Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/343

Rh var. elongata which produces the “henequen” fibre, or sisal hemp, of Yucatan, silk or tree-cotton (Ceiba casearia), sugar-cane, cotton (Gossypium), indigo and “canaigre” (Rumex hymenosepalus) whose root contains a large percentage of tannin.

Mexico has suffered much from the reckless destruction of her forests, not only for industrial purposes but through the careless burning of grassy areas. The denuded mountain slopes and plateaus of southern Mexico are due to the prehistoric inhabitants who cleared away the tropical forest for their Indian corn fields, and then left them to the erosive action of the tropical rains and subsequent occupation by coarse grasses. Fire was generally used in clearing these lands, with the result that their arboreal vegetation was ultimately killed and their fertility destroyed. In the valleys of some of these denuded slopes oak and pine are succeeding the tropical species where fires have given them a chance to get a good foothold.

Population.—According to the census of 1900 the population of Mexico numbered 13,607,259, of which less than one-fifth (19%) were classed as whites, 38% as Indians, and 43% as mixed bloods. There were 57,507 foreign residents, including a few Chinese and Filipinos. Since then the Japanese have acquired an industrial footing in Mexico. Under the constitution of 1824 all race distinctions are abolished, and these diverse ethnic elements are nominally free and equal. For many years, however, the Indians remained in subjection and took no part in the political activities of their native country. Since about 1866, spurred on by the consciousness that one of their own race, Benito Juárez, had risen to the highest positions in the, gift of the country, they have taken greater interest in public affairs and are already making their influence felt. In southern Mexico the Zapotecas furnish schoolmasters for the village schools. Peonage, however, is still prevalent on many of the larger estates, and serious cruelties are sometimes reported. The government itself must be held partly responsible, as for the transportation of the mountain-bred Yaquis to the low, tropical plains of Yucatan (see Herman Whitaker's The Planter, 1909), but the influence of three and a half centuries of slavery and peonage cannot be shaken off in a generation.

According to Humboldt, the census of 1810 gave a total population of 6,122,354, of which the whites had 18%, the mestizos 22% and the Indians 60%. The census of 1895 increased the whites to 22%, which was apparently an error, the mixed bloods to 47%, and reduced the Indians to 31%. It is probable that the returns have never been accurate in regard to the mixed bloods and Indians, but it is the general conclusion that the Indians have been decreasing in number, while the mixed bloods have been increasing. Neglect of their children, unsanitary habits and surroundings, tribal intermarriage and peonage are the principal causes of the decreasing Indian population. Recent observers, however, deny the assertion that the Indians are now decreasing in number except where local conditions are exceptionally unfavourable. The death rate among their children is estimated at an average of not less than 50%, which in families of five and six children, on an average, permits only a very small natural increase. The larger part of the population is to be found in the southern half of the republic, owing to the arid conditions prevailing in the north. The unhealthfulness of the coastal plains prevents their being thickly populated, although Vera Cruz and some other states return a large population. The most favourable regions are those of the tierras templadas, especially on the southern slopes of the great central plateau which were thickly populated in prehistoric times.

The dissimilar races that compose the population of Mexico have not been sufficiently fused to give a representative type, which, it may be assumed, will ultimately be that of the mestizos. Mexico was conquered by a small body of Spanish adventurers, whose success in despoiling the natives attracted thither a large number of their own people. The discovery of rich deposits of gold and silver, together with the coveted commercial products of the country, created an urgent demand for labourers and led to the enslavement of the natives. To protect these adventurers and to secure for itself the largest possible share in these new sources of wealth, the Spanish crown forbade the admission of foreigners into these colonies, and then harassed them with commercial and industrial restrictions, burdened them with taxes, strangled them with monopolies and even refused to permit the free emigration thither of Spaniards. Out of such adverse conditions has developed the present population of Mexico. It was not till after the middle of the 19th century that a long and desperate resistance to foreign intervention under the leadership of Benito Juarez infused new life into the masses and initiated the creation of a new nationality. Then came the long, firm rule of Porfirio Diaz, who first broke up the organizations of bandits that infested the country, and then sought to raise Mexico from the state of discredit and disorganization into which it had fallen. Suspicion and jealousy of the foreigner is disappearing, and habits of industry are displacing the indolence and lawlessness that were once universally prevalent.

The white race is of Spanish descent and has the characteristics common to other Spanish-American creoles. Their political record previous to the presidency of Porfirio Diaz was one of incessant revolutionary strife, in which the idle, unsettled half-breeds took no unwilling part. The Indian element in the population is made up of several distinct races—the Aztec or Mexican, Misteca-Zapoteca, Maya or Yucateco, Otomi or Othomi, and in smaller number the Totonac, Tarasco, Apache, Matlanzingo, Chontal, Mixe, Zoque, Guaicuro, Opata-Pima, Tapijulapa, Seri and Huavi. As the tendency among separated tribes of the same race is to develop dialects and as habitat and customs tend still further to differentiate them, it may be that some of these smaller families are branches of the others. In 1864 Don Manuel Orozco y Berra found no fewer than 51 distinct languages and 69 dialects among the Indian inhabitants of Mexico, to which he added 62 extinct idioms—making a total of 182 idioms, each representing a distinct tribe. Thirty-five of these languages, with 69 dialects, he succeeded in classifying under 11 linguistic families. A later investigator, Don Francisco Belmar (Lenguas indigenas de Mexico, Mexico, 1905), has been able to reduce these numerous idioms to a very few groups. None of them were written except through the use of ideographs, in 'the making of which the Aztecs used colours with much skill, while the Mayas used an abbreviated form, or symbols.

The Aztecs, who called themselves Mejica or Mexicans after they had established themselves on the high table-land of Mexico, belong to a very large family or group of tribes speaking a common idiom called Nahua or Nahoa. These Nahua-speaking tribes were called the Nahuatlaca, and compose a little more than one-fourth of the present Indian population. They inhabit the western Sierra Madre region from Sinaloa southward to Chiapas, the higher plateau states, which region was the centre of their empire when Cortés conquered them, and parts of Vera Cruz, Tabasco, Oaxaca, Morelos, Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosi. They were energetic and warlike and evidently had not reached the zenith of their power when Cortés came. They had been preceded on the same plateau by the Chichimecs, possibly of the same race, who were conquered by the Aztecs sometime in the 15th century after a supposed occupation of the territory about 400 years. The characteristic civilization of prehistoric Mexico, however, antedates both of these periods.

An Aboriginal race called the Toltecs is said to have occupied Vera Cruz and Tabasco and to have extended its empire westward on the plateau to and perhaps beyond the present capital. They were the builders of the pyramids of Cholula and Teotihuacan, near the city of Mexico, and of Papantla, Huatusco and Tuzapan, in Vera Cruz. One of their towns was Tollan (now Tula) 50 m. north of the national capital, and it is not improbable that the people of Cholula, Texcoco and Tlaxcala at the time of the Spanish invasion were occupying the sites of older Toltec towns. There has been much discussion in regard to the origin of the Toltecs, some assuming that they were a distinct race, and others that they belonged to the Nahuatlaca. Another and perhaps a better supposition is that they belonged to the Maya group, and represented a much earlier civilization than that of the builders of Palenque, Quirigua and Copan. Confirmatory