Mexico | Page 9

of the occupation
contributed powerfully to retard any intimate intermixture of the
conquerors and the conquered races, the closer connection with Spain
also keeping the Spanish-Mexican decidedly more pure in blood than
any other Spanish American people. This will account for the fact that
the various Indian races of Mexico are still, to a large extent, distinct
from each other and from the pure white Mexicans after nearly a
century of native Republican government. In the State of Oaxaca alone
there are even now at least fifteen perfectly distinguishable separate
tribes of pure Indians, of which two, the Zapotecas and the Mistecas,
comprise more than half the whole population of the State. But, this
notwithstanding, no race question now really exists in Mexico. The
pure-blooded Indians frequently occupy the highest positions in the
State, as judges, soldiers, or savants, the greatest but one of Mexican
Presidents, Juarez, having been a full-blooded Zapoteca, whilst the
present ruler of Mexico, certainly one of the most exalted figures in
American history, General Porfirio Diaz, is justifiably prouder of his

Misteca descent than of the white ancestry he also claims. Nor, as in
other countries of similar ethnological constitution, does the Indian
population here tend to decrease. The Mexican Indian or half-breed
suffers under no disability, social or political, and is in a decided
majority of the population. The number of pure whites in the country is
estimated at about three and a half millions, out of a probable nineteen
millions of total inhabitants, eight millions being pure Indians and
about seven and a half millions of mixed castes, most of whom are
more brown than white.
The future of the Republic, therefore, in an ethnological sense, is one of
the most interesting problems of the American Continent. The old
Spanish aristocratic aloofness traditional on the part of the pure whites
will take many generations entirely to break down, and the increased
communication between the Republic and the citizens of the United
States will probably reinforce the white races with a new element of
resistance to fusion; but in the end a homogeneous brown race will
probably people the whole of Mexico--a race, to judge from the
specimens of the admixture now in existence, capable of the highest
duties of civilisation, robust in body, patriotic in character, progressive
and law-abiding to a greater extent, perhaps, than are purely Latin
peoples.
The present book relates in vivid and graphic words the history of
Mexico during the time that it served as a milch cow to the insatiable
Spanish kings and their satellites. But for the gold and silver that came
in the fleet from New Spain, when, indeed, it was not captured by
English or Dutch rovers, the gigantic imposition of Spanish power in
Europe could not have been maintained even as a pretence throughout
the greater part of the seventeenth century as it was. For nearly three
centuries one set of greedy Viceroys and high officials after another
settled from the mother country upon unresisting Mexico and sucked its
blood like vampires. Some of them, it is true, made attempts to palliate
their rapacity by the introduction of improved methods of agriculture,
mining, and the civilised arts, and Mexico, in close touch with Spain,
was not allowed, as the neighbouring Spanish territory of the isthmus
was, to sink into utter stagnation. The efforts of the Count of Tendilla

to keep his Viceroyalty abreast of his times in the mid sixteenth century
are still gratefully remembered, as is the name of his successor Velasco,
who struck a stout blow for the freedom of the native Indians enslaved
in the mines, and emancipated 150,000 of them. But on the whole,
especially after the establishment of the Inquisition in Mexico, the story
of the Spanish domination is generally one of greed, oppression, and
injustice, alternating with periods of enlightened effort on the part of
individual viceroys more high-minded than their fellows.
With the early nineteenth century came the stirring of a people long
crushed into impotence. The mother country was in the throes of a great
war against the foreign invader. Deserted and abandoned by its Spanish
sovereign, and ruled, where it was ruled at all by civilians, by a body of
self-elected revolutionary doctrinaires, the colonists of the various
Viceroyalties of America promptly shook themselves free from the
nerveless grasp that had held them so long. A demand for an immense
sum of money beyond that which had voluntarily been sent by Mexico
to aid the mother country against Napoleon was refused in 1810, and a
few months afterwards the long gathering storm burst. The man who
first formulated the Mexican cry for freedom was a priest, one Miguel
Hidalgo. He had already organised a widespread revolutionary
propaganda, and on September 16, 1810, the Viceregal authorities
precipitated matters