Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/239

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA
223

Prescott has made sympathetic note of the effect of the tyranny of the conquering race upon the native races of Mexico. He says:

"Those familiar with the modern Mexican will find it difficult to conceive that the nation should ever have been capable of devising the enlightened polity which we have been considering. But they should remember that in the Mexicans of our day do they see only a conquered race as different from their ancestors as are the modern Egyptians from those who built, I will not say the tasteless pyramids, but the temples and palaces whose magnificent wrecks strew the borders of the Nile at Luxor and Karnak."[1]

The account of the industrial slavery of the aboriginal Mexicans contained in the historical quotation appearing in part first of this chapter goes very far toward explaining their racial degradation.

That the account quoted of the treatment of the aboriginal Mexican population by their Latin masters is no different from that which would be found in any honestly written history of Mexico, and that the conditions described have continued since the end of Spanish control to the present time, is shown by the following, taken from Mr. Bulnes's book:

"The planters have been accused of treating their Indian servants with haughtiness and disdain.

———

  1. "Conquest of Mexico"; Prescott, Book I, Chapter II.