Mexico by Michener James A

Author:Michener, James A. [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780449221877
Google: vCjiAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0449221873
Barnesnoble: 0449221873
Goodreads: 769885
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1992-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11.

SPANISH ANCESTORS: IN MEXICO

BECAUSE THESE WERE the good years when voyages from Seville to Veracruz were not threatened by pirates, English, Dutch or French, all lusting for the precious metals of the New World coming eastward from Mexico and the riches of Spain, traveling westward—the leisurely month-long sail across the Atlantic—was a delightful experience. Antonio conducted morning and evening prayers. He conversed with the captain, who had made two such voyages before. And he watched as the navigator marked off on his parchment chart each day’s slow progress. It was a gentle introduction to a new world and a new life.

Antonio was awed by his first sight of Mexico—a snowcapped volcano rising majestically out of the clouds that hung over the ocean. He later recorded his sensations at that moment: “I felt as if the finger of God were indicating my new home to me, and I entertained the disturbing premonition that once I had set foot on the mighty land hidden beneath that finger I might never be allowed to depart.”

He landed at the swampy port of Veracruz, and before the rowboat in which he was ferried ashore had gone ten feet he was covered with buzzing insects that punctured his skin in hundreds of places that began to itch. This was his introduction to mosquitoes. Ashore he found mud, filth, vegetation so dense it could be penetrated only with axes, and a few Spanish settlers covered with unfamiliar kinds of sores. A priest from Salamanca stumbled up, a shivering wreck of a man, weeping with joy at seeing a fellow clergyman.

“I’m going home … on that ship,” the sick priest mumbled, but before he could explain why, he fell to coughing and spitting blood, whereupon a soldier, thin as death, led him away.

What impressed Antonio more than the fellow priest, however, was his first sight of the Indians of Mexico, who now crowded in to inspect the new arrivals. They were for the most part naked, squat and blank-faced, displaying none of the superiority either of intellect or physical endowment that was supposed to mark the adversaries of Cortes, for they were jungle primitives, as he found out, whom the Spaniards had enlisted into forced-labor gangs. And it became obvious that false reports had been circulated throughout Spain in order to lure young men to a strange country with an unhealthy climate.

This suspicion was fortified wherever Antonio looked, for in late 1524 the port of Veracruz had already become what it was to be throughout the centuries of Spanish occupation: one of the ugliest and least hospitable anchorages along the Atlantic, the deplorable gateway to a noble land. For three miserable days Antonio languished there in the intense heat amid the sickening swarm of mosquitoes, catching not even one glimpse of the greater civilization he had come to Christianize. Without exception the Indians he saw were low brutes, while the Spaniards he talked with were disillusioned adventurers. From a rude room crawling with bugs he sent his first letter home to his brother, Timoteo, reporting his disgust with the new land.

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