December 12th
To-day is the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patroness of Mexico and of all the Lupes. For the last few days the mysterious Indian world has been hurrying to the shrine from far and near. I went out there this morning with dear Madame Lefaivre and Mr. de Soto. The crowd was immense, the same types, costumes, habits, language, gestures, even, that Cortés found on his arrival, unmodified (and unmodifiable, which Washington cannot understand) by four hundred years of surrounding civilization. Our motor gliding along the straight road was quite out of the note and picture. Many of the Indians were doing the distance between the city and Guadalupe, several kilometers, on their knees, with bowed heads and folded hands. Madame Lefaivre found it très-beau, but was glad that no voice told her that to save her soul, or, what is more important, her Paul’s soul, she would have to do likewise.
The plaza before the church was thronged with a brightly clad, motley crowd, venders of all sorts predominating, mostly selling candles and votive offerings of strange kinds. Hundreds of tortilleras were sitting on their haunches before their primitive braziers, piles of dough (masa, they call it) in their laps, molding the tortillas with a slapping noise of the palms—an old, inherited gesture, and pinching them into shape with their slender, graceful fingers. The church itself, as we pressed in, was crowded to suffocation, almost every one holding a candle of some length and thickness. The high altar was a blaze of light, the celebrated image above visible to all. It is the famous Imagen de la Virgen, stamped miraculously on the tilma (coarse cloth mantle) of a lowly Indian, Juan Diego, as the Virgin appeared to him passing the rock of Tepeyac on his way to Tlaltelolco, to receive instructions in the mysteries of the Faith. The sacred image is placed above the high altar in a gold frame, and there is a gleaming, solid silver stair-railing leading up both sides.
In the middle aisle were double files of young Indian girls, with bright-colored scarfs about their shoulders, and strange, high, picturesque-looking head-dresses, of gaudy tissue-paper, with trimmings of gold. They were chanting monotonous minor songs, accompanied by a swaying, dance-like movement of the hips—all most reverent. They had been there for hours and showed no sign of leaving. I hope I said a reverent prayer, but I felt a bit cheap in contrast to the rapt devotion on all sides. I was glad to get a breath of fresh air in the plaza, or rather, “fresher,” as it was almost as crowded as the church, and every dog in Mexico seemed to be there, scratching and shaking itself.
We made our way, Mr. de Soto clearing a path for us, to the Capilla del Pocito. These waters are said to have gushed from under the feet of the Virgin as she appeared to Juan Diego. A la the fountain of Trevi, whoever drinks of it returns to Mexico. We didn’t drink, for various reasons unconnected with return. The Indians use it for healing purposes and a lively trade in brightly painted, earthen-ware bottles, in which to carry the water away, was going on about the chapel. The Indians come, sometimes a many days’ journey, on foot, of course, and when they arrive they bivouac all about the church as if they had reached “home.” What with babies crying, beggars begging—“por la Virgen,” “por la Santa Madre de Dios”—dogs yapping and venders hawking, the whole dominated by the acrid smell of the various pungent messes they roll up in their tortillas, it was, indeed, Indian life at its flood. They must have presented much the same scene when they gathered to receive instruction and baptism from the old friars.
The “Aztec wheels” (merry-go-rounds) and all kinds of games of chance, to which they are addicted, help to get the centavos out of the Indian pocket; but it is their greatest holiday, this journey to their “Virgen India de Tepeyac,” and they count no cost of fatigue and savings. I only hope the press-gang will abstain to-day from doing any of its deadly work of separating families. You remember I once did a novena out there with Señora Madero, praying for graces that Heaven did not grant.
In the afternoon we went to the Reforma Club, the British country club, where Sir Lionel and Lady Carden were to present the prizes for the contests. Señora Huerta, always dignified and quiet, sat between Lady C. and myself. She had a married daughter with her, high-chested and thick-lipped, clad in a changeable green-and-red surah silk and a hat with bedraggled pink feathers. Señora Huerta herself wore black velvet, with touches of white in the wrong places. She has, I imagine, natural taste in dress, but must first learn. She has seen much of life. So many children and a soldier husband always starting for some seat of war, and now at last President of “glorious, gory Mexico,” means that few of the human experiences are foreign to her. I must say I have a great esteem for her. The President was not well—el estómago. Of course every one jumps to the conclusion that he had been consorting too freely with his friends Martell and Hennessy. It isn’t given to him to have a simple indigestion! Afterward we left cards at the houses of various Lupes.