Places and Persons

...but like so many others of the accidental leaders of democratic movements, quite devoid of a grasp on the realities of life...

...The Mexicans were illustrating their knowledge of gringo history and their deep sympathy with the father of his country...

...I noticed that there was a line of white buoys stretching at intervals of some fifty yards or so across the brown Rio Grande...

...Never have I seen such dignity as in that Mexican Washington, who perhaps stood five-feet-two in his high-heeled boots...

...They were patriots illustrating the high pageantry of revolutionary history...

...He did not move quickly or expertly enough, and the steer arose, shook himself, and galloped away...

...The whole Texas legislature put itself into motion and moved upon Laredo...

...That is the only formula in which there is any hope...

...So did all the champion riders and rope-throwers not only of Texas but of all the Southwest...

...Going into the interior, I visited a little mining town, behind which there was a mountain range whose silhouette against the sky was like a carved monumental face many miles long and a mile or two high...

...John Kenneth Turner had not yet written Barbarous Mexico, and exposed the misery of the peons which was being fermented by the diabolism of revolutionists-for-revolu-tion's-sake, but which, nevertheless, despite all the exaggerations of the extreme radicals, cried to heaven for vengeance...

...The cocking of rifles and revolvers sounded like the racket of riveting machines...

...So I could not go over into Mexico...

...It was not so long after that particular Washington birthday when again I was in Mexico, this time in Juarez, opposite El Paso, the day after the battle in which Francisco Madero and Francisco Villa had defeated the federal garrison, and thus opened the way for the success of the Madero revolution...

...In the bow stood a small figure, one white-trousered leg clad in a riding boot held stiffly on the side of the boat, arms crossed with severe dignity across the little chest, the chest itself covered with a brave blue coat with long tails, and on the head a cocked military hat...

...He was a vague dreamer...

...Anybody who reads Ernest Gruening's book, Mexico and Its Heritage, and several other recent works on Mexico, or who has any first-hand knowledge of our neighbor to the south, must know that the people truly are awake...

...He rode like a flashing, fantastic centaur...

...The Mexican lifted both hands toward an implacable heaven and then clenched his fists and shook them in the face of the powers which had deserted him in the moment of his triumph...

...The time usually consumed from when the horseman swept his pony forward, until he had accomplished his task of catching the steer, lassoing it, capsizing it, then leaping to its head and tying its feet together, was rarely more than a minute and a half to two minutes...

...Meanwhile, being for a minute or two unable to move, I listened to Madero, the American doctor freely translating...

...I interviewed the strange little figure, on the upper step of the house in which he had just held a conference with Villa and others of the leaders...

...One by one the long-horned, well-muscled steers would be released, and given about a hundred yards start of the pursuing horseman...

...but not by forcing our own ideas upon them...

...When he dismounted, his fat played him false...

...An American doctor serving with the rebels grabbed me and told me to beat it as soon as possible...

...Occasionally, the hectic excitement in the air-the dry champagne air of Texas surcharged with sun-smitten dust and electrical with masculine excitement-would fail to penetrate the lethargy of the steer, who instead of acting his proper part would behave like some maiden cow on a placid farm of the North...

...But mostly the steers became possessed of a devil: a raging, running, leaping, dodging, fiery devil...

...What, then, could this be...

...He caught the swift steer he was chasing in double-quick time, threw his lariat from a great distance, as if in mere bravado, neatly threw the plunging beast-but then his show went wrong...

...Since that day so long ago, Washington-or the influence of official Washington-has crossed and re-crossed the Rio Grande and 6ther routes into Mexico...

...I shall never forget one splendid vacquero: a fat man, who, while in the saddle, despite his plump curves, seemed part of the horse he rode, and whose silver buttons and scarlet waistband and black velvet coat and ten-gallon hat, would have made the fortune of any wild western movie hero of these latter years...

...This was Washington crossing the Delaware...

...Well, that is what seems to have happened...

...I had adventured from San Antonio to Laredo, the little Texas city on the Rio Grande which recently came into such notoriety through the efforts of its district attorney, John A. Vails, to arrest Elias Plutarco Calles on a murder charge...

...And the legend was that when the time for Mexico to break the bondage of Spanish or any foreign rule had come, the sleeping Indian would awake...

...Washington, by which, of course, I mean the American people, and more particularly the Catholic portion of the American people, can and should help the Mexicans...

...just as so many of them have done and continue to do in the greater instance of prohibition...

...The plaza was filled with the mixed followers of the various factions...

...and always for the Mexicans, the Catholic faith...

...She had been swept out of sight in the whirling mob...

...It was long before the days when even in the remotest places you might come upon the movie people doing their stuff...

...Then, apparently without a soul except myself and a small group on the Mexican bank looking on, the boat slowly moved toward the American side...

...Others in the boat were somewhat similarly attired...

...although, of course, the Church has had its human failures who have made mistakes, and upon whom must rest some of the responsibility for the misery of Mexico...

...So did the leading vacqueros of Mexico...

...I wanted to see that bull-fight...

...That strange ferment of hazy humanitarianism and desire to impose blue-law morality upon other people which later on brought the Anti-saloon League and other organizations into the high places of power in this republic was even then at work in Texas...

...There had been a quarrel among them, and an effort was made to arrest Madero...

...Then amid yells and the staccato barking of revolvers, a rider would go forward on his pony in pursuit...

...So the state legislature thought that the cruelty said to be incidental to the highly popular sport of cattle-roping must be done away with by law...

...The liveliest steers from half a hundred ranches were concentrated in corrals near the grounds chosen for the contest: simply a portion of the tremendous prairie which stretched northward, eastward and westward for hundreds of fenceless miles...

...I have forgotten the Mexican name for that mountain, but roughly translated it would mean, the Sleeping Indian...

...The occasion of my visit to the little and far-away city on the Rio Grande years ago was the celebration at that place of the last cattle-roping contest permitted by the laws of Texas...

...and so it was done...

...undoubtedly sincere in his democratic aspirations...

...He dominated that crowd...

...But that did not seem to matter...

...Sometimes, however, the tying was done insecurely, and the steer would struggle or leap to its feet again, amid the frantic profanity of the horseman, the disappointed howls of those who had backed him with their good money, and the delirious roars of laughter of those who had bet against him...

...The prizes were high, but only a side issue to the betting...

...The two municipalities had planned a joint celebration of Washington's birthday...

...Then I saw something queer...

...Then the horseman and his horse had their work cut out for them...

...Madero leaped upon the seat of an automobile and harangued the crowd...

...It was splendid stuff...

...but my job as a newspaperman was to report the historic closing scenes of cattle-roping in Texas...

...They were artists creating art for its own sake...

...But he was a brave man...

...But I had a wife to find before I could follow the kindly doctor's advice...

...On the Mexican side there was a boat pushing out...

...It was on Washington's birthday...

...I saw riding such as I had never dreamed possible-such as the standardized and commercialized rodeos which became fashionable in later years never provided...

...Just before the law went into effect, however, the legislators felt that they might as well have as much fun as possible out of the situation...

...He carried it in his direction away from the scowling Villa...

...all that I could do was to gaze upon that monstrous desolation of the Rio Grande, by the little group of adobe houses which represented Neuces Laredo, and the quivering desert beyond, and the blue, towering mountains in the dim distance...

...The bobbing buoys on the brown breast of the Rio Grande represented the traditional blocks of ice of the wintry Delaware...

...Gruening and others of his school of thought blame a great deal of the misery of the people upon the Catholic Church...

...Madero was a fanatic...

...Foreign capital was pouring into the country...

...Comprehension came...

...During the noon interval, while the barbecue fires were smoldering, and the corn liquor was circulating, and half a thousand lusty men were eating and drinking and excitedly discussing the events of the morning, I strolled across the sun-drenched solitude, and passing through one or two of the little dusty streets of Laredo, walked out upon the long bridge that connects the Texas city with Neuces Laredo, or New Laredo, the small Mexican town on the opposite bank...

...Washington indeed may cross the Rio Grande, but it must not carry economic imperialism, or materialism, or political methods well enough adapted north of that river, but utterly futile to the south of it...

...Soon afterward, again I was in Mexico, this time with Obregon's army when he was invading Mazatlan...

...The sport itself was simple, yet like many other simple forms of art it was capable of producing moments of the highest excitement, and splendid pictures of heroic beauty...

...James Creelman had not yet published the famous interview with Diaz which released the forces of revolution...

...Shoot me if you like," he cried, slapping himself on his chest with a gesture that recalled the heroic little figure crossing the Rio Grande, "but with me you kill free Mexico 1" He won the day...

...I stared with uncomprehending amazement...

...only himself to go down before a bullet later on...

...It seems to be certain that later on he tried to run his government with the aid of spiritualistic mediums...

...Unfortunately, he relies mostly upon utterly biased testimony...

...Across the bridge in Mexico they were holding a bull-fight...

...Those were the days when Porfirio Diaz still reigned in Mexico, and his sure-shooting, hard-riding rurales kept the law of the dictator very thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Mexico...

...And it was too bad that their audience was so slender and that the more rousing attractions of the cattle contest put a crimp in the show...

...Mexico for the Mexicans...

...But it may be held for certain by anybody who knows even a little of the truth about Mexico, that if the present government ties itself up too tightly with the economic and political power of the United States, again there will be trouble south of the Rio Grande...