# About Mexico - Past and Present/Chapter 20

Table of Contents
CHAPTER XX.
VICEROYALTY.
THE Indians were not the only sufferers from the grasping policy of Spain. She proved to be in every way an unnatural mother to this the fairest of her Western possessions. Throned between the oceans, with a front on both the eastern and the western hemisphere, a storehouse of the world's richest mineral treasures and blessed with a variety of climate and productions which gave her the advantage of every zone, Mexico should have been the commercial peer of Spain. Humboldt called Mexico el puente del comercio del mundo ("the bridge of the commerce of the world"), it being on the direct highway between Europe and Asia. "At one time" says Brantz Mayer, "the East and the West poured their people through the cities of Vera Cruz and Acapulco, and some of the most distinguished merchants of Europe, Asia and Africa met every year in the capital, midway between Spain and China, to transact business and exchange opinions upon the growing facilities of an extended commerce."
The Council of the Indies decided that Mexico herself should derive no benefit from all these natural advantages: she should be simply a colony of miners at work for the mother-country, furnishing a market for her exports. The colonists were forbidden to make any article ​in Mexico which Spain could provide. All commerce with other countries, and even with sister-colonies, was prohibited on pain of death. No vessels but those of the mother-country could enter the ports, and these were carefully searched lest contraband articles—especially books—should be concealed among the cargo. Modern history and all political writings were particularly under ban. All spirit of inquiry was stifled. One of our outspoken newspapers would have been considered an infernal machine by the inquisitorial censors of the press, who, through lack of heretics to burn, hunted books. A publishing-house in 1770 had to get special permission to bring over type to print an almanac. As all the small dealers in the country were obliged to report, under oath, the amount of their purchases and sales, perjury and smuggling became national vices. Every article of import was taxed each time it changed hands, and instances were known where such a tax was paid on a single article thirty times before it reached a consumer. Even Nature was repressed in her exuberance. The law frowned upon Mexican grapes and olives if planted by the hand of man, lest some enterprising Creole or Indian might hinder the sale of wine and oil from Spain by engaging in the manufacture of these articles at home. For many years after the colony was established on this "bridge of the world" maritime nations of Europe were busy searching for that famous strait to the south seas and other places which had long figured in the geographical romances of Europe. The viceroys of Mexico were anxious to add to the lustre of their reign by some great discovery. At one time rumors of a rich kingdom at the North were brought to the capital by an exploring party led by a Franciscan friar who had been in that ​direction. The name of this region was Quivara. Here arose the seven cities of Cibola painted in glowing colors by the monk who first visited them. This romantic story reaching Spain, orders came back to the viceroy to explore and subdue the land without delay. Cortez, who was then living on his Mexican estate, offered to fulfill this task, but was refused. An army was sent out under Coronado, taking the great natural highway leading toward the north over the table-land, where it entered what is now known as New Mexico. Like the seekers after the enchanted islands whose splendid domes and walls lured the mariners of a hundred years before, the soldiers traveled on and on in a fruitless search, wintering twice in the wilderness and coming back disgusted because they found only a community of Indian farmers living in the large pueblos. A few miserable villages still remain to mark the probable site of the cities of Cibola. Mexico whilst ruled by Spain was never so civilized after the conquest as before. It is recorded of one of the viceroys at the close of the eighteenth century that he caused the streets of the capital to be lighted and drained, and strengthened the police-force of this robber-infested land. Beggary increased under Spanish rule, until at the beginning of this century there were twenty thousand beggars in the capital alone.
Very little was done in the way of public improvement during the three centuries of viceroyalty. There were no roads except such as led from one large city to another, and these were very poor. The nobles and the rich Creoles lived on immense estates called haciendas, which separated them widely. One of these gentlemen, who lived on the hills bordering the lowlands, had a hacienda ninety miles long by fifty wide. He fitted out ​several large vessels yearly, at one time sending over a great shipload of mahogany, and, at another, one of cedar logs, from his own forests, as a present to Philip II. of Spain. Besides these munificent gifts, he sent a princely invitation to the king, declaring that if His Majesty would do him the honor to come back in one of these vessels to Mexico his horse should walk from the shore to the capital on ingots of silver. Millions upon millions of gold and silver produced in the mines were sent abroad and helped to carry on the wars by which Europe was devastated. In the years 1773-74 twenty-six millions of dollars were sent to Spain each year. She had conquered the New World, and was using its enslaved population to help her to lay waste the Old World also. It would be remarkable that during the three hundred years of Spanish government of Mexico and Peru no one of the enemies of Spain despoiled her of those treasure-houses, did we not remember how much easier it was for the cruisers of England and France to capture the Spanish galleons on the high seas than to invade the country and dig the silver and gold from the mines for themselves. As years went on the Church joined the State in its oppressions of the people. The supremacy of the former became the highest aim of the dissolute and avaricious priesthood against which Cortez warned his king. With this one purpose in view, the monks fostered ignorance and compromised with vice, until, like foul and monstrous parasites, these growths well-nigh smothered every vestige of life in the nation.
The spirit of inquiry could not have been wholly ​repressed, for, in 1572, Philip II. thought it necessary to set up a branch of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico. It is not probable that many victims were looked for among the poor and ignorant natives. Their heathenism was always tolerated by Rome; so long as they went through the forms of obedience they might indulge in pagan rites. But the rich colonists were looked after most carefully. After an existence of over eighty years in Mexico this satanic institution furnished fifty victims to be burned alive at the stake. In 1767, Charles VII. of Spain, convinced that the Jesuits were plotting against him, ordered that the society should be suppressed in every part of his dominions. Sealed despatches were sent to every Spanish colony, to be opened by the authorities on the same day. In April, 1767, when the order took effect, several hundred were sent from Mexico. Even the pope, whose special servants they were, shut his door in their faces. But, though the Jesuits were expelled, the Church establishment continued to engross much of the wealth and power of Mexico. Its ecclesiastics were the chief land- owners and capitalists of the country. The archbishop was the head of a great loan and trust company, and under deeds or mortgages held one-third of the real estate in Mexico. In 1750 it was stated that the amount of money drawn by the Church from this bankrupt nation corresponded to the interest on a capital of one hundred and fifteen millions of dollars.
There are few more sumptuous church-interiors in the world than those of several of the cathedrals of Mexico. The walls of the cathedral of the City of Mexico cost about two millions of dollars. On its massive silver altar within stands a small shrine in which is an image of the Virgin whose three petticoats—one embroidered with pearls, ​another with emeralds and the third with diamonds—are said to be worth three millions of dollars more. These imposing churches often stand in little villages of adobe huts, the homes of ignorance and squalid poverty. The contrast between the church and its surroundings is all the more striking when we remember that what the village is now it has always been since Rome took possession of Mexico, and nothing could better illustrate the perverted Christianity she has taught its people than these proud shrines, in whose unwholesome shadow they have been sitting for centuries. A picture of Mexico has been given by a visitor from this country in 1846: "The things which most strike an American on his first arrival in Mexico are the processions, ceremonies and mummeries of the Catholic worship. As to any rational idea of true religion or any just conception of its divine Author, the great mass are little more enlightened than were their ancestors in the time of Montezuma. Their religion is very little less an idolatry than that of the grotesque images of stone and clay of which it has taken the place."
Mexico is still one of the darkest corners of the pope's dominions. Nor is this to be wondered at when the character of its priesthood is understood. The abbé Domenech, who accompanied Maximilian to Mexico, speaking of these blind leaders of the blind, says of the Roman Catholic Church as he found it there, "It fills no mission of virtue, no mission of mercy, no mission of charity. Virtue cannot exist in its pestiferous atmosphere. The code of morality does not come within its practice. It knows no mercy, and no emotion of charity ever moves the stony heart of that priesthood which, with an avarice that has no limit, filches the last penny from the diseased ​and dying beggar, plunders the widows and orphans of their substance as well as their virtue, and casts such a horoscope of horrors around the death-bed of the dying millionaire that the poor superstitious wretch is glad to purchase a chance for the safety of his soul by making the Church the heir to his treasures."
All the viceroys but one—who was always known as the "great governor of New Spain"—were foreigners. It was the policy of the mother-country to surround this shadow of a king with a privileged class similar to the old nobility of Europe. They were all of pure Castilian blood and natives of Europe. Their children, if born in Mexico, were Creoles. To these foreigners were granted certain privileges (fueros) which in time created a great and impassable barrier between them and the Creoles. The Indians called these people gatzopins, or centaurs, afterward corrupted into gachupines—a word which may be traced back to the old idea that Spanish horses and men were one animal. These gachupines were always looked upon as aliens, as they truly were. All the honors and emoluments in Church and in State were reserved for this privileged class; every law was intended to benefit them. The system of fueros which elevated the gachupines was extended also to certain classes among the Creoles. Special privileges were thus granted to the army which lifted a soldier almost entirely out of the reach of the civil law and made both officers and men responsible to their commander alone. The clergy owed obedience only to the bishops, and these in turn to the pope of Rome, who kept his hold on the keys of this great treasure-house by entering into a business partnership with the king of Spain. The schools, the engineers, the revenue-officers, and others employed by the ​government, were so fenced about by these peculiar fueros that there was a never-ceasing conflict between the central authorities and their irresponsible subjects. The result of these long-fostered evils was constant friction. No difference in blood could create so much bitterness as these odious class-distinctions. Gachupine and Creole thoroughly hated each other, while both trod remorse lessly on the Indian.
About thirty-five years after the United States threw off its colonial yoke Mexico was aroused from the uneasy sleep of centuries to take a part in the great struggle for liberty then going on in the world. The fall of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, in 1808, was the death-knell of absolute monarchy in all her colonies. In that year Charles VI. abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII. This step, taken in haste, would gladly have been retracted, but Ferdinand would not yield. While father and son were quarreling Napoleon interfered and put his brother, Jerome Bonaparte, on the throne, declaring that the house of Bourbon had now ceased to reign. Ferdinand was obliged to sign the decree of the council of the Indies commanding their Mexican colony to obey the usurper. Strange to say, the gachupines, those creatures of an absolute monarchy, approved of this measure, but the Creoles, in their intense loyalty, publicly burned Ferdinand's enforced proclamation.
In this emergency the viceroy summoned a junta of the chief men in Church and State. For the first time in their history the Creoles were put upon an equality with the gachupines by an invitation to assist at this council. They were delighted, but the old Spaniards were so enraged that they went to the palace of the viceroy and seized him, hurrying him away to prison, where ​they kept him three years. These high-handed proceedings proved the ruin of the gachupines. The Creoles were determined to uphold Ferdinand, raising seven millions of dollars in a few months to aid the struggling royalists of Spain.
In 1812 the Spanish Cortes enacted a constitution which embodied many such reforms as the freedom of the press, the suppression of the Inquisition, the closing of monasteries and convents, the expulsion of the Jesuits and the cutting off of all privileges belonging exclusively to the army and the nobility. To crown all, the people were invested with power. But long before the ignorant peasantry of Spain could realize their high privileges a counter-revolution had seated Ferdinand on the throne, as firm a believer as ever in
"The right divine of kings to govern wrong."
He annulled everything the Cortes had done, persecuted those who had in any way aided the people in their cause, revived the Inquisition, and thus plunged the nation into a civil war which lasted six years. In 1820 the people regained their power and compelled the king to swear to support the constitution. There were great rejoicings all over Spain, to which Ferdinand listened in silence. He was a Bourbon of whom it was well said, "They never learn anything, and never forget anything." The royalists, though in a decided minority, began to plot again, and ere long the perjured king, with the aid of the Church, had regained his despotic power, and a cloud from the Dark Ages seemed for a time to over-shadow Spain. Ferdinand was restored once more to his throne and compelled again to swear to support the constitution. Backed by the Holy Alliance, he entered ​Madrid as before in royal state, but only to become again false to his God and his country. He revoked all his acts since 1820, re-established the Inquisition and its attendant despotism, and for years Spain was like Mazeppa's horse, struggling to throw its riders, living and dead.
All this time Mexico was a deeply-interested spectator. Loyalty in a Spaniard amounts to religion, and some, even among those who murmured loudest against the exactions of the government, sided with the tyrants they once had upbraided. But, with all the sympathy it received, royal authority in Mexico had received its death- blow. The Creoles had been watching from afar that battle for liberty in which the United States had borne a leading part, and, though not republicans in sentiment, they were determined to put down those odious class-distinctions by which so long they had been debarred from taking their rightful place in the government councils. They were dissatisfied with persons, not with principles, and insisted that natives of the country should have an equal share with foreigners in the management of colonial affairs. But this reasonable request was violently opposed by the gachupines.
The long-pent-up hatred toward the conquerors now burst forth with redoubled strength. Hidalgo had become one of a band of conspirators scattered throughout the country who had plotted to make Mexico independent. For years he had been brooding over the wrongs of his people, when the outrages at Guanajuato and Dolores fired him with new zeal and courage. The war-cry would soon have sounded, when, by the treachery of one of the band, the plan was exposed. The man was suddenly taken ill, and, fearing that he was ​about to die, he confessed all to the priest. Most of the clergy were hand in hand with the tyrants, and this one of the fraternity, though bound by oath not to reveal the secrets of the confessional, lost no time in spreading the news.
Tidings came to Hidalgo late one evening in December. Not a moment was to be lost. Messengers were sent to the captain of a regiment, La Rexia, near by, who was also one of the conspirators. He came with his men early the next morning, and the standard of Mexican independence hastily set up before the curate's door attracted all eyes. The villagers flew to arms. In twelve days twenty thousand Indians had gathered about this new flag, the first that had roused any enthusiasm since the old tribal banners had been laid low. They were a motley crowd, armed with slings, bows, clubs, lances and the machetes, or hoes, with which they tilled the soil. Very few besides the soldiers had muskets or knew how to handle them. Hidalgo put on a general's dress and marched at the head of the mob to Guanajuato. Every ranche and every hamlet on the way had furnished new recruits to join the wild shout,"Death to the gachupines and independence for Mexico!" Then Hidalgo arrested the gachupines. The whole city was in an uproar. The next morning he presented his cause to the people and carried all hearts before him. The citizens rose almost to a man and joined the insurgents.
But the partisans of Hidalgo were a cruel and lawless mob. Unused to war, they could not be held in check, and divided councils soon imperiled the cause so righteously begun. On the march to the capital his army increased to one hundred thousand men. The leading classes were by this time in arms against them, and their ​very numbers were an obstacle to their success. Orders had been given in Mexico to kill all the men, women and children in any town or village which should show favor to the rebels. The brutal general Callega, who carried out the government orders, wreaked its utmost vengeance on Guanajuato. He is said to have butchered at one time, in cold blood, fourteen thousand prisoners in that city alone.
Hidalgo was permitted to baptize the cause so dear to his heart only with a martyr's blood. He was making his way toward the United States, hoping for shelter there till his plans could be better arranged, but he was betrayed and captured, deposed from his priesthood and shot at Chihuahua, July 30, 1811.
True as was Hidalgo's devotion to his country, he fought against an enemy whose right arm he was blindly upholding. This was shown by his unswerving loyalty to that Church whose corruption and lust of power have ever made her a fit ally for despots. During the revolutionary struggles which followed Hidalgo's death the people began to see that their Spanish masters had no more faithful friends and allies than the Romish priesthood. Hidalgo's enthusiastic love for the Church was echoed by the first Mexican Congress, which met in 1812, the year after his death. They declared that the Catholic religion only should be recognized and allowed in the State, and that the press should be free except for the discussion of religious matters. Slavery was abolished, privileges of birth and color were annulled, the property of the gachupines was confiscated, and a representative government of natives was inaugurated.
The cause of liberty did not die with Hidalgo. While ​still hopeful of success he had commissioned Morelos, an Indian priest, as captain-general of the insurgent force at the South. After the death of Hidalgo the chief command devolved on his brother-patriot.
The royalists had entered on a war of extermination, and not a town or a village dared shelter the rebels. Morelos resolved to tire out his enemies by changing the scene of conflict to the hot lands on the coast, where the men of the cold regions would melt away with its deadly fevers.
At one time, on a retreat to Oaxaca, Morelos hoped to find shelter for his troops in a little town surrounded by a deep moat. As they came to the bank with the enemy in hot pursuit they saw, to their dismay, that the draw-bridge was raised and the better to prevent their entrance the townspeople had secured every boat. Seizing an axe, Guadalupe Victoria, afterward first president of the republic, sprang into the stream, and in the sight of the panic-stricken crowd on the opposite bank he swam boldly across, cut the ropes which held the bridge aloft, and as it came down with a thundering crash Morelos and his men dashed over and took possession of the place.
A story is told of Miguel Bravo, another of the patriots, that shows the spirit which animated many of these noble men. Three hundred prisoners had fallen into their hands at the siege of Palmo, and General Morelos gave the disposal of them to Bravo, who immediately offered them all to the viceroy in exchange for his father, Don Leonardo Bravo, then a prisoner under sentence of death at the capital. But the viceroy rejected the offer and ordered the execution to take place immediately. When Bravo heard the sad news, he set his three hundred men at liberty, saying, "I wish to put it out of my power to ​avenge my father's death lest in the first moments of my grief the temptation to do so would prove irresistible."
A national Congress which had been summoned to organize an independent government had not yet finished its work when the members were driven out of Chilpanzinco, where they were in session. Morelos led them to a dense forest, and there, hidden in the shadow of its great trees, the declaration of Mexican independence and its first constitution were drawn up. Before the work was completed an alarm was given, "The royalists are upon us!" Hastily gathering up their precious documents, the men fled, and Morelos and his handful of patriots, closing in behind them, held until they were beyond pursuit the pass through which they were flying. Morelos heroically stood his ground until but one man remained at his side. Then, when forced to surrender, he said calmly, "My race is run when an independent government is established in Mexico." He was condemned to be shot for high treason. As he knelt beside the grave already yawning to receive his body, his faith turned from the saints and the Virgin, who were the objects of prayer and adoration for generations, and he cried out to Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and man, exclaiming with his last breath,
"Lord, if I have done well, thou knowest it; if ill, to thine infinite mercy I commend my soul!"
* ↑ Recollections of Mexico, by Waddy Thompson.
* ↑ Ward's Mexico, vol. i. p. 204.