582
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
behind the times. The writer was much astonished in visiting a secondary school for girls at Aguas Calientes, with pupils ranging from eight to fourteen years of age, to find taught, in addition to the ordinary branches of a common-school education, English and French, drawing (with a room full of models), music (both vocal and instrumental, with instruments for practice), fine needlework and embroidery, and decorative penmanship, each with a special teacher, and telegraphy and photography (with full apparatus), the schoolhouse being a new one, but one-story in height, and built around an open court. Where in the United States could such a curriculum be found in a free public school?
The Mexicans are natural artists in all lines, and when I say Mexicans I mean the mixed race of Indian and Spanish blood; for they are the people of Mexico, the ruling class, the statesmen, the scholars, the artists, the everything that is good and promising and progressive in Mexico. A native-born Spaniard can not even hold office in Mexico under the constitution, so great is the hatred of that nation born and bred in the people whom they oppressed for so many centuries. This feature is mutual. Those of pure Spanish blood look down upon and despise the Mestizos, and the Mesitzo can not find words to express his contempt and hatred of the Spanish. Altimiranti, a noted statesman, who died a few years since and who was a full-blooded Indian, said that if he knew that he had a drop of Spanish blood in his veins he would open them and let it out.
Juarez, the greatest President Mexico ever had, was a full-blooded Indian. Diaz, the present progressive President, has a large admixture of Indian blood, and is a very handsome man of his type. The same is true of all of Mexico’s great men.
The Indians of Mexico are not of the same race as our red Indians of the United States, however, it must be remembered, but of a higher and more civilized type, as a a rule, although there are many Indian races in Mexico who differ greatly in point of development and in racial peculiarities. Cortez recognized nine distinct races. Some are of a very low type; some of a very high type.
In the state of Oaxaca, to the southeast of the state of Mexico, the native population is of a very high order. The capital of the state of Oaxaca is also called “ Oaxaca,” and presents the anomaly of a city of forty thousand inhabitants, without even a carriage road giving access to it.
This isolated city has its own university and has produced more great men than any other in Mexico. Juarez came from Oaxaca, and was a graduate of its university. The same is true of Diaz, the present President, and>*of Senor Matteo Romero, the accomplished Mexican Minister at Washington for so many years past, the latter two being Meztizos or Mexicans, and the former, as before stated having been an Indian.
Another great center of letters and art, second only to the City of Mexico, if indeed it does not lead it in this respect, is the City of Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco, on the Pacific slope, off to the northwest of Mexico.
The Mexicans are also a nation of musicians. No town or village of any size, is without its string band, many of the instruments being of native manufacture. Even the pure-blooded Indians are almost universally musicians and make their own instruments.
The Indian women are also expert in many kinds of fancy-work; embroidering with feathers, ante-dating Cortez; and the fine drawn-thread needlework of Mexico, which is so much admired, is wrought by them, some of it being so delicate, that it can only be done at midday with the work held between the eyes and the sun. This is not an accomplishment learned from the Spanish, as I understand it, but is a native acquirement of the Indian women themselves.
I went to Mexico entirely unattended. I was the first American lady, or lady of any other nation, so far as I could learn, who ever went through the country in that* way, stopping over at the various cities and visiting them, as I would in any other country. The camareros (chambermaids) are all men, and contrary to the generally received opinion that they are all thieves, I never had a pin’s worth taken from me during my four months’sojourn in Mexico.