MEXICO AND MEXICANS 



491 



founded by Pedro Jose Romero de Ter- 

 reros, the owner of the fabulously rich 

 mines at Real del Monte. Here money 

 may be borrowed on chattels at very 

 low rates of interest, and everything is 

 pledged, from a pair of cock's spurs to 

 an automobile and from a silver ring to 

 an iron safe. The smallest loan made is 

 12 cents and the largest $4,000. 



The clerk who makes the loan must 

 repay it out of his own pocket if the 

 pawn is not redeemed or cannot be sold 

 for a sum equivalent to the loan. Unre- 

 deemed pledges are marked with prices 

 at which they will be sold, and every five 

 months this price is marked down lower, 

 until it finds a buyer, or until the point 

 is reached where the clerk must pay the 

 loan and take the pawn himself. 



About 40,000 articles are pawned each 

 month. The interest on loans amounts 

 to about $20,000 a month. All profits go 

 to the extension of the business. 



From the American standpoint burial 

 customs in Mexico are very strange. A 

 grave may be rented in perpetuity or for 

 a term of years. If the latter option is 

 taken and the rent is not paid promptly 

 at each recurring period, the bones of the 

 occupant are ejected and thrown upon a 

 great bone pile. These bones from time 

 to time are cremated. 



At Mexico City's great city of the dead, 

 where 160,000 people have been buried, 

 there is a cave which contains hundreds 

 of tons of human ashes. The Mexican 

 law forbids services at the grave since 

 the separation of church and state under 

 Benito Juarez. 



Nothing is more heartrending than to 

 witness a funeral of a child among the 

 poor, and infant mortality is terribly high 

 among them. Too poor to buy a coffin, 

 they must content themselves with rent- 

 ing one. They place their own child in 

 it, the husband takes it upon his shoulder, 

 and together the family march to the 

 grave, where the child is removed from 

 the coffin and put into the ground, with 

 nothing to protect it from the cold earth 

 but its little cotton shroud. Those who 

 are better off use a street-car hearse and 

 buy coffins for their dead. 



THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 



The most conspicuous thing about the 

 male population of Mexico, so far as the 

 masses of half-breeds are concerned, are 

 their hats. These are bought even if their 

 purchase does force the buyer to go 

 hungry for months afterwards, for the 

 peon is not nearly as much a slave to his 

 haciendado as he is to his hat. 



At one time the brims of the Mexican 

 sombrero got so wide that the hats had 

 to be tipped sidewise to be gotten into 

 the cars, so the government resorted to 

 a tax of $1 for each 4 inches of brim 

 above a certain width. 



Grandiloquent promises and exagger- 

 ated courtesy is the characteristic of the 

 people. To be "muy simpatico," heartily 

 congenial, is the first law of their social 

 code. Everybody puts his house at your 

 disposal ; it is yours. But nobody means 

 even to entertain you as his guest unless 

 he says so in as many words. If you 

 admire a piano, a watch, a house, or a 

 hacienda, it is yours instantly, although 

 you never get it. 



The Mexican loves companionship. 

 When he meets an old friend he hugs 

 him to his heart, figuratively and literally, 

 and with many pats upon his back calls 

 him the friend of his youth. He bows 

 whenever he enters a public place, os- 

 tensibly to the person nearest the door, 

 but in reality to the whole crowd. 



Beggars flourish everywhere, and of all 

 the woe-begone, bedraggled, miserable- 

 looking creatures on the face of the earth, 

 commend me to the Mexican beggar. 

 "Un centavo, senor," rings in your ear 

 day and night. Begging and looking 

 wretched with them is an art whose mas- 

 tery they begin to strive for while still 

 babes in arms. They invoke the blessings 

 of the saints and the love of God upon 

 you when asking for alms and when re- 

 ceiving them, and the only way that yet 

 has been discovered to get rid of them is 

 to say "Pardoneme por Dios" — "Pardon 

 me in the name of God." That is even 

 a better way and a much more satisfac- 

 tory one than calling the police. 



Once I was passing through a little 

 town above San Luis Potosi. when I saw 

 a bunch of little half-breeds ranging from 



