LETTER XXVIII.
MEXICAN CHARACTER
I have adverted already in previous letters to the private character and
domestic customs of the Mexicans, and confess, that I came to the country
with opinions anything but favorable to the morals, tastes, or habits
of the people. It was alleged, that they entertained a positive antipathy
to foreigners, and that the exclusive system of Spain, under which they
were educated, had excited in them a distaste for innovation; an insouciant
contentment with the "statu quo;" and, in fact, had created in our New
World a sort of China in miniature.
I think it exceedingly reasonable, that the Mexicans should be shy of foreigners. They have been educated in the strict habits of the Catholic creed; they know no language but their own; the customs of their country are different from others; the strangers who visit them are engaged in the eager contests of commercial strife; and, besides being of different religion and language, they are chiefly from those northern nations, whose tastes and feelings have nothing kindred with the impulsive dispositions of the ardent south. In addition to the selfish spirit of gain that pervades the intercourse of these visitors, and gives them no character of permanency or sympathy with the country, they have been accustomed to look down on the Mexicans with contempt for their obsolete habits, without reflecting, that they were not justly censurable for traditional usages which they had no opportunity of improving by comparison with the progress of civilization among other nations.
Yet, treating these people with the frankness of a person accustomed to find himself at home wherever he goes, avoiding the egotism of national prejudices, and meeting them in a spirit of benevolence; I have found them kind, gentle, hospitable, intelligent, benevolent, and brave. Among their better classes, no people see more clearly than they do the vices of an ill-regulated society and the misery of their political condition; but, when rebuked in the presumptuous and austere spirit of arrogant strangers, they repel the rudeness by distance and reserve. The consequence is, that these disturbers of social decency are seldom the chosen friends or inmates of their dwellings. The Mexicans are a proud
