THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
583
Respectable Mexican ladies do not go on the street unaccompanied by some other female, as a rule, even though escorted by a husband or brother, as people may not know that he is a husband or brother. A duenna accompanies her, or a female servant trots along in the rear. This rule is adhered to very strictly in the provincial towns, but is beginning to be ignored, to some extent, in the City of Mexico; some especially strong-minded Mexican ladies asserting their independence of suspicion, by adopting the American custom in this respect.
Upon my first visit to a city, I generally hired a mozo (male servant) who would 'consider two reals (twenty-five cents) a day, ample compensation, and twice that amount, princely remuneration for his services, to go about with me for a day or two, to show me the way, and carry my packages, as the Mexican cities are like most of those of Europe, not regularly laid out; the City of Mexico itself, however, being an exception to the rule, although even there, the names of the streets, even when continuous, change every two or three blocks, as they do everywhere in Mexico, which increases the difficulty of finding one’s way about.
The religion of the great mass of the people of Mexico, is the Roman Catholic. It is pre-eminently a country of churches. No village, however small, is without one, or perhaps two or three, and even the open country frequently shows an isolated church crowning some distant hill. Time was when the church virtually ruled the state; owned about a third of the property in the whole country, and at least a quarter of the City of Mexico itself; was the banker of the people; in fact, was so powerful that it dictated terms to the government.
Under such circumstances any institution would become corrupt, and the church was no exception. In 1859, Juarez, then President, issued a pronunciameiito confiscating the church property, all except churches in actual use, and a house for the priests. This may strike you as a singular provision, but where there were so many churches (one hundred and twenty-seven in the City of Mexico alone, and forty in the little city of Queretaro—containing no more than forty thousand inhabitants), there were many not in use for public services. All convents and monasteries were suppressed, their property confiscated, and the members of the orders compelled to disband or leave the Country. The Jesuits were banished altogether.
This confiscation of the church property to the people, however, has not turned out well, as a rule. If the fine old convent buildings could have been appropriated by the state, and transformed into hospitals, schools and eleemosynary institutions generally, it would have resulted in saving, to worthy uses, a vast aggregation of valuable, and in many cases, magnificent buildings, which are fast falling into decay.
The common people in Mexico are generally Catholics, but. the ruling class—at least the men—are generally free-thinkers. Their wives and children, however, are, as a rule, Roman Catholics. Men in Mexico, as elsewhere, seem to like to have their wives and children (at least, female children) religious, whatever they may be themselves.
The Protestant movement has made considerable headway in some portions of Mexico. It had its origin in the State and City of Oaxaca, for it commenced in Mexico, as everywhere else, from within, and among pure-blooded Indians, an evangelical society having been formed, with its president and secretary, and regular meetings held for a long time before any Protestant missionary set foot in Mexico; but its converts are confined almost exclusively to the so-called lower classes, the Episcopal Church alone having made any progress with the aristocratic and cultured classes, and that only in the City of Mexico, where it owns the fine old church of the Franciscans, a native minister officiating, and counts a number of ex-Catholic priests among its converts.
The Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists have also made respectable headway in the City of Mexico, as well as in some of the provincial towns.
The abandoned convents make fine ruins, although it fills one with sadness to see such valuable property—the result of so much effort on the part of man—going