XVI Morelia and Toluca — The Markets — The Colleges — The Schools — The Ancient and the Modern Spirit
Toluca, Estado de Mexico, Mexico,
December 14th.
Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock I left Morelia by the National Railroad and reached here at three o’clock in the morning. Tio continued on to Mexico City, but I stopped over to spend the day with my friend, El Padre, the missionary, who has been one of our party to the Tierra Caliente.
From my hotel Jardin, in Morelia, I rode down to the station in a most ancient little car pulled by a single mule; the electric tramway has not yet arrived at that capital.
It was yet dark when I was awakened for Toluca. When I left the train the air was cold, frosty. The city was silent, but it was well lighted with electricity, and a modern electric tram car awaited me at the station. Toluca thus gave me at the hour of my night arrival the impression of being more modern than Morelia, and this impression was borne out upon later acquaintance.
Toluca is one of the more vigorous of the growing cities of the republic. It is a community of some twenty-five thousand people, the capital of the State of Mexico, and lies one thousand feet higher in the air than Mexico City. It is near the center of a fertile valley, forty or fifty miles in length, and ten to twenty broad, while ten miles to the southwest towers the snow-capped Volcano de Toluca, lifting its gleaming cone fifteen thousand feet into the heavens, its melting snows giving an abundant supply of pure water to the town.
The religious differentiation between Toluca and Morelia is marked. Morelia is one of the six cathedral cities of Mexico, and is the seat of one of the six Archbishops. Morelia is also the center of Jesuit activity in Mexico. In Morelia, the Spanish-Mexican takes off his sombrero when he passes the cathedral; the Indian kneels down in the street and crosses himself. The several hundred churches are kept in excellent repair. Ecclesiasticism dominates, the layman is subordinate. In Toluca, on the contrary, Church rule is pushed aside; while there are a number of churches, they are old and most of them dilapidated. The foundations of a great cathedral, laid many years ago, are now overgrown with grass and bushes. No money has been forthcoming from Tolucan pockets to build it up. The governor of Toluca is among the most progressive and liberal men of the republic. His administration maintains large schools and academies for the instruction of young men and women, where the sciences are taught, where enlightened thought rules, and where particular attention is paid to the English language and literature. Several of the instructors are from Chicago.
There are many fine residences in Toluca, with handsome private grounds. The public buildings are new and imposing; the Alameda Park, with its groves and gardens and multitudes of birds, is as beautiful as Chapultepec.
There is also great business activity in Toluca and a number of successful manufactures.
The morning of my visit, I noticed an unusual crowd upon the streets. It surged toward me. It was respectful and quiet. The swarthy company were pressing to look wonderingly upon two little Swedish girls, with the bluest eyes and pinkest cheeks, and braids of the most golden hair—perfect types of the Scandinavian North. They were the children of workmen imported from Sweden and now teaching Tolucans the skilled manufacture of iron.
The rich valley, with its climate of perpetual spring, is the home of a large Aztec and Otomy Indian population. These live in many towns built of stone and adoby, containing two and three thousand souls, even yet speaking their ancient Aztec tongue, knowing only Spanish enough to trade. They are mostly agriculturists, and raise large crops of wheat and corn, which are borne to market upon the backs of men and mules and burros. We met many such burden-bearing cavalcades entering the city, and generally driven by Indians of the wildest types we yet have seen. The sturdy and rugged men are of a stronger race than the inhabitants of the Tierra Caliente along the valley of the Balsas. These Indians run, not a man of them walks. They take a quick, short step, a sort of jog-trot, which carries them forward a great many miles a day.
The climate of Toluca is colder and drier than that of Mexico City, the town being so much higher above the sea. The temperature at night, all the year round, is said to be nearly at frost, falling as low as thirty-nine degrees (Fahrenheit). In the markets to-day I have seen oranges, limes, tamarinds, apples, guavas, hawberries, three sorts of bananas, strawberries, and several other fruits I did not know, as well as fresh peas, beans, lettuce, turnips, beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and several other edible tubers. I have also just purchased some of the celebrated Toluca lace, made by the Indians, and some pretty head shawls, (tapalos), of native make. An Indian pottery, made here, is also attractive—a brown and yellow ware, made into jars and water jugs, some of which I am sending to Kanawha.
What a land this country of temperate highlands would have become if only our Puritan and Cavalier ancestors had discovered and taken it! But the descendants of Puritan and Cavalier have at last found out the charm and richness of this great country and, little by little, are beginning to come into it, sympathetically collaborating with its people. Mexico will yet become a most potent factor in the world’s affairs. Progressive Mexicans hope for the day when Mexico will become even more closely knit to the great Republic of the North. Reactionary Mexicans, the conservatives of the Roman Church, dread and deprecate the impending change. El Mundo, chief newspaper of the ecclesiastical party, continually declaims against what it denounces as the “Peaceful Conquest,” of Los Americanos.
In Toluca there was no extensive celebration of the twelfth of December, “The Coronation day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Indian Madonna,” to every Indian the greatest festival of the year. In Morelia, on the contrary, just as in Patzcuaro, the town was lit up from one end to the other with electricity, with gas jets, with lanterns, with multitudes of candles, with torches. The cathedral and the many churches were trimmed with bands of fire along each cornice, up and down each belfry and tower, and all the hundreds of bells were clanged discordantly. The bells of the churches of Mexico are not swung and rung, nor have they any clappers hanging in their throats. The bells are made fast in one position, are struck with a ponderous hammer, and distract the stranger with their incessant dissonance.
The illumination of Morelia is said to be paid for from the Archbishop’s chest, although each layman is expected to set out his own candles before his door. In front of the cathedral a company of priests touched off elaborate fireworks. During the day, hundreds of Indians came into the city, even as I saw them entering Patzcuaro. They camped along the streets, cooked at little fires along the curbs, and slept wherever they happened to be. These Indians were chiefly afoot, the women brought their babies upon their backs, even the old folks were sometimes being carried along upon the shoulders of the younger men. The thronged and excited city was early awake. In fact, it never slept. And there were not only the swarms of Indians, but also groups of dashing haciendados in their high sombreros, short velvet jackets, and tight-fitting, silver-laced and buttoned pantaloones, all mingling and promenading and celebrating the fiesta of Mexico’s patron saint.
In Morelia no one has yet dared to sell a foot of ground to the Protestant missionaries. To do so would mean the seller’s ruin.
In Toluca the Protestant Church (the Baptists) have purchased buildings and opened a fine school for boys and girls, which is become the pride and life work of El Padre.
So many smooth and cunning scoundrels have fled to Mexico, there to hide from American justice, that the Mexican has begun to doubt us all. Hence it is doubly gratifying when one finds here honored and esteemed the better type of our enlightened citizenship like El Padre, and some others whom I have met.