Sunday Evening, January 18th
To-day we had a long motor trip to the old church and convent of Tepozotlan, with Seeger, Hay, the Tozzers, and Elim. There were pistols under the seats, of course, though the road (the old post-road to the north) is not a haunt of the Zapatistas. We drove two hours or more through the dazzling air, the road running for miles between picturesque fields planted with maguey, the Indian’s all, including his perdition. Here and there are collections of adobe huts, with bright-eyed, naked children playing by fences of nopal, and sometimes a lovely candelabra cactus standing guard. We passed through Cuauhtitlan—a most interesting place, with its deserted, picturesque hostelries that used to do a lively relay trade in the old coaching days. Each carved door, with glimpses of the big courtyard within, seems to tell the tale of past activities.
Tepozotlan is celebrated for its beautiful old church, with a fine carved façade, built by the Jesuits at the end of the sixteenth century. It was suppressed in 1857, under the Juarez laws of reform, and is now neglected, solitary, and lovely. Cypresses guard the entrance to its grass-grown patio, adorned by a few pepper-trees, with here and there an occasional bit of maguey. It was all sun-baked and radiant, receiving the many-colored light and seeming to give it forth again in the magic way of the Mexican plateau. We wandered through the church, which preserves its marvelous altarpieces in the Churrigueresque style, and admired the gilded, high-relief wood carvings, to which time has lent a marvelous red patiné. Some of the old chapels are still most beautifully adorned with rich blue Puebla tiles, now loosened and falling from neglected ceilings and walls. The adjoining seminario, with its endless corridors and rooms, is dim and deserted, except for spiders and millions of fleas; I thought at first, in my innocence, that these were gnats, as they settled on my white gloves. We lunched in the enchanting old patio of the cloisters, where orange-trees and a Noche Buena tree, with its brilliant red flowers, were growing around an old stone well in the middle. For those hours, at least, we felt that all was well with the world. Afterward we climbed the belfry and feasted our eyes on the beauty unfolded to our sight. East, west, south, and north other pink belfries pressed themselves against other blue hills, repeating the loveliness until one could have wept for the beauty of it all. The almost deserted village, straggling up to the patio of the church, is where Madre Matiana was born at the end of the seventeenth century. She made, on her death-bed, the celebrated prophecies which have been so strangely confirmed by subsequent events in Mexican history.
The Ojinaga refugees, garrison, and civilians are just arriving after the four days’ march through the desert to Marfa and Fort Bliss. This affair has cost $142,000 up to date, and $40,000 were spent for new equipments for officers. I think every officer in Mexico will contemplate, for a brief moment, the idea of crossing the frontier. There will be a good deal of disillusionment and suffering in the detention camp, however, if the soldiers are called on to comply with the hygienic rules of the American army.
Jesus Flores Magon, whom we knew as Minister of Gobernación under Madero, a strong and clever man of pronounced Zapoteca Indian type, is going to Vera Cruz at N.’s suggestion, to see Mr. Lind. Flores Magon, who knows his people, says there is no use in “trying out” another government here. Though he was in Madero’s cabinet, he is now for the sustaining of Huerta. He thinks another government would only mean another set of traitors, who would, in turn, be betrayed. N. asked him if he were convinced that Huerta had other aims in view than the graft and personal aggrandizement his enemies credit him with. Though not unreservedly enthusiastic, he answered that he thought he had within him the elements necessary to control in Mexico, but that, like all Indians, he was cruel. Lind is out-and-out for recognizing the northern rebels, or, at least, raising the embargo on arms and ammunition. A terrible policy, it seems to me. Taking from the possessors to give to those desirous of possessing can hardly mend things—here or anywhere. Nothing that Mr. Lind has seen or heard has modified in the slightest the ideas with which he arrived.
Delendus est Huerta is the mot d’ordre, and I find myself assisting at the spectacle. I am dazed at this flying in the face of every screaming fact in the situation. N. went to see Moheno yesterday, with the usual bundle of claims against the government, and M. said, in a wild, distraught way: “My God! When are you going to intervene? You are strangling us by this policy.”
We hear from a railroad man (they are always informed) that there are two thousand well-armed men in Oaxaca, doing nothing—simply awaiting orders. They are Felicistas. Everybody is waiting to betray everybody else.
I had to stop writing for a few minutes; one of those strange accompaniments of life in Mexico has just manifested itself—a slight earthquake. The doors that were ajar swung quietly open and as quietly closed themselves. The chandeliers were thrown out of plumb in a rhythmic way; there was a sliding sound of small objects from their position and then back. I had an unpleasant sort of depolarized sensation. It is all over now—the temblor, as they call it. But I feel as if some ghost has passed through the room, leaving me not quite the same.