133 Conditions of Mexico (1823)
Of the people I can give no very satisfactory account. They are patterns of politeness, full of compliments, and profess that their houses are at your service but seldom ask you in. Of the ladies strangers see but little. They seldom appear in the streets and there they are in the same habits as at church; but in their houses they are gay, sprightly, and affable. Both men and women in general are very ill-informed with respect to the state of Europe. They believe the continent to be under the dominion of Spain; that England, France, Italy, Holland, Germany, etc. are only so many paltry states or provinces to which the king of Spain appoints governors who superintend the manufactories, etc. for the benefit of that country. I found it dangerous to contradict this flatly. One lady asked me where a muslin dress had been made? ”In England.” “And how came it here?” “Probably through Spain,” I replied. “Well then, what is England but the workshop of Spain?” Many think that the riches of Spain enable the others and as they call them the poorer parts of Europe, to live.
The account of the manufactories of New Spain will occupy but a small space. The policy always pursued by the mother-country in keeping the colonies dependent on her as much as possible induced her to frame strong laws for this purpose. Silkworms were not allowed to be reared nor flax to be cultivated, and the vine and olive were prohibited under severe penalties. A few coarse woolens and cottons amounting in the whole country to scarcely a million and a half sterling were it appears formerly made. But during the revolution even these have diminished. The wretched system in which public manufactories are conducted is of itself sufficient to disgust even the most degraded and lowest of the human species. Instead of encouraging the love of labor and industry as the means of obtaining comfort, wealth, and enjoyment, it is here accompanied by slavery, poverty, and misery.
Every manufactory that requires many hands is strictly a prison from which the wretched inmates cannot remove and are treated with the utmost rigor. Many of them are really confined for a number of years for crimes against the laws and others, by borrowing a sum of money from the owners, pledge their persons and their labors till they redeem it, which it often happens is never done. The proprietor instead of paying in money supplies them with spirits, tobacco, etc. and by these means they increase rather than liquidate the original debt. They have mass said for the wretched inmates on the premises. But high walls, double doors, barred windows, and severe corporal punishments inflicted in these places of forced industry make them as bad as the worst-conducted gaol [jail] in Europe.
Cast iron, so generally useful and necessary to us, is almost unknown in New Spain; its use for culinary purposes being supplied by the excellence of their common earthenware. Of its powers when connected with steam, they have received such exaggerated accounts that they in general disbelieve the whole. One person asked if it was true that by means of a boiling teakettle, a thousand persons could be moved in safety one hundred miles a day.
The Agriculturists of New Spain are considerably behind those of Europe. The fineness of the soil and climate renders less labor and management necessary than with us and the laying of manure on the land seems to be little practiced. Irrigation has been used from the earliest period. A simple plough of wood pointed with iron is drawn by two oxen, which are fastened to it by the horns. The coa or spade is a simple triangular instrument of wood armed with iron and is used with great dexterity by the Indians.
The wheat is the finest I have ever seen. The fields are very extensive and the grain is trodden out by mules, as it was formerly in Europe and as it is still in Egypt by oxen. The Indian com or maize is very generally cultivated and forms the supply of bread for the great mass of the people. Sugar is made by the Indians in most parts of Mexico, though formerly imported from Spain. It is sold in small cakes at a very reasonable rate. Coffee is grown, though not very generally. Cotton of a very fine quality is abundantly produced in most of the warm parts but is manufactured to great disadvantage by the natives. The machine for extracting the seed is not known and this troublesome process is performed by hand. The Indians also expose for sale great quantities of coarse calico of their own making. Excellent tobacco is produced in many parts of Mexico and it was used in the form of cigars in such quantities as to yield in the time of the Spaniards a net revenue of £833,400.
I found that several respectable English mercantile houses had been established and that others were preparing. Strong hopes were entertained that the heavy import duties would shortly be lessened and the facilities for transporting goods into the interior be increased. A plan for the establishing of wagons on the great road to the capital had been partially acted on by some gentlemen from the United States and promised to be successful. Without it, the conveyance of the heavy cast iron machinery of the steam-engines with the necessary iron tools, etc. for the mines now about to be opened will be a labor of great difficulty.
The duties and other expenses on the landing of goods at Vera Cruz are enormously high and tend much to discourage the mercantile speculator. Eight and a half per cent ad valorem is paid on all cargoes from Europe at the Spanish castle of St. Juan de Ulúa, and twenty-seven and a half to the town. This too is on their own arbitrary valuation and is often three times the original cost. One dollar each package is charged for the hospital and four and a half dollars per ton on the ship, according to her register. Three rials per ton for water, eight dollars for the captain of the port, and thirty- two dollars each trip for the use of large boats for landing the cargo. To these may be added the expense of porterage to the custom-house and afterwards to the stores of the merchants. Even this is expensive, as labor of all kinds is here excessively high-priced and the insolence of the negro porters is intolerable. The above are the principal charges at the port, to which the removal of goods to Mexico [City] adds much, as they pay an additional duty of about twelve per cent on their arrival and the carriage of every horse or mule-load, from two to three hundred weight, is from eighteen to twenty- two dollars. The goods sold in Mexico pay again another duty on being removed to the provinces but if they are intended when landed to be removed direct to the cities beyond Mexico, an arrangement can be made at the port custom-house which will save some of the expenses.
The contraband trade carried on by the Castle is a source of considerable loss and trouble to the fair trader as it is notorious that by intriguing with its officers of the customs, goods to a vast amount may be clandestinely conveyed into the country. It is principally the Spanish merchants who are thus enabled to avoid the heavy duties and charges demanded by the Mexican government and who by these means are competent to undersell the fair trader in the article of his own manufacture. This state of things cannot be of long continuance. The state of trade has already undergone as great a change as the politics of Mexico and the further alterations of fashions will introduce a more extensive demand for our manufactures.
The prosperity of Mexico must always depend on the cultivation of her immense mineral wealth. The silver mines have already produced more riches than those of any other portion of the globe and more rapid fortunes have been made by individuals than are possessed by any in Europe. Mining operations it is believed have never been well conducted here, notwithstanding which, more than one thousand six hundred millions sterling have been issued from the treasury.
Nothing is now wanting in my opinion to re-establish the prosperity of this fine country but an acknowledgment of its independence by Great Britain. That it is forever severed from the mother-country I have not the smallest doubt. But in its present state it may yet linger, from the debility to which it is reduced by the revolution, for years unless cherished by our assistance, with which it would shortly rise and be again in opulence and productiveness.
Source: William Bullock, Six Months’ Residence and Travels in Mexico (1824), 52-498.
