Mexico-Whither and Whence?
Keppler, John
94 THE COMMONWEAL December I, I926 MEXICO--WHITHER AND WHENCE?
By JOHN KEPPLER (This is the first of two articles by Mr. Keppler, setting fortk the character of Mexican civilization and the...
...I see seven things the matter -" "~ with it...
...With-out any tempest whatever, Lake Texcuco became sud- denly agitated, pouring its angry waters into the streets of Tenochtitlan...
...This is not only frankly admitted, but actually asserted by each sect, with reasons of "apologetic"mi.e., explanatorymna- ture...
...Congregationalists look further back, to Robert Browne...
...Catholicism, as taught by the early friars, the In- dian willingly embraced...
...Humboldt, in 18o3, divided the native races as follows: Creoles (pure whites of Castilian descent but born in Mexico) I,OOO,OOO...
...During the period from 1864 to 1884, seven changes in government took place, and once more in I864, the nation bowed to a foreign foe, Maximilian, who was crowned emperor with the support of French bayonets, only to fall before a firing squad when France, upon the protest of the United States, with- drew her troops...
...Only three times in IOO years has the executive power been peacefully transferred from one President to another...
...From 1825 to 1864, the republic had thirty-five different Presidents and dictators...
...Settling in December I, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 95 Anahuac, the present valley of Mexico, 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, they named their settle-ment Tenochtitlan...
...Does the reader remember," writes Mercante, "the speech in which Montezuma, upon handing over his throne to Cortez, related that 'for a long time have we known that our forefathers were of those men that traveled in sailboats and were orientals from dis- tant regions' ?" If the best blood of a race may be said to course in its pioneers, then the American Indians and those who inhabited Mexico before the Spanish conquest were the flower of the Orient, for they were pioneers in every sense of the word...
...Whether it will ever become complete the present revolutionary epoch will determine...
...To the oriental, space and time mean nothing...
...Until 1884, economic power rested largely with the Church and with the Creoles...
...Of what use to resist a god...
...independence brought turbu-lence...
...Despite his oriental features and characteristics, the ancient origin of the American Indian was long en-shrouded in deep mystery, even the lost, submerged Atlantis being made to account for the beginning of his race...
...But, reflective in mood, the Indian drifted into mystic abandon as naturally as did his historic forbear of the East...
...First tortured by his captors, he was led to the edge of his grave and shot...
...He ~eas intimately acquainted with many promi- nent Mexican officktls...
...Every sect has repudiated one or more of the dis- tingnishing marks of the original organism...
...Second in point of time were the Zapotecs, a kindred tribe...
...Methodists look back to John Wesley, born in 17o2, before whom there were no Methodists...
...Hrdlicka stimulates interest still further...
...At the site of what is now the city of Mexico, the Aztec vanguard came upon an eagle, perched upon a cactus, the royal bird holding in his beak the neck, and in his talons, the tail, of a serpent...
...There seems to be so many critics in these United States that a pessimist might well wonder how many people are left to practise it...
...From the Gila river-valley in Arizona, during the seventh century, came the Toltecs...
...Further research may assign a like origin to the Incas of Peru, and it is left to be revealed whether Mexico did not also belong to the prehistoric empire of Fu-Sang...
...No wonder, then, that he draws back in sullen stubbornness, and clings to old customs...
...That free and essentially rural life--that independent livelihood--3oo years of con-quest destroyed, leaving him, instead, to depend upon a patronizing, enervating tutelage, which, however kind it may be claimed to have been, ultimately forced him into complete serfdom...
...Likewise migrating from the North, the Zapotecs settled in the mountains of Oaxaca, which continue to shelter them...
...Undoubtedly, the prime mover toward unrest has been the Indian, but in the words of Brancroft, "in his own land where the law grants him the title of citizen," the Indian "is regarded by the few as a useful machine only...
...Neither did his keen eye overlook in many Mexican proper names the Chinese termina- tion, "tsin...
...There was also the foreign colony--the Gachupines (Spaniards born in Spain) whom all the native elements disliked--the Creoles the more because in appointment to official position the government favored the Gachupine...
...and pure Indians, 2,5oo,ooo...
...Four centuries have passed...
...Landing in Alaska, migration drifted naturally to the more fertile regions and the sunnier climes of the South, although scattering tribes made their way to the frozen Arctic: the Esquimaux of our time...
...Political supremacy since independence has rested largely with the Mestizos, the notable exceptions being Ju~irezDa pure Zapotec, Mexico's only Indian Presi- dent, a barefoot boy of the Oaxaca Mountains risen to greatness---and the group of Creoles who gathered about Diaz, himself a Mestizo...
...The author is an ./lmerican attorney who once represented the Farm-Labor party and who has just returned from a year's study of conditions south of the Rio Grande...
...This is a disintegrating movement...
...Picture, then, the ethnic alloy into which this once proud nation was hammered upon the anvil of foreign conquest...
...Creoles were influential in the Church and powerful in the country's economic life...
...94 THE COMMONWEAL December I, I926 MEXICO--WHITHER AND WHENCE...
...Yucatan is still the home of the Mayas, and Merida, their capital, stands upon the site of an ancient village, bearing the Chinese name of T-ho...
...whether the Aleutian Islands existed to serve as stepping-stones, so to speak, from the old world to the new, can make little differencenfor navigation was not unknown to the ancients of the East, as is shown by Heou-Han, who wrote of a country "which one reaches after a year's sailing...
...the exact sciences of the West are but man-made standards, useful perhaps, but not uni- versally true...
...nevertheless, the Church in- fluenced him spiritually no more than he outwardly influenced the Church--a mutual influence which per- sists to this day...
...In his ancient empire, private property meant little...
...Christian Scientists to the more mod- ern Mary Baker G. Eddy...
...By the seventh cen- tury, the Otomies, an isolated tribe of cave-dwellers but strikingly Chinese in features and language, had occupied the northern and central plateaus...
...According to Mer- cante, the Maya-Quiches "related that their fore-fathers, who came from the land of the sun, crossed the sea over the ice...
...The number of Creoles has since been greatly diminished...
...next took charge, to meet an even worse fate...
...That attitude toward life and toward the West the Mexican Indian has not lost, and much of Mexican history is thereby explained...
...All these humanly-founded organizations effected a greater or less separation from the organism founded by Christ...
...To Ju~rez belongs the credit of wresting his native land from this second foreign con- quest, which was short-lived...
...You travel very fast toward a goal, yet the universe itself is without goal...
...R ARE are the men who make history...
...And more--Indian women became the wives of Spanish men, and with their children adopted western standards of living...
...bet" of the Catholic Church and that all his life he has been associated with movements for social reform...
...According to Thompson, the population in 191o represented: I,I5O,OOO Creoles...
...What Montezuma feared, however, was not this union of Spaniard and Tlascaltec, but the possibility that Cortez might be none other than the god, Quetzal- coati, returning to punish the Toltecs and their suc-cessors for the persecution he suffered when in the flesh of a priest...
...Excelling in astronomy, mak- ing use of the picture-word as a medium of expression, and building temples to the sun gods of the East, they developed a culture which flourished many centuries...
...There are more than one hundred kinds of "Chris- tianity" in the United States...
...Returning from a recent archaeological survey of Alaska, he said there was not the slightest doubt that Asiatics came to North America by way of the Alaskan peninsula...
...A numerous and hardier tribe, the Chichimecs, then en- tered from the North, and in their wake came the Tecpanecs, Acolhuans, and Tlascaltecs...
...the last when Calles succeeded Obregon two years ago...
...Before the fast-advancing hosts of the Occi- dent, the Orient has retreated but not surrendered...
...The middle of the sixth century found the Mixtecs, probably a branch of the Zapotecs, inhabiting the re-moter parts of these mountains...
...but all are paper-problems, which a stroke of the government pen would solve...
...Peonage (forced labor for debt) followed the conquest...
...Husbandmen, artisans and builders, they gradually penetrated the territory of the Otomies, where cities were reared and a great em-pire rose which lasted four centuries...
...To these different groups must be added the various foreign colonies, comprised mostly of Americans, English, Germans, Spaniards and French, with property interests to man- age and protect...
...Thompson pictures her a surging Indian sea, recurringly wash- ing from its shores the castles erected by the white man...
...While he reared cities and built empires, his social organization did not lose its tribal qualities...
...The revolution which brought political independence began with Indian uprisings, but was a failure until Creoles took command...
...in many cases, too, it was not far removed from the nomadic stage...
...also highly cultured...
...Keppler, setting fortk the character of Mexican civilization and the background of the present struggle...
...in I825, the last of Spain's forces sailed from Vera Cruz, and the republic of Mexico became a reality...
...far and wide the West has extended her empires, but the final scene in this world drama has not been en- acted...
...So long as Mexico remains racially distinct and politi- cally independent, the conquest cannot be called com- plete...
...That the Mexican Indians formed part of these ancient migra- tions can no longer be questioned...
...The second article will follow in an early issue.--The Editors...
...In oriental fashion, he dwelt in his village, tilling the adjoining lands in common with his fellow-tribesmen...
...Such bodies, considered together, make up the numerical preponderance of "American Christianity...
...Early in the fifteenth century, Spaniards landed on the Gulf coast, in command of the resolute Cortez, and soon they occupied Tenochtitlan...
...Zapotec architec- ture "combined the solidarity of the works of Egypt with the elegance of those of Greece...
...8,ooo,ooo Mestizos...
...Earliest to inhabit the country were the Maya-Quiches, their migration beginning perhaps more than five thousand years ago...
...Tung Dekien shows that in the literature of China before the Christian era, mention is made of an empire, named Fu-Sang, situated many thousand miles "east of the oriental sea," whither Chinese, Mongols, and Tartars had migrated to escape an excess of population and persecution...
...Humboldt likened Mexico to "a beggar sitting upon a sack of gold...
...and thus, as if by some magic wand, was drawn the curtain upon cul-tures which now have naught but the charm of an-tiquity to sustain them...
...at present more than two-thirds of the country's wealth is in foreign hands...
...Auspicious was the moment, Spain being then, like the rest of Europe, at sword's-point with Napoleon the Great...
...While Montezuma pon- dered and feared, Cortez acted...
...Hidalgo captured and executed Morelos, a Mestizo curate...
...Tradi-tion credits them with a superior religion, based upon the immortality of the soul, and with having main- tained a thousand years of peace...
...In that period of thirty-nine years, the ex- ecutive power changed hands fifty-six times---generally by force...
...This is merely a non-controversial truism, germane to the fact that schism is not a sectarian sin...
...to him life and death are no more than the eternal recur-rence of things...
...With the Span- ish invasion the current of Indian tribal m'gration to Mexico came to an end, but Montezuma, the king of the Aztecs, did not relinquish his crown without proudly recalling the ancient ancestry of his people...
...Since 191o, five bloody revolutions have come and gone--the last in 1923 and 1924...
...I believe this to be the view of the majority because I imagine the active church-members and Christianity's many American critics outnumber the hostile and the totally indifferent...
...given to worship of ancestry and the elements, fatalism found in him its true incarnation...
...Legend attributes the downfall of the Toltecs to persecution of their god-priest, Quetzalcoatl, who had come from Asia to teach them Buddhism...
...It is difficult for the western mind to understand the soul of the Orient...
...Cortez conquered the Aztecs with a handful of less than five hundred white men, aided by the Tlascaltecs, who, from motives of expediency, had joined him...
...Each is prone to regard its organization as either an improvement upon that organism, or as identical with it...
...yet the significance of the event was not grasped by those who participated, nor gauged by the historians who came immediately after...
...The twelfth or thirteenth century brought the Aztecs...
...revolution poverty...
...Mestizos (of mixed Castilian and Indian blood) 2,ooo,ooo...
...In the case of any humanly-founded "church," both these hypotheses are demonstrable absurdities...
...Haeckel defied the centuries when he traced from Asia, across Bering Strait, the great cur-rent of ancient migration to the Americas...
...still rarer the men who see history in the making...
...Christ, the unques- tioned Founder, created an organism, the One, Holy, Universal, Apostolic Church, which remained virtu- ally intact until Martin Luther's challenge and seces-sion 409 years ago brought the Protestant movement into existence...
...For a time we admired your poetry, but, alas, it was merely a transition--a becoming--it was merely the anticipation of a joy unreal...
...and 6,ooo,ooo Indians...
...Religiously, the people remain overwhelmingly Catho- lic...
...one of the temples mysteriously caught an inextinguishable fire...
...Mestizos inclined to the lighter occupa- tions...
...and by the mass either as an un- desirable intruder, an incubus, a dead-weight, or as an outcast...
...Considered by the West a dreamer, a child, among the "backward" of the earth, he might answer, if inclined to answer at all: "But you build civilizations only to see them crumble to dust, never learning life's fuller, nobler meaning...
...He feels himself at one with the uni- verse, and because he feels, he understands...
...Astrologers predicted disaster and the speedy end of the empire...
...another cause is said to have been the discovery of pulque, an intoxicating liquor made from the sap of the maguey...
...Superficially, one sees Church and state again in conflict, land legislation taking an anti-foreign turn, and petroleum rights once more the subject of diplo- matic correspondence...
...By JOHN KEPPLER (This is the first of two articles by Mr...
...Each of these sects had a human founder...
...However, when the crown granted lands to the conquerors in tracts so extensive that agriculture and stock-raising could be carried on only with hired labor--tracts which often included even Indian villages, with their agricultural and grazing commons--and when the Indian was assigned to labor for his conqueror in field and in mine, he encountered a force which was destined to have far-reaching ef- fects...
...Graceful, poetic and anarchic...
...A hundred years ago, Humboldt observed that Tchuehis were accustomed annually to cross Bering Strait in small boats for the purpose of warring upon American tribes...
...It may be added that he is not a mere...
...Guerrero and It-firbide succeeded...
...Hidalgo, an aged Creole priest, in I8IO voiced his never to be forgotten, "El Grito de Dolores"--the cry which sounded the be96 THE COMMONWEAL December I, 1926 ginning of the end of Spanish rule...
...Thus, if legend may be trusted, the gods had indicated to the Aztecs the location of their new em- pire, for they in truth believed themselves to be a "chosen people...
...SEVEN SINS OF "THE CHURCHES" By HENRY S. WHITEHEAD tt AM..ERICA N Christianity," broadly considered, ]--~ is sectarian...
...but at bottom remained the Indian, the menial...
...Speaking as an American of long heredity and profound conviction, I share the view of the majority that Christianity is the most important element of our national life...
...From 1884 to 191o, under Diaz, an enforced peace prevailed within the country, and friendly relations were maintained abroad...
...still another, and a more likely one, a succession of crop failures, followed by famine and the plague...
...Whether Alaska then joined the mainland of Asia...
...The first major di~culty, as I see it, is that most Christians are using a substitute...
...three comets appeared in the skies the same night, and a strange light broke forth in the East...
...When white man met red man, two great migrations, like giant armies upon some vast battlefield, engaged each other for the possession of this hemisphere...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 4
