Luis Gonzales ObregÓn, one of the best known of living Mexican writers, was born in Guanajuato, August 25, 1865. After studying under private teachers at his home, he went to Mexico, where he completed his preparatory studies in the Seminario and in the Colegio de San Ildefonso. Ill health interfered with his further education, but he had already developed a strong affection for literary, and particularly for historical, pursuits, which has motived his whole life work. He is a devoted student of the national history of his country and particularly delights in the investigation of obscure and curious incidents. So far as a feeble physical constitution has allowed, he has given himself up to such researches and to writing. In 1889 he published a useful little volume, entitled Novelistas Mexicanos en el Siglo XIX (Mexican Novelists in the Nineteenth Century). In an introductory section he briefly characterizes the Mexican novel; he then presents a complete list of the novelists of the century, to the time of his writing, with the names of their novels and a few discriminating words regarding their place in the national literature. Our author’s best known work is certainly MÉxico Viejo (Old Mexico), of which a “first series” was printed in 1891 and a “second series” in 1895. These have recently been republished, in a single volume, in Paris. The work consists of essays, each dealing with some special event in Mexican history, or sketching the life of some eminent person, or depicting some old custom or popular practice. Usually they contain information derived from unpublished manuscripts or rare and ancient works. Among the many other writings of our author, two biographical sketches demand particular mention, on account of the interest and prominence of the men who form the subjects. These are Don JosÉ JoaquÍn Fernandez de Lizardi famous as a writer, early in the last century, under the nom-de-plume of El Pensador Mexicano (the Mexican thinker), and Vida y Obras de Don JosÉ Fernando Ramirez (Life and Works of JosÉ Fernando Ramirez), the eminent literary man, historian, and statesman. The selections, which we here present, are from MÉxico Viejo. They do not as satisfactorily represent SeÑor ObregÓn’s style as longer passages would, as he is at his best when he narrates some ancient legend or describes some popular festival.

CHANGES IN MEXICO.

For some years past Mexico has been undergoing a slow, but evident, transformation. Everywhere the modern spirit modifies what is old. Customs, types, dress, monuments, and buildings are completely losing the long-fixed physiognomy of the colonial days.

The customs of our ancestors, half Spanish, half indigenous, are disappearing, replaced by a mixture of European practices, and now, in the same house, one prays in the old fashion, clothes one’s self after the French style, and eats after the Italian manner; one mounts his horse or enters his coach a la English, and conducts his business a la Yankee, in order to lose no time.

The fountains, those ancient fountains of the colonial epoch, have been replaced by hydrants and troughs at every corner, and the traditional type of the aguador (water-carrier) is eclipsed and forced to betake himself to those sections where the deep shadows of the electric lights fall, and where the precious fluid does not flow of itself, except when it pleases heaven to inundate the streets and alleys.

The china[10] has died, to live only in the beautiful romances of the popular Fidel; the chiera[11] yields her gay and picturesque puesto of refreshing waters, to the experienced seÑorita, who in high-heeled shoes and tightly-laced bodice serves us iced drink in vessels of fine crystal; the sereno,[12] with his shining, varnished hat, his ladder on his shoulder and his lantern in his right hand, withdraws shame-faced before the gendarme,[13] and thus with other types, whom the curious investigator now encounters only in the pictures of forgotten books.

Who now remembers the habits of the humble friars, who once traveled through the streets amid the respectful salutations of the faithful?

The coaches slung on straps, the gigs, the omnibuses—are all passing away, all are forgotten in the noisy whirl of English and American carriages and the confusion of the tranvias,[14] which rapidly slip over their steel rails.

Mexico changes, principally, in its material part. The old houses fall daily, faÇades change, the ancient wooden roofs give way to iron sheeting.

The streets are being lengthened, their names are expressed in cabalistic signs, and their historic and traditional associations are relegated to the verses of our poets.

The city, born amid the rubbish of the heroic Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the viceroyalty of New Spain, which had on every corner a chapel or temple—or, at least, a picture of a saint—pious evidences of the religion of the populace, now rejuvenates itself, appropriating those old buildings, consecrated to some special purpose, to some use far different, since the epoch of the Reform.

What was then a church is now a library; what was a convent, a barrack; what was a customs house, a departmental office; a corridor becomes a gallery; a patio, a warehouse; a refectory, a stable.

Before the special physiognomy of those times completely disappears, before the crowbar demolishes the last faÇades, before the scaffolding is raised against the bulging wall, before—finally—we hear the song or whistle of the indifferent stonecutter, as he mercilessly chisels the stone which will completely change the aspect of those things upon which our forebears gazed, we propose to conjure up the incidents, the times, and customs which have gone that future generations need not vainly excavate among forgotten ruins.

LUISA MARTINEZ.

The war of independence in Mexico had, also, its martyr heroines. The insurgents never executed a woman of the royalists; but that party stained its arms with the blood of the fair sex.

* * * *

There was another heroine of humble origin whom we ought not to omit, because she, also, was a martyr of the independence. She was named Luisa MartÍnez, wife of Steven GarcÍa MartÍnez (nicknamed ‘the reveler’), who kept a little shop in the pueblo of Erongaricuaro, about the years 1815 and 1816. In that pueblo all were chaquetas, that is to say, partisans of the royalists. She, however, was devoted to the other flag. She courageously aided the insurgent warriors, she gave them timely information, victuals, resources, and communicated to them messages from their superior officers, with whom she kept in constant touch. One day her messenger, bearing letters directed to the insurgent leader, TomÁs Pacheco, was surprised by Pedro Celestino Negrete. Luisa MartÍnez fled; but, pursued, captured, and tried, she was compelled to pay two thousand pesos and to promise to communicate no farther with the patriots, in order to regain her liberty. But she was not warned by her experience. Thrice again was she pursued, imprisoned, and fined, until, at last, she could not pay the sum, four thousand pesos, which Negrete demanded, and was shot by his order in the year 1817, in a corner of the cemetery of the parish church at Erongaricuaro.

Just before her execution, turning to Negrete, she said to him:

“Why such persistent persecution of me? I have the right to do what I can to help my country, because I am a Mexican. I do not believe that I have committed any crime, but simply have fulfilled my duty.”

Negrete remained inflexible, and Luisa MartÍnez fell, pierced by royalist bullets.

SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ.

If there is one literary glory among us, universally recognized and applauded, it is Sister Juana Inez de la Cruz, most virtuous nun, inspired poet, and pre-eminently admirable for her prodigious learning.

Sister Juana was a privileged being; her beauty captivated all hearts; her intellect astonished her contemporaries.

The life of that surprising woman is almost a fairy tale.

She was born near the slopes of those giants, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, in a country place called San Miguel Nepantla, in a humble inn known by the name of la celda, at eleven o’clock in the night of Thursday, November 12, 1651. At three years of age she had coaxed the teacher of her sister to teach her to read; she was not yet seven, when she had written verses and addresses to the Santisimo Sacramento, in order to win a book which had been offered as a prize; she came to Mexico, where she devoured the few books which her grandfather owned; in twenty lessons with her teacher, Martin de Olivas, she learned the Latin language; she begged her mother to dress her as a man, that she might study at the University; later, young and beautiful, as lady-in-waiting of DoÑa Leonora MarÍa de Carreto, then the vice-reina of New Spain, Juana de Asbaje charmed the gallants with her witcheries and astounded the learned with her knowledge.

One time, the Viceroy Antonio SebastiÁn de Toledo, Marquis of Mancera, desired to convince himself whether the learning of that lady was real or apparent. He collected at his palace all the notable men, reputed learned, in the city. What with theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, poets, humanitarians, ‘and not a few of those whom in sport we call tertulios’[15] (says Padre Calleja), forty were present. Juana de Asbaje appeared before that severe tribunal for examination. She astounded all by her responses. The viceroy himself, years later, admiringly recounted the impressions of that day to Padre Calleja, and added ‘As a royal galleon would defend itself against a few fishing-smacks which might assail it, so did Juana Inez easily disentangle herself from the questions, arguments, and objections which they all, each in his own way, put to her.’

But she did not long shine in worldly life; mysterious reasons—disappointments or impossible affections, or, more likely, the repeated entreaties of her confessor—decided her to enter a convent. She first chose that of San JosÉ, of the order of the bare-foot Carmelites, today Santa Teresa de Antigua; but the rigors of that order so enfeebled her that she abandoned the novitiate at the end of three months, by order of physicians. Soon, however, she entered another nunnery, that of San GerÓnimo, never again to depart. There she publicly made her vows, on the 24th of February, 1669. Pedro VelÁsquez de la Cadena, a wealthy man of distinguished family, endowed her and her confessor, Padre Antonio NuÑez de Mirando, bore the expenses of the occasion, and was so delighted with her profession that he himself lighted the evening candles and invited the leading representatives of the civil and ecclesiastical governments, the religious notables, and the nobility of Mexico to be present.

Time passed. Sister Juana, in the silence of her cell, without a sign of pride, with spirit ever thirsting for knowledge, studied incessantly, and with modesty received the praises, which from all parts were bestowed upon her; but, suddenly, a religious fervor, offspring of her faith and the counsels of her spiritual director (who urged her to abandon all dealings with the world) drove her to dispose of her books; she divided the sum realized among the needy; she left her lyre to gather dust, flung her pen far from her, and, grasping her disciplina, scourged herself; she weakened herself by fasts, opened her veins, signed new vows with her own blood, until, finally, a pestilence, which had invaded the convent, stretched her upon her couch, after she had exercised her Christian charity in ministering to her sisters. She never rose again. Science, in vain, eagerly attempted to help her. Vain were also the clamors for her health which the convent bells clanged forth. Tranquil as a saint, she received her last communion on earth and calmly closed her eyes to open them in heaven.

Sister Juana died aged forty-three years, five months, five days, and five hours, at four in the morning of April 17, 1695.

The funeral was imposing. The Canon Francisco Aguilar conducted the ceremony. The most notable men, the most distinguished ladies, and the government officials were in attendance. ‘The populace,’ says one biographer, ‘crowded about the doors of the church of San GerÓnimo. All mourned that loss for letters. Poets sung her praises and Carlos de SigÜenza y Gongora pronounced the eulogy.’

THE INQUISITION.

Thus was installed, November 4, 1571, the tribunal of the Inquisition in the very loyal and very noble City of Mexico.

From that day terror began among its good inhabitants! Woe to heretics, blasphemers, and Jews! Woe to sharpers, witches and sorcerers!

Fear swept over all, and that frightful secrecy with which the tribunal surrounded itself contributed greatly to increase the terror; that mystery with which it proceeded; that impressive pomp which it displayed in its public sentences—which in time were the favorite diversion of the mob and even of the middle and comfortable class.

No one lived at ease; unknown and secret denunciation threatened everyone; unfortunate was he who gave ground for the least suspicion and unhappy was he who merely failed to wear a rosary.

It is necessary to transport one’s self to those times, to read what history records of that dread tribunal, in order to picture, adequately, to one’s self the terror which must have overwhelmed those who appeared before the Holy Office in the old Cathedral of Mexico.

With time respect diminished, and that which before caused terror now aroused derision.

Some of the sentences were ridiculous—mere travesties. For instance, that celebrated in Santo Domingo on December 7, 1664, and in which conjugal infelicities between the viceroy, Mancera, and his lady secretly had their influence. Guido says: “There were ten condemned and among them one who, according to his sentence, was taken to the patio of the convent and stripped; two Indians smeared him with honey and covered him with feathers; there he was left exposed four hours.”

Such spectacles must have caused at first indignation, then contempt.

No less insulting than such punishments were the penitential garments of those condemned by the Holy Office, called san-benitos. These were a kind of scapulary of linen or other cloth, yellow or flesh-red in color. There were three kinds, known respectively by the names samarra, fuego revolto and san-benito—the latter being also a name common to all.

The samarra was worn by the relajados, or those handed over to the secular arm to be garroted or burned alive. It bore, painted upon it, dragons, devils, and flames, amid which the criminal was represented as burning.

The garment known as fuego revolto was that of those who had abjured, and for this reason the flames were painted upside down, as if to signify that the wearers had escaped from death in the fiery embrace.

Finally, the san-benito, which ordinary prisoners wore, was a flesh-colored sack bearing a Saint Andrew’s cross.

The kind of mitre which the condemned wore upon the head was called coroza, and was a cap of paper, more than a vara high, ending in a point like a fool’s-cap, with flames, snakes or demons painted on it, according to the category of the criminal.

The condemned carried also rosaries, and yellow or green candles; those of the “reconciled” were lighted, those of the impenitent extinguished; when they were “blasphemers” they were gagged.

In time these insulting insignia were looked upon with indifference as any other dress, and gave occasion, in Mexico, to a curious story. It chanced that once a “reconciled” was walking through the streets wearing his san-benito; some Indians seeing him noticed that the dress was new and one thought it was the Spanish devotional dress for Lent; returning to his house he made some excellent san-benitos, well painted; he brought them to the city and offered them for sale to Spaniards, saying, in the Indian language, Sic cohuas nequi a san-benito? which means, Do you wish to buy a san-benito? The thing so amused everyone that the story even went to Spain, and in Mexico there is still a saying, “ti que quis benito.”

The common people ended by losing all fear of such scarecrows, and defied the Inquisition in this way:

A merited jest for that which knew not how to respect worthy and valiant heroes, such as Hidalgo and Morelos.