Six Months in Mexico by Nellie Bly (best classic literature TXT) 📕

Once every year to commemorate the victory over the French on the 5th of May, 1862, the president reviews all the troops. They flock to the city from mountain, valley, town, and city, clad in holiday attire. Then only one realizes their strength, as they march before the palace where the president is seated on the balcony. The finest looking men in the whole 40,000 are the rurales. They number 6000 and are larger men than Mexicans usually are.

These rurales are a band of outlaws who came forward with their chief and aided Diaz during the war. When it was over Diaz recognized their power, and was so afraid of them that he offered them a place in the army, with their chief as general, and they are to-day not only the best paid, but - speaking of their fighting ability - the best men in Mexico. In the first place they are large and powerful and known over the entire country, mountain, town, and valley, as thoroughly as we know our A, B, C. They fear nothing on earth, or out of it, and will fight on the least provocation. They would rather fight than eat, and have a great aversion to exhibiting themselves, as they demonstrated on the 5th of May last, when only 800 could be persuaded to participate.

They have their own bands and a number of buglers. Every man owns his horse, which must in color match that of the rest of the regiment. Their uniform is yellow buckskin, elaborately embroidered with silver and gold, upon the pants and on the back, front and sleeves of the short cutaway jacket. Their wide sombrero is the same color, finished with the same embroidery and a silver cord and tassel. Their saddles also match their suits in color and silver finish. How they ride! It is simply perfection. The horse and rider seem to be one.

I don’t think they could carry any more weapons if they tried. Each man has a good carbine, a sword, two revolvers, the same number of daggers and two lassos, and they fight with any or all of these weapons. They fight very cleverly with the lasso. If they wish to take a prisoner - a very unusual proceeding on their part - they, with the rope, can either lasso man and horse together or two or more men. The other lasso is of wire, which not only catches the fugitive, but knocks him senseless or cuts his head off, as the case may be.

These rurales guide tourists through the interior and also attend all public places to keep order; they receive one dollar a day, which is enormous compared with the other soldiers’ pay of six and one-quarter cents. They have their horses in perfect control, and can make them execute all kinds of movements in a body, while the tricks performed by individual horses are numberless.

The Mexicans have a good deal of suppressed wrath bothering them at the present day; they know that Diaz is a tyrannical czar, and want to overthrow him. It may be readily believed that Diaz knows they are bound to get rid of this superfluous feeling, and he would much rather have them vent its strength on the Americans than on himself; thus he stands on the war question. He is a good general, and has many good, tough old soldiers, the best of whom is ex-President Gonzales, to aid him, besides the convict soldiers and the rurales.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE PRESS OF MEXICO.

THE press of Mexico is like any of the other subjects of that monarchy, yet it is a growing surprise to the American used to free movement, speech and print who visits Mexico with the attained idea that it is a republic. Even our newspapers have been wont to clip from the little sheets which issue from that country, believing them untrammeled, and quoting them as the best authority, when, in truth, they are but tools of the organized ring, are only capable of deceiving the outsider.

In the City of Mexico there are about twenty-five newspapers published, and throughout the empire some few, which are perused by the smallest possible number of people. The Mexicans understand thoroughly how the papers are run, and they consequently have not the slightest respect in the world for them. One can travel for miles, or by the day, and never see a man with a newspaper. They possess such a disgust for newspapers that they will not even use one of them as a subterfuge to hide behind in a street car when some woman with a dozen bundles, three children and two baskets is looking for a seat.

The best paper in Mexico is El Monitor Republicano (the Republican Monitor), which claims to have, in the city, suburbs, and United States, a circulation of five thousand. It is printed entirely in Spanish. The Mexican Financier is a weekly paper - filled with advertisements from the States - which is published in English and Spanish, and is bought only by those who want to learn the Spanish language, yet it is the best English paper in Mexico. Another English paper is published by an American, Howell Hunt, in Zacatecas, but it, like the rest, is of little or no account. One of the newsiest, if not the newsiest, is El Tiempo (the Times), which is squelched about every fortnight, as it is anti-governmental.

Very few have telegraphic communication with the outside world, and none whatever with their own country. They mostly clip and translate items from their exchanges, heading them “Special telegrams,” etc., when in reality they are from eight to ten days old. El Monitor Republicano steals from its exchanges first and the other papers copy from it. Not a single paper has a reporter. Two men are considered plenty to clip and translate for a daily, and it is not unusual for them to borrow type to set the paper. All the type-setting is done in the daytime and a morning paper is ready for sale - if anybody wanted it - the afternoon before. While our morning newspapers allow their brains to rest at 5 A. M., the Mexican brethren cease labor the day before at 4 P. M. Things happening on the streets, which would make a “display head” with us, are never even mentioned by them. One day I saw woman fall dead two squares away from a newspaper office, and after a long time read in the same paper: “One of our respected contemporaries is authority for the story than an unknown Indian woman dropped dead on the street about two weeks ago.” It needed no label “castanado” (chestnut). For a time the papers imagined they had an item.

There was an old Frenchman who made some sort of taffy and with it used to perambulate the streets crying, “Piruli.” The English paper came out quoting a notice of this old fellow. In a few days they quoted another to the effect that the old fellow had died of smallpox. Then, after using space for one entire week, changing every other day the cause of the old man’s death and substituting some new disease, the learned editor stated that according to all reports the old fellow was not dead at all, but had charmed some rich Mexican widow with his musical voice - or taffy - and was enjoying a honeymoon on her bank account. We even did not get peace with that, but in a few days they declared the report false and gave a new version. When we left there, five months later, they were still contradicting themselves about the old taffy-peddler.

Quite as bad was their treatment of a small forest fire located about twenty miles from the city. I was at the village at the time, and was quite amused, when the fires were extinguished after eight hours’ burning, to read for two weeks after contradictory stories on it. It was still raging with renewed energy - hundreds of lives had been lost, etc., until one morning the English paper said: “According to a letter received at this office yesterday, the forest fire only lasted a few hours, and our contemporaries, from whom we have been quoting, have made a big mistake. No lives were lost.”

When a new member was added to the royal family of Spain the notice was clipped from a foreign paper, in which it stated clearly that the Queen Regent Christina had given birth to a boy baby. Yet it was headed: “Is it a Boy?” When it grew a little colder than usual in an interior town, they headed the item: “A Mexican Town in Danger.” When Roswell P. Flower, of New York, returned from his trip to Mexico he was interviewed by some reporter, and while he said nothing in Mexico’s favor he said nothing against it, so they headed the clipping: “He Loves Mexico.” Moralizing is quite customary, at least with the English paper. After quoting an item from La Patria about a married pair quarreling so fiercely that the motherin-law took bilious fever and died, it gave a sermon entitled: “Let not your angry passions rise.” On another occasion, speaking of the criminal list being unusually large for the last month, it broke out with: “Oh, pulque, pulque, what evils are committed under thine influence! And yet, verily, thou art a most excellent aid to digestion.”

All the papers which I know of are subsidized by the government, and, until within several months ago, they were paid to abstain from attacks on the government. This subsidy has stopped, through want of funds, but the papers say nothing against the government, as they care too much for their easy lives; so they circulate among foreigners misrepresenting all Mexican affairs, and putting every thing in a fair but utterly false light. The Mexicans have nothing but contempt for the papers, and the newspaper men have no standing whatever, not even level with the government officials, whose tools they are. If a newspaper even hints that government affairs could be bettered, the editors are thrown into prison, too filthy for brutes, until they die or swear never to repeat the offense. The papers containing the so-called libelous items are all hunted up by the police and destroyed, and the office and type are destroyed. These arrests are not unusual; indeed they are of frequent occurrence. While in Mexico I knew of at least one man being sent to jail every two weeks; they are taken by force, in the most peculiar manner for a country which lays claim to having laws, not to speak of being a republic. Just for an imaginary offense in their writings, they are remanded to prison, and are kept in dark and dirty cells, shut off from connection with the world without trial, without even enough to eat.

A satirical paper named Ahuizote was denounced by some offended government officials and the editor was thrown into jail. Then Daniel Cabrera started another Mexican Puck and called it Hijo del Ahuizote (the son of Ahuizote). It was quite clever and got out a caricature entitled: “The Cemetery of the Press,” showing in the background the graves of the different papers, and in the front a large cross engraved, “The independent Press. R. I. P.,” while hanging to each side was a red-eyed owl with a spade. On top of the tomb was a lighted fuse marked “Liberty.” Underneath it read, “The sad cemetery of the Press of Mexico, filled by liberty leaders, Juarez, Lerdo, Diaz and Gonzales.” The police were sent out to gather up and destroy every copy of this paper.

Editor Cabrera was put in Belem, where he remained in the most pitiable condition until