, now embraced by the United States, beautiful Cuba, from whose eastern province of Santiago Ponce de Leon across the lucent waves of the tropical sea coveted the ambrosial forests and fertile meadows of Porto Rico, whence he was to sail to the floral empire of Florida. But this was not all of Spain's magnificent domain. Far across the waters of the South Pacific was the now famous cluster of islands bearing the name of the Spanish king. ”

“ Oh, not the dry, barren border country, but my Mexico, rich with jewels and gold, studded with magnificent cities, flowering with rare fruits and 222 spices, a mellow, golden, matchless land, peopled by those who are skilled in arts and science, lovers of beauty, and—Ah, you do not know Mexico. You know only the half-breed savages who run the borderland, preying on Mexican and American alike. You do not know the real Mexico of beautiful women, and brave and gallant men. ”

“ Since the arrival of the earliest Spanish settlers more than 400 years ago, millions of Hispanic men and women have come to the United States from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Caribbean regions, Central America, South America, and Spain, in search of peace, freedom, and a more prosperous future. ”

“ Mexico wore anything but the air of a city under military rule. It was a very Babel of tongues; a panorama of varied costume; an ever-moving throng, combining the military splendor and polished civilization of Europe, with the semibarbaric elements of a strange and decadent race, retaining even to this day many of the characteristics described by the old Spanish chroniclers as existing in the days of Hernando Cortes. Austrian, Polish, French, Belgian and Mexican uniforms mingled in the crowd ”

“ In our day, this southern portion of North America is broken into two great divisions, the first and most southern of which is known collectively as Central America, and embraces the republics of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, San Salvador and Panama. The great peninsula of Yucatan, which is now Mexican, formerly belonged to this group of Central American peoples. The second portion of the territory we are to study corresponds to the present republic of Mexico. I shall presently explain the sense in which it might be called the Mexican empire in the time of Fernando Cortes. ”

“ Many an Indian tribe never saw a white man before, and some, perhaps, have never seen one since. Mexico was his first hunting-ground, and thither he returned more than once; Cuba the second. Thence he was drawn to the Rocky Mountains, California, and Sierra Nevada. Then in succession he visited Panama, New Granada, Sierra Nevada again, California again, Washington Territory, Panama again, Bonaventura, the Cauca valley, Antioquia, Northern Peru, crossed the Andes, returned to Bonaventura, and thence to Europe. ”

“ Central America, occupied by no less than a dozen distinct linguistic stocks, forms a fourth cultural district. Its peoples show not only the influences of the Maya and Nahua to the north (a tribe of the Nahuatlan stock had penetrated as far south as Lake Nicaragua) , but also of the Chibchan civilization of the southern continent, dominant in the Isthmus of Panama, and extending beyond Costa Rica up into Nicaragua. In addition, there is more than a suggestion of influence from the Antilles and from the sea-faring Carib. Here, we can truly say, is the meeting-place of the continents. ”