The Mystery of Mexico
Sands, William Franklin
74 THE COMMONWEAL May 26, 1926 THE MYSTERY OF...
...It is not safe Lansing, at the direction of the United States Senate, interto think of what is happening there in European terms...
...William F. Sands, in the course of his plea for a sane alien to both...
...iniquity of the legislation on religion...
...We think Mr...
...What right had Mr...
...Somewhere in the Peten-Quintana Roo region, ruling class at the conquest and the destruction of their writ- runs the tale, is a walled place of temples ; not dead, not ings by the handful of Spanish soldiers who possessed them- ruined, and covered with trees and creepers, buried in mounds selves of their kingdom...
...The latter thinks that "in due time an understanding, a To such a Lady great love is due...
...Ryan's roseate view of the future one would Will reign for us in love serene like to know on what he bases his hopes...
...Light on Mexican Darkness, The Commonweal, European concepts...
...a special object of solicitude on the part of the United States Rose of roses, Flower of flowers, government...
...We resent deeply what is happening there to of knowledge and of ancient tradition scattered among the fellow Christians...
...Rose of roses, Flower of flowers, In the same issue of The Commonweal, Mr...
...A constitutional republic is no more natural and cautious policy in our dealings with Mexico, makes the to the Spaniard than it is to the descendant of Montezuma...
...Lady of ladies, Power of powers...
...A chant from afar, with glasses, the walls and pyramids of the secret intoned before the public would take, according to this theory, city, approach to which is death...
...following statement: "With the broad question of the rights In spite of Las Casas the mind of very large numbers of of Mexicans in spiritual matters as against their own governMexicans remains a dark and unexplored mystery in the mat- ment, it is safe to posit that our government has nothing whatter of religion...
...the mass of evidence for his theory which the Abbe draws Mexico at this moment is very much in the minds of Cathofrom these years, which is only part of that enormous wealth lic Americans...
...We are perhaps still too busy island or archipelago great enough to be classed as a small recapturing the broken threads of European history, reweaving continent would be likely to remain in some form in the mem- our own immediate story to turn our own attention to the ory and tradition of mankind, but to follow the Abbe to his past of the new land wherein we dwell...
...he has for those clauses of the Constitution of 1917 which Rose of roses, Flower of flowers, appear to be favorable to labor, that clouds his vision to the Lady of ladies, Power of powers...
...their chants in a manner similar to some aspects of the Chinese Priests in that primeval region have heard of a living city language whereby a word takes different meanings according of the ancients...
...soned...
...Sands's contention be correct, then it would appear that at least two of our secretaries of state were entirely out of bounds in attempting to dictate to a foreign state what &antiga in Praise of Saint Mary its attitude should be toward religion...
...There are allusions to air a totally different meaning when intoned with different inflec- unconquered stronghold of the old Mayan priests in many tions to those initiated in the priestly mysteries...
...Every priest ment knows what is happening and that our government is in the missions of the Mayan borderland has such tales to doing what government may do lawfully and properly for tell of unexplored mysteries as drove Columbus on his venture...
...the protection at least of those who share our own nationality...
...74 THE COMMONWEAL May 26, 1926 THE MYSTERY OF MEXICO the multiplication table and the list of American presidents, by explorers who have only now become conscious of their By WILLIAM FRANKLIN SANDS existence through common talk along the Canal Zone...
...Several have claimed actually to have seen to the inflection of the voice as the word is uttered...
...This is what a number Translared from the Galician by Thomas Walsh of readers would like to have settled...
...mission work, with full utilization of all modern equipment...
...of a cultural history so remote, in as far as we are now able to Lionel Wafer nearly three hundred years ago-are being visualize it, from anything known in Europe, a people only drawn from their retirement and brought to Chicago to learn lightly touched by European culture, whose national growth May 26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 7S is so wholly distinct from our own...
...Doubtless it was an act of "military of century-old tropical mould, like Copan, like Querigua, like necessity," not greatly surprising in men who had been reared the cities being sought and explored by expeditions from in warfare against the heathen for so many centuries, but a American universities...
...It is, perhaps, less Others profit by the "monkish tales" and seem to be on the interesting that in this account he follows a branch of the point of unlocking the treasure-house of American history in Mexicans to their present abode, than that he derives all which our own scant four hundred years of varied European mythology from this cataclysm...
...If Mr...
...He fears lest threats from the United States "will intensify greatly and prolong indefinitely the present tyrannical regime And we should love and serve her well, in Mexico...
...The tradition has persisted from the His theory explains the disappearance of knowledge of this conquest and the first settlements in Mexico and Guatemala civilization, by the suppression and slaughter of the priestly and Yucatan...
...teen years ago, claimed there a living refuge of the last deThe Abbe takes as his text a fragment which has been pre- scendants of the priestly caste, the ancient masters, rulers of served, the tale of the Aztec wanderings until they settled per- their people centuries before the coming of Cortez, still pracmanently in the valley of Mexico...
...These Lettres sur le Mexique, a feat not otherwise easy of accom- men are feared by their Christian neighbors, but feared, quite plishi ent for his "four letters" run through formidable vol- possibly, less because of actual sorceries (to which the eye of umes and complicated theories which no -one may test who is the cabildu is more alert than to other things of more pracunfamiliar with the hieroglyphs of the Gulf countries...
...a description of a continent intermediate between America, As party after party of American archaeologists penetrates Europe and Africa, the state of its civilization, and its de- the wilderness, equipped with alll that makes jungle travel struction by natural causes quite possible and plausibly rea- possible, these old tales come north to fire the imagination...
...Whose troubadour we fain have been, As to Dr...
...Testing this fragment by rising their bloody rites destroyed elsewhere by the Spaniards, his theory, he brings forth, by intoning it with other inflections, still guarding the secret knowledge of their old civilization...
...Ancient tradition, still persisting fifgreat loss nevertheless...
...The old generation of priests which lived contentedly in the What do we really know, however, of the forces working wilderness for half a century is dying off, and leaving nothing there...
...What business was it of his or of the United A very keen American publisher remarked not long since, States Senate, whether freedom of religion was granted or after a visit to Rome, that far from being a machine or an not ? organization, the Catholic Church with its disorderly dupli- Again, why did Secretary Bryan, in a series of communicacation of every effort, with its astounding inefficiency could tions intended for Generals Villa and Carranza, warn the rebel not last a day unless by the strength of a "motivating" ideal...
...But is Mr...
...tolerable adjustment, will be reached between Catholic interIn times of need she can guard us true, ests in Mexico and the government of that country...
...We have here, of course, Atlantis, "the fountain of It is not our own, unfortunately, who are drawn to the quest...
...Nor ever fail our pledge to tell, Evidently Mr...
...We wish to be assured that our governreligious orders and among the mission priests...
...Hayes does not share the view of many And she our evils will repel, well-informed persons, that without the moral support and And gain our forfeit with her dowers, sympathy of the United States, not one of the governments Rose of roses, Flower of flowers, that have misruled Mexico for a century could have endured...
...Every large Indian village in Guatemala has one or two witch docM ANY years ago, a displaced kneecap and absence of all tors, mysterious personages whose real character is shrewdly other reading matter made it possible to read from end guessed at by the local priest as being in reality simply that to end the venerable Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg's Quatre of secret followers of the old cults and heathen rites...
...Radicalism, Bolshevism, anti-clericalism, atheism, are written...
...the Central American cultural system...
...Let the United States withdraw recognition, which was only This Lady whom we hail as Queen, granted conditionally, and the Calles regime will be doomed...
...Hayes unduly alarmed over the possible The sweetest in our earthly bowers, results of Catholics in this country protesting to our governRose of roses, Flower of flowers, ment against the anti-religious tyranny which rages in Mexico...
...older Spanish writings...
...tical importance) than for some concealed relation with the The Abbe's principal theory is that the Aztec priests, a ancient masters...
...Cathoremark may have a bearing on it : namely, the coordinating of lic Mind, May 8, 1915...
...caste possessing knowledge held secret from the people, had People at Quetzaltenango, or as near the capital as San also two languages, one for public expounding of the mysteries Juan Sacatepequez and Mixco will tell of the disappearance of worship, another for the initiate ; that this double meaning of these people at certain long intervals, into the wilderness of the same Aztec words was made possible by intonation of beyond Verapaz and Peten...
...leaders that "in order to command the sympathy and moral It may be that the Church in America has a particular support of America, Mexico must have, when her reconstrucmission now that its domestic problems are solved, and that tion comes, true freedom of conscience and worship...
...And gain our sins their pardon too...
...There are great regions where four centuries ever to do...
...Los Altos, Calif...
...Carlton J. Lady of ladies, Power of powers...
...Lady of ladies, Power of powers...
...Sands's view correct...
...May 5...
...the conduct of the rascals who are in power at present in...
...If such be the case, why did Secretary of State of Christianity have sunk but precarious roots...
...Even the "white Indians" behind the San of descent at least as ancient as western European civilzation, Blas coast of Panama-described by the Englishman, Dr...
...Lady of ladies, Power of powers...
...Can they be so easily applied to a people ones forgetting...
...Is there anything in ALFONSO X (1221-1284...
...It is possible to contend COMMUNICATIONS that under alien Spanish rule the people of Mexico had no more to do with government than they did under the Aztec, THE MEXICAN SITUATION Toltec, or Maya...
...Hayes and Father John A. Ryan write more or less sympathetically of certain elements in the Mexican revolutionary Rose of beauty and loveliness, program...
...Since the first quarter of the nineteenth century and the T0 the Editor:-The articles and communications in the separation from Spain, the Spanish element in the country, issue of May 5 on the Mexican situation have naturally still alien, has struggled with alternating success against the aroused discussion...
...That past, however, conclusions would need, as has been said, a knowledge of the has a mighty influence upon some of our neighbors whose inMexican hieroglyphs...
...Is it the respect When other loves we call not ours...
...habitants are in major part descended from an America more However one may regard the probabilities of this discovery, ancient than our own, whose national characteristics are interthe result of many years of mission work among the peoples woven with trends and tendencies that we cannot even imof Mexico and the Maya countries, there is much of value in agine...
...Certainly the extinction of an influence is but an interlude...
...Bryan to historical and of archaeological knowledge, the collation and specify as a condition for recognition, religious freedom for scientific direction of 2,000 years of Christian experience upon the Mexican people...
...The former believes it would be "a most mistaken Flower of joy and happiness, and short-sighted policy for Catholic Americans to endeavor Lady of pieties that bless, to make the present welfare of the Catholic Church in Mexico Queen of aid in our evil hours...
...resurgence of the native races, under a system of government Mr...
...Those rogate the then provisional government, as to whether the who have lived in Asia may find it easier to understandd the government would guarantee and provide religious liberty for Mexican, since they have already been shaken out of their its people...
...The old men of the tribes are dying, and the younger all European terms...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 3
