# Mexico of the Mexicans/Chapter X

CHAPTER X
RANCHING MEXICO
Until the middle of last century, agriculture in Mexico was in a very backward state indeed, and in many of the more out-of-the-way neighbourhoods still remains as it was at the time of the Conquest—indeed as it was long before the Conquest. In ancient Mexico, agriculture was greatly venerated. Most of the deities connected with it were feminine, and shared in those terrible and sanguinary festivals which the gods of war and similar divinities seemed to find necessary to their well-being. This connection of agriculture with religion made it almost a sacred thing, but since the time of Cortes the tilling of the soil has taken second place to mining. Other causes, too, exist to account for its backwardness. The Mexican peon adheres lovingly to his primitive methods; and the general character of the country, which is mountainous and rugged for the most part, is by no means favourable to agricultural pursuits. Internal communication, too, hampered the tiller of the soil in his efforts to introduce his produce to suitable markets; and, lastly, the aridity of many Mexican neighbourhoods has rendered their cultivation impossible until suitable irrigation is introduced.
But all these difficulties the Department of Fomento, for the encouragement of internal enterprises, has attacked with excellent results: for not only has it undertaken the technical education of the peon, but it has practically assisted him by distributing among his class the necessities of modern agricultural endeavour. A great deal of Mexican agricultural land, however, is occupied by large holdings, and especially is this the case in the South, in Oaxaca and Soconusco, where coffee-growing is the principal industry. The other staples of agriculture in Mexico are tobacco, sugar, cotton, and ​maize; and in the South and in Yucatan, hennequen and other fibre-producing plants.
Mexico produces a very superior grade of coffee. Besides those already mentioned, the chief coffee-growing districts are in Vera Cruz, Morelos, and San Luis Potosi. Colima, too, is famous for its coffee, the flavour of which is exceptionally fine. It has been stated more than once by responsible authorities that a clear profit of 75 per cent, can be made on coffee-growing in Mexico. One of the great difficulties that the coffee-grower has to contend with is the shortness of labour, for, as elsewhere, the Mexican peon prefers to seek his fortune in the towns and is rapidly forsaking the country, his place being gradually taken by Japanese and Chinese coolies. As some indication of the large export coffee trade that Mexico does, it may serve to mention that she sends nearly 40,000,000 Ib. of coffee to the United States every year.
The cocoa plant is indigenous to Mexico, and is nowadays being exploited in Europe in the form of Mexican chocolate to compete with the British and Swiss makes. The plant was well known to the ancient Mexicans, who, by the way, did not call it, or rather the beverage made from it, "chocolatl," as Prescott and other writers have affirmed. In ancient times, the natives mixed it with maize-flour and honey, and drank it cold. The State of Tabasco is the principal cocoa-growing centre.
DRYING COFFEE
​Yucatan, perhaps the most polished traders in the world, reside for the most part at Merida, the capital of the province, and leave the conduct of their estates to major-domos and overseers; and if accounts reach them regarding cruelties perpetrated by these brutes upon the helpless Indians who labour on their estates, they certainly do not take much notice of them. Why, indeed, should a mere Indian come between the wind and their nobility? They seem to forget that the men of the race they now enslave were once lords of the soil themselves and the most cultivated people on the American continent, having a civilisation beside which the shabby-gentility of upstart Merida is a very tinsel affair indeed. I never encounter the phrase "Viva Mexico!" but I mutter to myself "Viva los Indios!" But to return to the facts and figures of the hennequen trade, nearly £30,000,000 worth of hennequen has been exported since 1887, and the annual amount netted from its shipment abroad averages between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000 a year. Yucatan is, of course, a poor country, waterless and almost desert in places, and it is pleaded that hennequen is its only industry. Not so, for there is a much more important traffic—the traffic in bodies and souls. Sufficient has been said elsewhere regarding the Mexican's love of fruit-cultivation, but it may be as well to state that within recent years several large companies have been promoted with the object of growing fruit on a large scale within the Republic. Thus bananas, oranges, grapes, nuts, figs, and pineapples are extensively grown. But Mexican fruit, though decidedly luscious in appearance, has but little or no flavour in some districts. In others, however, it is all that can be desired, and luckily the desirable variety is much more plentiful.
After the example of the late rubber boom, writers on the subject must observe a proper economy of Rubber. language in respect to this variable vegetable, if such it can be called with propriety; and I am not going to say anything here which will make the ​reader hurry to his broker. If Mexican rubber is grown under proper supervision, it is as good as any other variety; but how many Mexican rubber companies are paying dividends? The ridiculous boom some years ago definitely injured the cause of rubber in Mexico, as it did elsewhere. Let the prospective investor bear in mind that the price of land suitable for the growing of rubber is invariably high, and when he reads ninety-nine out of a hundred prospectuses his common sense will do the rest; also let him beware of rubber companies whose headquarters are in the United States. By this, I do not for a moment intend to suggest that American company promoters are any more dishonourable than other company promoters, but I do maintain that they have greater chances of being dishonourable in Mexican affairs than those of any other country. Americans are fond of enlarging upon the responsibility they feel with regard to the Republics of Latin- America, and the best manner in which they can impress the world that this feeling of responsibility is genuine is by playing the game in commerce as well as in diplomacy.
The principal cattle-raising districts are in the North, which has been the scene of the greatest revolutionary disturbances. Within the last twenty years, settlement by British and American stock-raisers Cattle Raising. has been frequent, and that the former make by far the best managers is shown by their brilliant record in the Argentine, which country they have practically "made." Mexican cattle-raising under Mexican native auspices is a shabby affair enough, resulting in poor beasts of light weight and unsatisfactory strain generally. There is, perhaps, no industry to which the Northern provinces are more naturally suited than that of cattle-raising. Yet neglect and, perhaps, lack of native common sense have greatly retarded progress. The native products for the fattening of cattle are, for example, nearly all exported, and the animals have often to be content with inferior grass instead of the ​cotton-seed meal which finds its way to the United States and Europe. It is as if Great Britain were to export all her coal and retain none for home consumption. Cotton-seed meal commands a price. "Well," argues the Mexican, "what more natural than to dispose of it?" Of course, logic of this description is unanswerable. If the haciendado cannot see that this cotton-seed may be transmuted into good sound beef which he can sell at, let us say, ten times the price, that is his affair.
The Federal Government has certainly little to reproach itself with, for in the hope of improving the breed it has imported the finest cattle procurable from England and the United States; and here it may be put on record that the Mexican farmer owes a great deal more, perhaps, to his Government than the farmer of any other country in the world. Bad as the Diaz régime was in many ways, this charge cannot be laid to its door that it was neglectful of the interests of the haciendado. If he is not now on the average a flourishing individual, it is decidedly no one's fault but his own. In the course of years it is almost certain that he will find himself replaced by the American cattle-raiser, and he will have himself to blame. Strangely enough, however, he has not neglected sheep and goats in the same way as he has neglected the larger cattle. The quality of these, however, is by no means of the first class. Disease is fearfully rife among them; but when one thinks of the ridiculous price of upkeep per head (say, 6d. per annum), something can be allowed for wastage. Such wastage could, in any case be checked by a little more vigilant supervision, which is too often lacking; and many animals are destroyed which could easily be saved by the introduction of proper conservative and sanitary methods. The wool yielded by native breeds is, for the most part, poor and scanty, but the introduction of merino rams has to some extent improved the native stock.
A smart Yankee once asked a Mexican haciendado, "How ​is a Mexican farm run?" and before the rather astonished son of the soil could reply to the question, another Gringo replied: "Sir, Mexican farms ain't run; they are walked." There is, indeed, no running about the business, or, if there is any, they run themselves. In places, one encounters the queerest mixture of the modern and the prehistoric. On one hand can be seen the most up-to-date American agricultural machinery and, on the other, grain winnowed by being tossed into the air or trodden under foot by mules. The man who goes through Mexico hoping to sell agricultural machinery to the natives may, indeed, dispose of some. Watches have been worn by the King of the Cannibal Islands, but as personal ornaments, not as chronometers, and it is precisely as toys that most Mexican farmers buy these things. Should a reaping machine get out of order, it is a hundred to one that it will remain so, and that it will be cast on one side and neglected, perhaps left standing in the middle of a field. Such a sight is sufficient to make the Anglo-Saxon weep, if he ever does weep; but it will draw not the slightest comment from the average Mexican, who would probably observe that the red paint with which it was covered lent a bright note to the rather sombre landscape of the tierras templadas.
PASTORAL SCENE NEAR CHAPULTEPEC
​his polite and graceful manner of a ride in one of these. Several times did he warn the driver against recklessness, until at last, becoming alarmed, he lapsed from his usual courteous speech and spoke to him with some warmth. The effect was electric, for the driver, in the belief that he had been chidden for not going fast enough, whipped up his mules and deposited the eminent scientist in the nastiest possible part of a ditch.
The true Mexican haciendado is, generally speaking, a most hospitable fellow, cheerful, if somewhat reserved, but manly and pleasant-mannered. In the old days, when feudal customs ruled agricultural Mexico, he was inclined to be somewhat of a despot, and had almost powers of pit and gallows over the peons in his service, who belonged to the land quite as much as did the serf in England in Anglo-Saxon times, or the moujik in Holy Russia. But too often the Mexican farm or estate suffers from the evils of absenteeism, as does many an estate in Ireland or Scotland, aye, in England itself, for that matter. Like all Latin-Americans, the wealthy Mexican regards Paris as his paradise; and you have probably a much better chance of meeting him there than on his native heath, just as you have a better opportunity of finding the Scottish nobleman, who prides himself on his Caledonian descent, in London. Strange that the land-owner cannot recognise the high privilege of territorial possession! Better, surely, to be "King in Kippen" than to be one of a thousand in any metropolis.
The average Mexican hacienda has, usually, its purely agricultural and its cattle-raising sides, the latter of which is generally the more important. There is usually a clever sub-division of the beasts according to different colours, a practice which greatly facilitates identification. This, of course, applies to large haciendas only. The staff of a Mexican ranch bears a close resemblance to that of a travelling circus, the cowboys being arrayed in brightly-coloured shirts and leathern trousers, plentifully decorated ​with buttons. There may be anything from 1,000 to 10,000 beasts on such a run, and the staff varies in numbers accordingly. There are certainly no more expert horsemen in the world, and they have to work fairly hard for wonderfully small wages, for, besides food, they are lucky if they get 4s. a week. The major-domo, or head of the staff, usually earns as much again, and the hours worked at for these wages are generally from sunrise to sunset. It is inspiring to think that the new Provisional Government of Mexico is honestly doing its best to improve the conditions of life of these men, for it was undoubtedly the system of peonage—call it slavery, if you like—which caused the brooding sense of wrong which precipitated the Revolution. It is no excuse to argue that labour is cheap in Mexico because of the poverty of the land. The land is not poor, neither are the haciendados. One cannot support life in Paris on an impoverished estate.