P E R EG R I N A

book sixteen

Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series

Books about women and families, and their changing role in society
 Alma M. Reed

Edited and with an introduction by Michael K. Schuessler

Foreword by Elena Poniatowska

university of texas press austin

Peregrina
love and
death in
mexico
Copyright © 2007 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2007

The Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series

is supported by Allison, Doug, Taylor, and Andy Bacon;
Margaret, Lawrence, Will, John, and Annie Temple;
Larry Temple; the Temple-Inland Foundation; and the
National Endowment for the Humanities.

Requests for permission to reproduce material from

this work should be sent to:
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requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reed, Alma M.
Peregrina : love and death in Mexico / Alma M. Reed ;
edited and with an introduction by Michael K. Schuessler ;
foreword by Elena Poniatowska. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-292-70239-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-292-70239-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Reed, Alma M. 2. Carrillo Puerto, Felipe, d. 1924.
3. Carrillo Puerto, Felipe, d. 1924—Relations with women.
4. Yucatán (Mexico : State)—History—20th century.
5. Journalists—Mexico. I. Schuessler, Michael Karl. II. Title.
f1376.r42 2007
972'.65082—dc22
2006023444
To Alma M. Reed, ‘‘La Peregrina,’’ and to all the extraordinary women of the
United States whose contribution to the life and culture of postrevolutionary
Mexico has been overlooked and undervalued for more than seventy-five years.

—Michael K. Schuessler
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 contents

foreword, by Elena Poniatowska ix

acknowledgments xiii
introduction, by Michael K. Schuessler 1
selected bibliography 55

Peregrina, by Alma M. Reed

author’s foreword 59
outline of book 63

1. Yucatán Assignment 71
2. Southward 79
3. Antillean Interlude 87
4. Caribbean Reflections 97
5. The Road to Kanasín 107
6. Ultima Thule 123
7. Uxmal: ‘‘The Thrice Rebuilt’’ 131
8. Land and Liberty 147
9. Motul 165
10. Conflicts and Amenities 183
11. City of the Learned Itzáes 193
12. Ritmos del Mayab 207
13. Well of Sacrifice 215
14. The Arena 221
15. Flowers of Stone 235
viii Contents

16. Civil Liberties 241

17. Social Justice 249
18. Homeward Journey 261
19. Mexican Crusade in Manhattan 267
20. Platonic Love 277
21. Foreboding Moments 285
22. Martyrdom and Infamy 301
23. Never Forgotten 309

notes 315
index 331
 foreword

i remember alma reed well: during the 1950’s and 1960’s we would
often share the elevator going up to the editorial offices of The News, a U.S. daily
associated with the Mexico City newspaper Novedades. She used to sing to her-
self during the ride up from the first to the third floor, keeping her eyes closed,
and only opening them when it was time for both of us to get off the elevator.
She wore old-fashioned dresses, always covered with lace and frills, and when she
wore black, she looked quite lovely, because her face was quite pale and the dark
apparel made her seem still more distinguished. Some mornings I would happen
to ride up standing in between Alma and Yucatecan poet Rosario Sansores. They
seemed to be engaged in a duel of hats, and theirs were always covered with veils,
flowers of all sorts, and even stuffed birds. I regret that I never spoke to Alma,
because there was always a smile fluttering on her lips, but as she was always
singing quietly to herself, I didn’t dare interrupt. Now that I know how impor-
tant Alma Reed is, I am astonished that Novedades did not pay more attention to
her. I never heard any comments regarding her articles, nor did anyone mention
that she was a good journalist. Fernando Benítez, the director of the supplement
México en la Cultura, never asked anyone to write an article about her. In a way,
they treated her in the same disdainful way they did Rosario Sansores, who was
considered gaudy and passé. Rosario had come from Cuba as the chronicler of
Sociales 1 for Mexico. No one mentioned her poem ‘‘Sombras,’’ which was made
into an emblematic song for the Yucatecan trova. Rosario Castellanos once wrote
that she felt very grateful to her son, Gabriel, because he was the only one who
never confused her with Alma Reed. Like Sansores, Alma Reed did not belong
to the Mexican intellectual establishment; the only women who had access to
such elite groups were Frida Kahlo, Elena Garro, and, naturally, Sor Juana Inés
de la Cruz.
If I ever knew that Alma Reed had written José Clemente Orozco’s first biogra-
phy and supported him during times of hardship in New York, I forgot. If some-
one ever mentioned to me that Alma had written such important books as The
x Elena Poniatowska

Ancient Past of Mexico or The Mexican Muralists, I don’t recall. Now, through the
publication of her autobiography with a preliminary study written by Michael
Schuessler, I learn that for several years I used to ride the elevator up and down
with a fabulous personage.
At the Windsor School, we were always taught to sing two songs: ‘‘Caminante
del Mayab,’’ by Guty Cárdenas, and ‘‘La Peregrina,’’ written by the Yucatecan poet
Luis Rosado Vega and set to music by Ricardo Palmerín. Over the years, when
I heard the line ‘‘Peregrina of clear and divine eyes,’’ I never associated it with
Alma Reed. Indeed Alma was a foreign woman, but I used to attribute the song
to all the female tourists who came to Mexico. Now I see that the only person
truly worthy of the ballad was Alma Reed, the great love of the Yucatán governor
Felipe Carrillo Puerto, known as the ‘‘red dragon’’ of southeast Mexico.
As a columnist writing under the pseudonym ‘‘Mrs. Goodfellow,’’ Alma Reed
defended the outcasts of San Francisco in her weekly column that appeared in
the San Francisco Call, a left-wing newspaper, during the first two decades of
the twentieth century. She was the defender of migrant workers—Mexico’s bra-
ceros—as well as the promoter of the art of Orozco, Edward Weston, and Ansel
Adams. Alma Reed fully transcends the blond gringuita who falls in love with a
revolutionary from the Mayab.
Hired in 1921 by the New York Times, Reed defended and uncovered Mexico’s
archaeological heritage through a series of articles in the newspaper’s Sunday
Magazine. She chronicled the excavations of Sylvanus G. Morley in Yucatán, and
when Sir Edward Thompson confided to her that he had secretly sent the ar-
chaeological treasures retrieved from the sacred cenote of Chichén Itzá to the
Peabody Museum via diplomatic pouch, Reed did not hesitate for an instant in
making it known. Thanks to her and her journalistic and political campaigns,
Mexico was able to recover at least half its treasures. Also thanks to her and to
her contacts with Mexico’s revolutionary government, Reed was able to obtain
the necessary preliminary information so that Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of the
powerful Times, could write an editorial in favor of President Álvaro Obregón,
thus heralding official recognition by the United States government.
Orozco owes Alma Reed not only his first biography but also the sale of his
Mexico in Revolution series in the United States and, later, commissions to paint
murals in the New School for Social Research, Claremont College, and Dart-
mouth College. Through her friendship with Eva Palmer, wife of Greek poet
Angelo Sikelianos, and the Delphic Society that they founded together in New
York in 1928, Reed was able to give Orozco the exposure that he would have
never obtained otherwise, as well as the opportunity to meet personalities such
as Kahlil Gibran and Thomas Hart Benton. Later, Reed founded her Delphic
Studios Gallery on East Fifty-seventh Street—then and now the most prominent
foreword xi

address for art galleries—with the sole purpose of exhibiting Orozco’s work and,
later, that of other Mexican artists such as Emilio Amero, Miguel Covarrubias,
Roberto Montenegro, and Adolfo Best-Maugard.
Reed was part of a group of bold North American women who arrived in
Mexico seeking to learn about the revolution and there devoted themselves to
the study and promotion of Mexican culture. Among them are Frances Toor;
Alice-Leone Moats; Anita Brenner, who was born in Aguascalientes, lived in
the United States, and exposed her splendid backside to Edward Weston; Emily
Edwards, who commissioned Manuel Álvarez Bravo to take photographs of
Mexican murals; Tina Modotti; Grace and Marion Greenwood, who painted
murals in the Abelardo Rodríguez Market alongside Fermín Revueltas and Pablo
O’Higgins. Later arrivals were Mariana Yampolsky; Margaret Shedd, who gave
impetus to the Centro Mexicano de Escritores; Irene Nicholson, translator of
Juan Rulfo’s work; Ione Robinson, who substituted Modotti in Edward Weston’s
amorous relations; and Katherine Anne Porter, whom Reed never befriended,
because Porter had spoken disparagingly of her and both had been girlfriends
of Carrillo Puerto.
Michael Schuessler has already published La undécima musa: Guadalupe Amor
(The Eleventh Muse: Guadalupe Amor, 1995) and El universo de Sor Juana (Sor
Juana’s Universe, 1995), as well as Elenísima: Ingenio y figura de Elena Poniatow-
ska (Elenísima: Facts and Fictions of Elena Poniatowska, 2003). It was only to be
expected that Michael would be interested in Alma Reed, especially after he dis-
covered her autobiography along with Felipe’s love letters in a semi-abandoned
apartment in Mexico City. I recall that when Michael first told me he had found
the autobiography of ‘‘La Peregrina,’’ I thought that perhaps it might be apoc-
ryphal, as Reed had been dead for forty years and nobody seemed to remember
her. Nevertheless, one day he stopped by my house on his way home from the
gym with the first chapters in his backpack. These documents were a fascinating
read because they portrayed the Mexican Revolution in Yucatán (which is very
unusual) and described the impressions of a young U.S. journalist who would
soon fall in love with a fascinating man who was already a part of the history of
Mexico, Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
Since the era of the marquise Fanny Calderón de la Barca, travel writing has
become enthroned in Mexico, but no work to date has been as instructive as Alma
Reed’s, which describes in detail her adventures in Yucatán as well as her fasci-
nation with Carrillo Puerto’s socialist utopias; she considered him her true soul
mate, referred to him as a ‘‘Greek god,’’ and was given a Mayan equivalent of her
name by him.
Reed’s friend Ethel Turner—the widow of John Kenneth Turner, who wrote
Barbarous Mexico—helped Reed revise her book and recommended that in the
xii Elena Poniatowska

last two chapters she include details such as the reactions of the people of Yucatán
to the assassination of Carrillo Puerto, as well as the honor guard ceremony held
each year at the place of his death. Reed was unable to follow her friend’s advice
because she fell ill. Thinking it was just ‘‘Montezuma’s revenge,’’ she checked into
the British hospital in Mexico City. There the doctors discovered she had intesti-
nal cancer, something she would never learn but which caused her death only a
few days later, on November 20, 1966, the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.
Therefore she was unable to write the last lines of her book, which, as Schuessler
explains, was also to become the script for a movie made in the United States
about the meaning of Yucatán in her amorous and ideological existence.
In his preliminary study, Schuessler, an extraordinary scholar, uncovered
many intimate details about Alma Reed and tirelessly searched archives—often
alongside his friend and mentor Miguel Capistrán—to document the life and
work of this extraordinary woman. He also interviewed the recently deceased
Swedish painter Rosa Lie Johansson and Joe Nash, the veteran U.S. journalist who
arrived to Mexico on his bicycle over half a century ago and would become a
close friend of Reed’s. However, it was thanks to Richard Posner, perhaps Reed’s
best friend and confidant during the last ten years of her life, that Schuessler was
able to rescue this valuable text, for after La Peregrina’s death Posner hid her
memoir in the back of a closet, behind stacks of musty sheets and pillows.
Michael Schuessler is a passionate scholar of Mexico, and in this sense he has
followed in the footsteps of Egon Erwin Kisch, Carleton Beals, Malcolm Lowry,
the brothers Gutierre and Carletto Tibón, and many others who came to Mexico
for a short visit but stayed on for many more years than they had ever imagined.
We of Mexico are indebted to people like them for their loving and critical vision
of our country. They deserve high honors, for, in the words of José Martí, honrar
honra—it is honorable to honor.

—Elena Poniatowska
 acknowledgments

a fulbright--garcía robles fellowship and a mini-grant from

Barnard College, Columbia University, allowed me to spend the 2003–2004 aca-
demic year in Mexico City, where I completed the research for my introductory
study as well as the notes to Reed’s text. The following individuals made im-
portant contributions to my research and to the preparation of the manuscript:
Ramón Arzápalo, Patricia Sawtelle Berman, Donna Brodie, Jim Budd, Mrs. Elsy
Bush Romero, Ligia y Virginia del Socorro Cámara, Miguel Capistrán, Elizabeth
Castelli, Helen Delpar, Adelina Erosa, Tita Escudero, Norma Franchi, Elisabeth
Garrett, Amparo Gómez, Kim Haney, Luis Irabién, Rosa Lie Johansson (†), John
Maxim, Sandra E. Miller, Joe Nash, Juan Bruce Novoa, Steve and Mimí Novom,
Lois Parkinson Zamora, Lisette Parodi, Elena Poniatowska, Ruperto Poot Cobá,
Sara and Manuel Poot Herrera, Richard Posner, Tynisha Rue, Salvador Rueda
Smithers, Gail Schuessler, Herbert Sloan, Rhona Statland de López, Philip Stein
(Estaño), Luis Terán, Pat Vano, Alejandro Varderi, Ileana Villarreal, Elizabeth
Wade, Christopher L. Winks, and Nancy Worman.
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P E R EG R I N A
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 introduction

Life has so many chapters . . .

alma marie sullivan reed (1889--1966)

the first time i heard of alma reed was in 1992, in the lobby of
the Gran Hotel in Mérida, capital of the state of Yucatán. I had arrived after a
twenty-six-hour bus ride from Mexico City, which included frequent stops in
towns and villages along the way. Upon my arrival, I was immediately captivated
by the once-imposing surroundings of the hotel, which, as I would soon dis-
cover, was a local landmark in the cultural and political history of the city. As the
receptionist, Don Eusebio, handed me the key to my room, he mentioned that
Fidel Castro had occupied my suite many years before, when he and his rebels
were searching the Gulf Coast for a boat to take them back to overthrow Batista’s
Cuba. Encouraged by my interest, he rattled off the names of several other for-
eign celebrities who had once stayed there: Charles Lindbergh, Sergei Eisenstein,
Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and so on until he happened upon a woman popularly
known as La Peregrina. When I failed to show any enthusiasm, he quickly ex-
plained that La Peregrina was a gringa from San Francisco, California, whose
name was Alma Reed. He was astonished that I had never heard of this locally
revered figure, especially given that we were paisanos, or countrymen, and he
proceeded to narrate the story of her tragic romance with the revolutionary hero
and martyred governor of the Yucatán, Felipe Carrillo Puerto (1874–1924). Alma
Reed met, fell in love with, and became engaged to marry the Yucatán’s charis-
matic populist governor, known to his detractors as the ‘‘red dragon with eyes of
jade,’’ while on assignment for the New York Times Sunday Magazine in the early
1920’s.
Immediately after their formal engagement, Reed returned to San Francisco
to gather her trousseau and make plans for the wedding. Although she had been
previously married to Samuel Payne Reed, Alma was again in love and willing
to face the consequences of this union, as Felipe was a married man. In January
1924, a week before the marriage was to take place, Alma received a telegram with
devastating news: her fiancé, three of his brothers, and nine of their followers
had been executed by a firing squad.
2 Michael K. Schuessler

Portrait of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, wearing his ‘‘Governor’s Stetson.’’

The photo is inscribed in red ink with the following note in Spanish:
‘‘Alma, my most lovely little woman: I send you this, for they say that
it looks like me, and if you agree, keep it as my portrait.’’

Carrillo Puerto had fought alongside Emiliano Zapata for ‘‘Land and Lib-
erty.’’ In the spirit of the Mexican Revolution, the governor made great attempts
during the early 1920’s to modernize his distant state, whose land barons were
members of la casta divina, the ‘‘divine caste.’’ This landed aristocracy had stead-
fastly resisted agrarian reform and other social advances put into practice by the
new constitutional government. In the Yucatán, these included the creation of
feminist leagues, led by Felipe’s sister Elvia, which instituted the first family plan-
ning programs with legalized birth control in the Western Hemisphere, as well
introduction 3

promoting women’s suffrage, which was obtained far earlier than in the rest of
Mexico.1
The radical governor also founded more than four hundred local schools to
educate Maya youth, until then virtual slaves held by debt peonage on the enor-
mous henequen haciendas of the ruling class. Indeed the coat of arms of the
all-powerful Montejo family, which adorns the facade of their sixteenth-century
palace in Mérida, is composed of a Spanish foot planted squarely on the head of a
Maya slave. In clear defiance of the status quo, the socialist governor revived the
ejidos, or communal villages, characteristic of pre-Hispanic Mexico, arguing that
the land of the Yucatán was the inhabitants’ legal birthright. He also reformed

Alma in Mérida with members of the Feminist League of the Southeast,

including Felipe’s sister Elvia Carrillo Puerto (standing on right).
4 Michael K. Schuessler

Carrillo Puerto’s funerary bust in

Mérida’s Panteón General. It bears the
following phrase in Spanish: ‘‘Do not
abandon my Indians.’’ The memorial
was constructed directly in front of the
wall where Carrillo Puerto, three of his
brothers, and nine of his supporters
were executed by firing squad on
January 3, 1924.

the prison system and constructed roads into Mérida from numerous villages,
so that farmers could transport their goods to the market more efficiently.
Despite his towering height and green eyes, Carrillo Puerto was said to be a
descendant of Nachi Cocom, the last indigenous cacique of the Mayapán fed-
eration, who in the mid-sixteenth century had steadfastly resisted the invading
Spanish.2 Whatever the case may be, as a result of his childhood spent in the
countryside and his regular contact with indigenous peasants, Carrillo Puerto
was fluent in Yucatec Maya and in his youth even translated the Mexican Con-
stitution so that the non-Spanish-speaking majority could know their rights.
As a direct result of the socialist-inspired reforms enacted during his gover-
norship, which lasted only twenty months, the first democratically elected gov-
ernor of the Yucatán was murdered on January 3, 1924, along with his brothers
Edesio, Benjamín, and Wilfrido and nine political confidants, including Manuel
Berzunza, Carrillo Puerto’s closest adviser.
The assassins were agents of the Delahuertista rebellion, led by Adolfo de la
Huerta and headed in the Yucatán by Colonel Juan Ricárdez Broca, from the
northern state of Sonora. The Delahuertistas supported the efforts of the Yuca-
tán’s ruling class to regain the henequen haciendas and de facto slave labor they
were forced to give up as a result of the Mexican Revolution. This once-privileged
group, supported by the Catholic Church, openly challenged the presidency of
Álvaro Obregón, Carrillo Puerto’s staunch ally, and would later unsuccessfully
introduction 5

attempt to overthrow him. Although de la Huerta condemned the executions

the same day they occurred, shortly afterward Ricárdez Broca was promoted to
general and named acting governor of the Yucatán. His provisional—and ille-
gitimate—government was short-lived, due in part to the immediate response
of the important Ward Line—its suspension of cargo service to and from the re-
gion paralyzed the henequen industry, whose revenues were the backbone of the
local economy.
In a stirring attempt to emphasize the improbable couple’s everlasting love,
Don Eusebio intoned the first lines of the popular ballad through which Reed is
still remembered in Mexico and abroad.3 The ballad was composed upon Carrillo
Puerto’s request by Yucatecan poet Luis Rosado Vega and arranged by Ricardo
Palmerín:

la peregrina

Peregrina de ojos claros y divinos,

y mejillas encendidas de arrebol,
peregrina de los labios purpurinos
y radiante cabellera como el sol.

Peregrina que dejaste tus lugares,

los abetos y la nieve virginal,
y viniste a refugiarte en mis palmares,
bajo el cielo de mi tierra, de mi tierra tropical.

Las canoras avecitas de mis prados

por cantarte dan sus trinos si te ven,
y las flores de nectarios perfumados
te acarician en los labios, en los labios y la sien.

Cuando dejes mis palmares y mi sierra,

peregrina del semblante encantador,
no te olvides, no te olvides de mi tierra,
no te olvides, no te olvides de mi amor.4

Don Eusebio didn’t recall how the song was conceived, only that it was dedi-
cated to Carrillo Puerto’s American sweetheart, the reporter Alma Reed. Ten
years later, in a letter dated May 1951 from the composer to La Revista Ilustrada
director Ramón Ríos Franco, I discovered the ‘‘Only True Account Concerning
‘La Peregrina.’ ’’ In it Rosado Vega recounts that Reed, Carrillo Puerto, and he
6 Michael K. Schuessler

were driving through Mérida on a warm summer evening en route to a dinner

party. It had just rained, and the poet describes the origin of the song:

Upon perceiving that fragrance which emanated directly from Nature and
which has no equal, Alma, widening her brow, breathed in deeply and
exclaimed:
‘‘What a lovely bouquet!’’
I immediately answered: ‘‘That perfume is because you are passing by
and the earth, trees and flowers wish to caress you.’’
Alma laughed in her distinctive crystalline way and Felipe immediately
remarked, looking at me:
‘‘You shall tell that to Alma in verse.’’
‘‘I will tell it to her in a song,’’ I answered.
‘‘I have your word,’’ replied Felipe.

Throughout my first visit to Yucatán, Reed’s ghost would appear on numer-

ous occasions, most often in this famous song but also in the collective memory
of the emeritenses, residents of Mérida. As I would later discover, the images con-
jured up by the ballad ‘‘La Peregrina’’ aren’t always pleasant, and during a recent
interview with a granddaughter of Carrillo Puerto, she was quick to point out
that her grandmother always changed the channel whenever the song was played
on the radio, as it inevitably reminded her of that ‘‘gringa oportunista’’ who stole
her husband’s love.
Ever since that first visit to the Yucatán in 1992, I have been captivated by this
woman. Before becoming a living legend in Mexico, she had begun her journalis-
tic career in San Francisco under the pseudonym ‘‘Mrs. Goodfellow,’’ a columnist
for the leftist San Francisco Call. Under this byline, she documented the tragedies
and injustices suffered by the disenfranchised, earning her the dubious sobriquet
of ‘‘sob sister.’’
Reed’s reputation as a champion of human rights and as a journalist was estab-
lished in 1921 by her celebrated defense of Simón Ruiz, a seventeen-year-old un-
documented Mexican worker who was sentenced to death by hanging after being
advised by his state-appointed lawyer—in incomprehensible English—to plead
guilty to trumped-up charges. As a result of Reed’s campaign, which lasted sev-
eral months and produced many impassioned articles in the Call, the state laws
of California were amended to prohibit the execution of minors. The law, passed
in 1921, was popularly known as the Boy Hanging Bill.
The legal amendment attained as a direct result of Reed’s efforts is a clear case
of how journalism could lead to tangible advances in government and society,
and Reed was a visionary in this sense. Indeed her absolute support of Álvaro
Obregón’s revolutionary government, as reflected in several articles written for
introduction 7

Original manuscript of the ballad ‘‘La Peregrina,’’ by Luis Rosado

Vega, reproduced in the Mexico City magazine Impacto, no. 1359.

the Times as well as the Hearst papers (under a pseudonym), would soon result in
the official recognition of Mexico’s new government by the United States. Given
her defense of the disenfranchised, which, in the case of Ruiz, resulted in a major
change in the California legal system, it may be argued that Reed heralded a type
of reporting that had nothing to do with the antics of ‘‘daredevil girls’’ such as
Nellie Bly, popular at the time. This was in part thanks to Fremont Older, ‘‘who
gave newspaper women extraordinary opportunities on the San Francisco Call
Bulletin and backed them in many original exploits, and believed that editors did
not employ enough women.’’ 5
Reed’s crusade to save Simón Ruiz attracted the attention of Mexico’s new
8 Michael K. Schuessler

The back of this curious

photomontage reads as follows:
‘‘Alma as Mrs. Goodfellow
distributing gifts to poor
Mexicans in San Francisco
before her first visit to Mexico.’’
The other person has not been
identified, but her image was
cut out and pasted on top of
the original photograph, which
probably dates from 1919–1920.

revolutionary government, and in September of 1922 Reed traveled to Mexico

City for the first time as the semiofficial guest of President and Mrs. Álvaro Obre-
gón. Upon her arrival, Reed was treated like royalty; her suite at the elegant Hotel
Regis was festooned with flower bouquets and caged songbirds, while a chauffeur
waited outside to take her to her various official engagements, which included a
trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacán, tours of the schools constructed by the new
government, and luncheon with the president and first lady at their residence
introduction 9

in the former castle of Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota, perched atop
Chapultepec Hill.
At the time, Mexico had just emerged from a revolution that had left thou-
sands dead but that, upon its triumph, had distributed arable land to the peasant
population, for this had been the greatest demand of the landless majority. The

Alma as a young woman in her native California, wearing a pendant given to her by Felipe:
a pre-Hispanic Mayan copper bell set within the red triangle of the Resistance League of the
Southeast.
10 Michael K. Schuessler

new government was also attempting to overcome a long history of educational

neglect and undergoing a cultural transformation spearheaded by Secretary of
Education José Vasconcelos. It was said at the time that just as the revolution
had handed over large tracts of land for cultivation, Vasconcelos had given to the
artists enormous public walls to adorn with images of such changes. This official
sponsorship gave rise to the Mexican mural movement, whose main exponents
(Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros) would soon
transcend Mexico’s borders.
Upon Reed’s triumphant return to San Francisco, Adolph S. Ochs, owner and
editor of the New York Times, contacted her at the Call, where she had gone back
to work. Like many journalists of the time, Ochs had followed Reed’s success-
ful campaign to change California’s capital punishment law, and he now wanted
her to write for his daily. The two met face-to-face, and the newspaper magnate
offered her the position of California correspondent. Duly flattered but having
been bitten by the bug, Reed explained that what she really wanted was an assign-
ment that would take her back to Mexico. Ochs was surprised by such a request,
especially as she was then enjoying a growing visibility in the United States. How-
ever, he had also come to California looking for someone to cover an important
upcoming archaeological expedition to the Yucatán.
After a series of brief negotiations, Reed was hired to cover the Carnegie Ex-
pedition to the Yucatán Peninsula, where she would document the activities and
discoveries of American archaeologists, including Harvard Mayanist Sylvanus G.
Morley. His plan was to excavate the ruins of the classical Maya city of Chichén
Itzá, located on the former henequen hacienda owned at that time by legend-
ary American explorer and archaeologist Sir Edward Thompson, who had lived
there with his family since 1885.
As Reed recalls in her autobiography, Thompson considered her to be ‘‘sim-
pática,’’ and he admired her professionalism and work ethic. Soon after, he would
choose Alma as his confidant, revealing to her that over the years he had dredged
up countless treasures from the sacred cenote, or sinkhole, of Chichén Itzá and
had gradually sent them back to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University
via diplomatic pouch. When Reed’s exclusive story broke in the New York Times
on April 8, 1923, under the title ‘‘The Well of the Maya’s Human Sacrifice,’’ the
taking of the artifacts at once became an international event. Mexico demanded
repatriation of the items or the payment of a large indemnity, and Reed actively
championed this petition. Nearly ten years later, in 1930, the Peabody Museum
reluctantly returned a portion of Mexico’s national treasure, largely as a result
of Reed’s efforts in journalistic and legal circles.
It was also upon her first visit to Mérida, in February 1923, that Reed became
enamored of the Yucatán’s governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Their passionate ro-
introduction 11

Sir Edward Thompson, American archaeologist and owner of the Hacienda

Chichén Itzá, in a photograph he probably gave Alma during their ground-
breaking interview in 1923.

mance would last for less than a year but would leave an indelible mark on the life
and work of La Peregrina and also on the history of twentieth-century Mexico.
According to her own recollections, Reed first met Carrillo Puerto at an official
reception attended by all the North American ‘‘Yucatologists,’’ as they were soon
christened by the local media. After being introduced to the governor—who
worked out of the ‘‘Casa del Pueblo,’’ 6 having converted the Governor’s Palace
into a cultural center and archaeological museum for the residents of Mérida—
12 Michael K. Schuessler

The back of the photo reads: ‘‘Alma and Felipe—Alma departing from
Yucatán, October, 1923.’’ This is the last known picture of the engaged
couple. Note that Felipe is carrying Alma’s purse by its straps while the
latter bears a large bouquet of roses, surely a parting gift to his beloved
‘‘Pixan Halal.’’

Reed shared her impressions with Brigadier General William Barclay Parsons,
an American railroad and subway engineer who accompanied the expedition.
According to Reed’s autobiography:

A Carnegie Trustee and the senior member of the group, he voiced what
was obviously the amazed reaction of his fellow expeditionaries when he
whispered: ‘‘This is the most personable red dragon I’ve met with in any of
my safaris . . . What do you think, young lady?’’
introduction 13

With total conviction, I unhesitatingly answered: ‘‘He’s my idea of a

Greek god!’’

The intensity of their love and utopian dreams is fully documented in the let-
ters and telegrams, composed mainly in Spanish, that Carrillo Puerto sent to
Reed in New York and San Francisco between April and December 1923, which
I will reproduce in a scholarly edition to be published in Mexico. As I explain in
detail below, the henequen bag in which I found one version of Reed’s memoir
also contained three manila envelopes labeled ‘‘Felipe’s Letters and Telegrams,’’
‘‘Letters of November, 1923,’’ and ‘‘The Final Letters and Maya Poem.’’ These
original materials—a total of twenty-seven telegrams and thirteen letters, many
written in red ink on the official stationery of the Liga de Resistencia del Sureste
(Alliance of Resistance of the Southeast)—cast an entirely different light upon
the governor of the Yucatán. As his correspondence reveals, Carrillo Puerto was
utterly captivated by his ‘‘idolatrada Alma,’’ 7 although it was rumored that he had
pursued affairs with other women, including an American he had met in Mexico
City a few years prior and an alleged mistress in Mérida.8 His love for the ‘‘niña
periodista,’’ 9 whom he soon gave the Mayan name ‘‘Pixan Halal,’’ 10 was appar-
ently so genuine that in his letters he regularly informs her about the status of the
divorce he had requested from his first wife and the mother of his four children,
María Isabel Palma de Carrillo, so he and Reed could marry in San Francisco
on January 14, 1924. The wedding would never take place, for Carrillo Puerto
was assassinated on January 3 of that year. His last missive, in Spanish and dated
December 10, 1923, sets the ominous tone for his violent death, which occurred
less than one month later. His last words to his ‘‘linda niña’’ 11 were these:

With all tenderness I send you greetings and I hope that you realize how
desperately unhappy I am that you are not at my side. I have no one to
comfort me, nor the slightest caress. Receive all the kisses from my lips
and all the love from this poor man who is thirsting for happiness. Yours
until death.

Underlining his pressing situation, at the bottom of the typewritten letter, which
had been interrupted by a bomb that exploded nearby, he scrawled: ‘‘Commu-
nicate our matters by aerogram until I can send you a code.’’
In the notes for Katherine Anne Porter’s unpublished novel Historical Present,
‘‘a full history of a period as seen by certain people that moved through it,’’
the author records Reed’s ‘‘dramatic account of how she was standing by what
chance she never explained in the hotel lobby, in full white satin with veil and
orange blossoms rehearsing in her wedding dress, when the news came of Felipe’s
14 Michael K. Schuessler

death.’’ 12 The novelist ‘‘was both envious and contemptuous of Reed’s notoriety,’’
according to Thomas Walsh, Porter’s biographer of her Mexican sojourn: ‘‘In
fragments of Historical Present, a novel she was working on in 1930, she planned
to begin with Reed’s ‘cashing in on Felipe’s death’ and go on to her gradual build-
ing up the legend to become ‘patroness of all Mexico.’ ’’ This hurtful remark, as
well as the women’s shared romantic interest in Carrillo Puerto, explains why
Reed never attended Porter’s well-publicized lectures in Mexico City during the
1950’s and 1960’s.
After Carrillo Puerto’s assassination in January 1924, Reed traveled to North
Africa, again as a correspondent for the New York Times, and reported on the
archaeological excavations in Carthage led by Polish count Byron Khun de Pro-
rok. A series of five articles, bearing such intriguing titles as ‘‘Science Ferrets Out
Carthage’s Secrets,’’ ‘‘ ‘Curse’ Still Hovers over Carthage,’’ ‘‘Science Hunts for the
Lost Atlantis,’’ ‘‘Under-Water Camera Films Ruins of Deep,’’ and ‘‘Explorers Seek
Traces of African ‘Joan of Ark,’ ’’ appeared in the New York City daily from Octo-
ber to December 1924 and bear witness to Reed’s renewed interest in classical
studies, an area that had fascinated her since childhood. While studying archae-
ology for a year in Naples, Reed translated G. Consoli Fiego’s archaeological trea-
tise, Cumae and the Phlegraean Fields, which was published in Naples in 1927. She
later traveled to Greece as a guest of her childhood friend Eva Palmer, wife of the
Greek poet Angelo Sikelianos, and translated Sikelianos’s works as The Delphic
Word . . . The Dedication, published the following year. During this period, Reed
continued to write for the Times and in 1926 published two articles dedicated to
one of the greatest mysteries of the Greco-Latin world: ‘‘Virgil’s Hades Gives Up
Its Secrets’’ and ‘‘Sibyl Renews Her Challenge to Man.’’ While in Athens, Reed
participated in the first Delphic Festival, which was organized by Palmer and
Sikelianos in May 1927 as a way to return Greek culture and traditions to their
rightful heirs.
Inspired by this Hellenic spirit, Reed and Palmer traveled to New York later
that year to found the Delphic Society’s first colony in the United States. In early
1928 they moved into an apartment once occupied by celebrated Russian author
Maxim Gorky, located at 12 Fifth Avenue. The flat, near Washington Square and
its triumphal arch, was baptized ‘‘the Ashram’’ in homage to the ‘‘apostle of paci-
fism,’’ Mahatma Gandhi, whom both Palmer and Reed greatly admired.13 Like
Gandhi’s settlement, Reed’s New York apartment was the center of communal
activities while also serving as headquarters for a cultural movement born of an-
cient philosophy, both Eastern and Western. Eventually Reed’s Delphic Studios
Gallery would emerge as the most enduring product of their initial collaborative
effort. Unfortunately, only a few photographs survive that evoke the cosmopoli-
tan atmosphere of their innovative literary and political salon.
introduction 15

(left) Reed dons Greek-inspired attire at the

Delphic Society, ca. 1928. (Underwood and
Underwood Studios, 417 Fifth Avenue, New
York)

(below) ‘‘Artists in Alma Reed’s Apartment,

ca. 1932.’’ (Courtesy of the Enrique Riverón
Papers, 1918–1994, in the Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

One day in 1928, Reed received a telephone call from Anita Brenner, a young
woman from Aguascalientes who shared her fascination with Mexico and whose
parents had immigrated to San Antonio, Texas, at the beginning of the Mexi-
can Revolution. Later, Brenner would return to Mexico on numerous occasions,
first to complete research for her well-known books, which included her study
of religious syncretism and Mexican art, Idols behind Altars, published in 1929.
During their conversation, Brenner informed Reed that the artist José Clemente
16 Michael K. Schuessler

Orozco had been living in Manhattan since December 1927 and was a bit down
on his luck.
During Reed’s second visit to the Mexican capital, in 1923, when she and
Carrillo Puerto were the toast of the town, Secretary of Education José Vascon-
celos showed Reed the murals then being painted by Diego Rivera in the Public
Education Secretariat, as well as those recently begun by Orozco in the National
Preparatory School. In her 1956 biography of Orozco, Reed remembers that as she
and Vasconcelos ‘‘approached the main patio of the preparatoria, where Orozco
was engrossed in the decoration of a high vault, Vasconcelos called up to him:
‘Orozco, this is the North American periodista (journalist), Alma Reed. She likes
your painting. I don’t! It’s the worst yet. But it’s your wall, hombre, not mine,
so go ahead.’ ’’ 14 Surely Orozco’s powerful images of peasant struggles, warring
revolutionary factions, the dissolute upper classes, and ruthless critiques of the
Catholic Church made a great impression on the young journalist, and state-
ments made during her first visit reveal a budding fascination with Mexico. In
an interview with one of the capital’s most important dailies, Excélsior, Reed an-
nounced: ‘‘Mexico should be the Mecca of all the world’s artists: here every object
and every scene is an occasion for art and beauty.’’ 15 This developing interest
would soon lead her to join the ranks of other North American women who
arrived on the heels of the revolution, including Katherine Anne Porter, Ione
Robinson, and Frances Toor, founder and editor of the magazine Mexican Folk-
ways. Although their activities have yet to be fully documented, these women
were all actively engaged in important cultural endeavors during a period re-
ferred to as the Mexican Cultural Renaissance, when the artistic and educational
ideals born of the revolution were being put into practice.
Reed immediately volunteered to assist Orozco and planned to visit him at
his ‘‘parlour-floor studio on a shabby Chelsea block somewhere in Manhattan’s
West-Twenties’’ (Reed, Orozco, 3).16 In a letter written to his wife, Margarita
Orozco de Valladares, in June 1928, he mentions Reed for the first time:

The other day Anita [Brenner] told me that there are possibilities that I
might sell a drawing and a small picture of those I have made here. Ap-
parently, a Miss Alma Reed, who was the fiancée of Carrillo Puerto, the
governor of the Yucatán who was killed, likes my works a lot, but naturally I
was not introduced to her. Ms. Reed is a close friend of [José Juan] Tablada,
but that cad hasn’t introduced me to her or to anyone else.17

Two months later, according to a note dated August 2, 1928, Orozco had appar-
ently still not met Reed, but in a second letter written later that same day, he
informs his wife that she is interested in visiting him at his studio:
introduction 17

I have just received a letter from Alma Reed, whom I haven’t met, but who
is a friend of Tablada and the person Anita [Brenner] showed my drawings
to a few days ago. She tells me that she has been a profound admirer of mine
for a long time, and that ‘‘The entire series on the Mexican revolution holds
a very intimate appeal to me, but one of them, ‘Cemetery Scene,’ is irresist-
ible,’’ 18 and she includes 20 dollars towards the $100, which is the price of
the drawing. She wants to come to my studio with a friend to talk about the
publication of who knows what. My luck is changing a little bit, Miti. From
your mouth to God’s ear! 19

After visiting Orozco at his improvised studio for the first time, Reed recalls: ‘‘The
next morning I resolved to help the Mexican painter pursue his career in the U.S.
I did not try to rationalize the inner compulsion that had shaped my decision.’’
She also confesses: ‘‘I had no precise idea as to what I might do—if anything at
all—to further his career in New York. But I could at least buy a picture, perhaps
induce my friends to do likewise.’’ 20
In a letter to his wife dated August 15, 1928, Orozco’s reaction to their meeting
is equally enthusiastic:

On Sunday night, Anita introduced me to Alma Reed, who is a lovely

woman and seems quite cultivated. She says that she is a great admirer
of my work. She told me that she wants to illustrate a book she is writing
with some of my Revolutionary drawings, and that tomorrow (Thursday)
she will come to my studio with a woman she says is involved in some 40
magazines, in order to see my works, and that perhaps there will be busi-
ness, that she wants a poster to announce some festivals in Delphos, Greece,
patronized by a woman millionaire, that is celebrated every two years and is
attended by people from all over the world. She says that there is some kind
of group of literati and philosophers I will be presented to next winter, with
a conference and projections of my paintings, and that they have spoken
about me to all of their friends.21

Soon afterwards, Reed convinced her friend Eva to commission a portrait of her-
self from the painter, who set up his easel in a small room of the Ashram that he
dubbed ‘‘the Pulquería,’’ in honor of the notorious Mexican watering holes.
As Reed recalls in her biography of Orozco, first published in Spanish in 1955
by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, the artist later painted odd pieces of home-
made furniture and completed two canvases for the decoration of what he called
the Ashram’s ‘‘Mexican Sector.’’ He also painted Reed’s portrait but soon de-
stroyed it in a paroxysm, provoked by what he considered to be a far superior
18 Michael K. Schuessler

‘‘Photograph of a party at Alma Reed’s Delphic Studios, ca. 1936.’’ Alma Reed is squarely in the
center, and muralist José Clemente Orozco is standing on the right of the picture. David Alfaro
Siqueiros, another Mexican muralist, is standing at the extreme left, while Kahlil Gibran stands
in front of him. Although the other guests are unidentified, they are most likely members of the
Delphic Society. (Courtesy of the Enrique Riverón Papers, 1918–1994, in the Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

rendering by Lebanese poet and engraver Kahlil Gibran, another famous habitué
of her salon. The latter’s admirable likeness includes the following dedication:
‘‘For Alma Reed: My dear and gracious friend, whose heart dwells in the world
of truth and beauty. K. G. 1928.’’
In his autobiography, Orozco recalls frequenting the Ashram and the great
impact its cosmopolitanism had upon him:

When I met [Alma Reed] and Mrs. Sikelianos, they were living in a spacious
place on lower Fifth Avenue. They had come to New York to secure financial
aid for the cause of Greece’s resurgence and to organize an excursion to the
festivals that were celebrated every two years in Delphi. . . . The literary-
revolutionary salon of Mrs. Sikelianos was extremely well attended. Some
days the Greeks came, among them Doctor Kalimacos, patriarch of the
Alma Reed as envisioned by the artist and philosopher Kahlil Gibran, a frequent guest at the
Delphic Society. This image was reproduced from an in-depth article dedicated to La Peregrina
that was published in the Mexico City News immediately after her death in 1966. The drawing
has apparently been lost (or sold); the frame, donated to the Museo Nacional de Historia by the
nieces of Rosa Lie Johansson, now contains only the artist’s dedication to Alma.
20 Michael K. Schuessler

Greek Church in New York. There one heard Modern Greek spoken to per-
fection by the owners of the house. On other days bronze-colored Hindus
with turbans arrived, champions of the cause of Mahatma Gandhi. . . . Alma
Reed recited her translations of Sikelianos’s epic poems, some of which had
already been collected in a volume entitled The Dedication.22

Orozco held his first solo U.S. exhibition in that fabled Greenwich Village apart-
ment in September 1928, and some sixty guests attended the opening. A testi-
mony of Reed’s keen desire to promote the Mexican artist is to be found in a
letter she sent to Orozco, dated September 26 of that year, which he transcribed
in a letter to his wife, Margarita. In it Reed informs him of several developments
and potential opportunities that had come about as a result of this first solo
exhibition:

The interest in your exhibit grows. Yesterday we had several very impor-
tant people here, some of whom are returning today with the owners of
galleries and with wealthy prospective purchasers. We feel that in view of
this continued interest that it would be wiser to keep the exhibition here
until Friday night. There is likelihood too of some portrait orders, so we
think that it would be well to have your marvelous portrait of yourself here.
Several very distinguished critics who viewed your work yesterday made the
same comment independently and quite spontaneously: ‘‘Orozco’s grouping
and anatomy would pass for that of Michel Angelo.’’
I have never seen such enthusiasm aroused by the work of any artist as
was shown here yesterday. Many of our guests on Monday telephoned us
yesterday to express their profound admiration again. . . .
There will be interesting developments, I am sure, in regard to your work
very soon, for so many influential friends are deeply interested now. We
are working towards obtaining a ‘‘pretty wall’’ for you at the ‘‘Architectural
Exhibit’’ in January. There will be some heads of galleries here today, in-
cluding Marie Sterner. I think that I shall have some news for you tomorrow
evening.23

The success of his first show led to a two-week exhibition of his Mexico in Revo-
lution series, curated by the upscale Marie Sterner Gallery. The show opened on
October 10, 1928, and, according to Orozco, Reed herself paid for the framing
of his canvases as well as the printing and mailing of exhibition catalogs. Unfor-
tunately, most of the guests had attended the opening in deference to the gal-
lery owner, and they appeared more interested in Sterner’s Biederman furniture
than Orozco’s revolutionary canvases.24 According to Alejandro Anreus, author
introduction 21

of Orozco in Gringoland,25 ‘‘much to the disappointment of Reed and Orozco, the

exhibition received no critical notice, and not a single work was sold.’’ 26 How-
ever, as Orozco himself points out in another letter to his wife dated October 11,
1928, Mrs. Sterner asked that his drawings not be sold, as they would ‘‘cause a
sensation’’ in Paris, and asked Mrs. Sikelianos to take the ‘‘entire collection of
drawings’’ with her to Europe on her upcoming trip.27
Nevertheless, Reed didn’t give up her hope for the artist’s commercial possi-
bilities, as she considered herself Orozco’s self-appointed ‘‘mother, sister, agent,
and ‘bootlegger.’ ’’ 28 Shortly after this first exhibition, she gathered enough funds
to rent a space on the top floor of the same East Fifty-seventh Street building
and there established Delphic Studios, her own formal gallery dedicated to the
promotion of various artists, but principally Orozco.29 The Mexican painter de-
signed the furniture and chose the colors to complement his work, which would
be there on permanent display. In a letter to Mexican artist Manuel Rodríguez
Lozano dated October 11, 1929, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, patroness of the arts,
intellectual, and a tragic figure,30 describes Reed’s new gallery while indirectly
criticizing its founder:

Clemente [Orozco] met Alma Reed on November 10, 1928, quite by coinci-
dence. Alma Reed is an Antonieta who never met a Rodríguez Lozano: all
goodwill and disorientation.31 Until then, Cleme[nte] had done nothing.
Alma, who is well connected, embroiders her tragedy with Carrillo Puerto
with red thread and thus holds great interest in Mexico. Clemente, a Mexi-
can, unprotected and brilliant, allowed her to avenge herself over Mexico,
which killed her Carrillo eight days before the wedding. She adopted him,
and the last three or five days has done nothing but create a reputation for
Orozco in the United States: articles, exhibitions, lectures, etc. She has now
rented a flat on Fifty-seventh Street, where all the best art galleries are, half
a block from Fifth Avenue, where she will open a gallery (Clemente men-
tions it sotto voce) that will be dedicated to Orozco. He is going to paint a
fresco on the façade that will be visible from Fifth Avenue and in February
will hold an exhibition (it’s the best month).32

In An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography, U.S.

muralist Thomas Hart Benton also recalls the Delphic Studios, an organization
to which he felt obliged to belong and whose originator he describes:

The Delphic Gallery was founded by Alma Reed, who, as a buxom and at-
tractive blonde reporter for some press organization,33 had found herself in
Mexico at the time of the first successes of the Mexican School of painters.
22 Michael K. Schuessler

‘‘Alma Reed being serenaded by Los Hermanos Hernández in New York, ca. 1936.’’ (Courtesy
of the Enrique Riverón Papers, 1918–1994, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution)

Alma envisaged a resuscitation of the Greek mysteries of Delphi in a new

and modern form. This was considerably too esoteric for me, but because
Alma had the Mexican painter Clemente Orozco in tow and because I had
great admiration for his work, I joined her organization.34

In a letter dated November 15, 1930, and included in her autobiography, A Wall
to Paint On, North American artist and Diego Rivera’s assistant Ione Robinson
also comments on the Delphic Society and its eccentric cofounder:

There is an extraordinary woman by the name of Alma Reed, who has

a gallery called the ‘‘Delphic Studios’’! She is going to sponsor Orozco.
Mrs. Reed originally came from California, and I’m afraid that she carried
with her some of the mystic ailments that sometime befall the people out
there. Mrs. Reed is a very fat woman and wears long black dresses, but
she has the face and hands of a Madonna! She belongs to a secret Greek
order called the Delphic Society. (I only hope that she concentrates on
selling Orozco’s work!) The other night she invited me to one of the meet-
introduction 23

ings of the Delphic Society. A Mrs. Hambridge, the wife of the man who
is supposed to have discovered Dynamic Symmetry (a system of drawing
mathematical forms), was there, dressed in white veils, and she wore Greek
sandals. The rest of the people (all women) wore long chains with Greek
crosses. The lights were dimmed—and the discussion of ‘‘Art on a Higher
Plane’’ commenced. I was really frightened.
When Mrs. Reed is talking, she waves her hands in the air and the words
go up and down, all according to the dramatic incident she is recalling. The
most dramatic part of her life was her engagement to Felipe Carrillo Puerto,
the martyred governor of the state of Yucatan, Mexico. But in spite of her
foolishness, Mrs. Reed has a rare quality. No matter what cause she is de-
voted to, she makes the most of every moment in order to arrive at some
climax. She is determined that Orozco will paint a fresco in New York, that
his genius will be recognized, and that with his recognition, Diego Rivera
will fall into oblivion.35

The stock market crash of 1929 caused an abrupt decline in the art market,
of course, but it did not mean the end of Reed’s first venture into the gallery
business. Indeed, on October 15, 1930, Reed’s Delphic Studios presented Edward
Weston’s first solo exhibition in New York City. The idea had been born during
a trip to Carmel, California, where Reed and Orozco met the photographer—
recently back from his Mexican sojourn—and where Orozco posed for Weston’s
now-famous portrait of the artist. According to Orozco, Weston was ‘‘the first
surrealist photographer,’’ and there he proposed the idea of an exhibition in
New York. Later that year Orozco himself hung the fifty photos making up the
show. Reed would exhibit the work of other up-and-coming American pho-
tographers at her Fifty-seventh Street gallery, including that of Ansel Adams,
who later complained that he never was paid for the eight prints Reed sold for
him.
The California visit had been a professional venture, for earlier that year Reed
had negotiated a commission for a mural by Orozco from Professor José Pijoan,
head of art history at Pomona College in Claremont, California.36 The work, titled
Prometheus Bound and informed by the ideas and individuals Orozco had en-
countered during many hours spent in conversation and debate at the Delphic
Society, was completed in 1930. Soon after, Reed secured another commission
for Orozco from the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Thomas Hart
Benton, in his autobiography, recalls Reed’s role in what would be Orozco’s sec-
ond U.S. mural:

At this time, Alvin Johnson, founder of the New School for Social Research,
had raised enough money for the erection of a building for the school on
24 Michael K. Schuessler

Detail of Orozco’s mural at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan’s Greenwich
Village, showing the artist’s rendition of Carrillo Puerto and Lenin.

West Twelfth Street near Fifth Avenue. Hearing of this, Alma visited John-
son and offered Orozco’s services as a muralist. They were accepted. Orozco
would paint a mural for the New School’s dining room for the expenses of
execution.37

The work was inaugurated on January 19, 1931, and its principal mural was en-
titled Table of Brotherhood.
Among the images included in the fresco cycle is a portrait of Felipe Carrillo
Puerto, depicting him in the same pose as that of a photograph that the martyred
governor of Yucatán had inscribed and sent to Alma after their first encounter
in the Yucatán. In the background, Orozco painted the main pyramid of Chi-
chén Itzá, which Alma and Felipe had climbed together almost ten years earlier.
Below, the artist painted groups of women, recalling the progressive Feminist
Leagues headed by Felipe’s sister Elvia in Mérida. Other world leaders depicted
by Orozco at this universal supper were Gandhi and Lenin, but in 1952, censor-
ship brought about by McCarthyism forced school authorities to cover up not
only Lenin’s portrait but Carrillo Puerto’s as well. In 1932, a year after the New
School commission, Orozco was invited by Dartmouth College to paint what was
to be his last U.S. mural, Indian Prometheus. Its title was a clear allusion to his
growing fascination with the concept of the ‘‘cosmic race,’’ an idea first proposed
by José Vasconcelos in the early 1920’s and certainly shaped by the numerous
Delphic Society events Orozco had attended.
That same year Reed published the first book dedicated to the art of Orozco.
The large volume contains a five-page introduction to the artist and his work,
in which Reed describes Orozco’s art as ‘‘an integral part of the drama evoked
by the crash of age-old systems and the reversal of once immutable scientific
laws.’’ 38 The book also includes ‘‘Biographical Notes of the Artist,’’ as well as more
than one hundred black-and-white reproductions, many of them photographs
introduction 25

of the artist’s frescoes taken by such essential photographers of Mexico as Tina

Modotti, Edward Weston, and José María Lupercio, all acquaintances of Reed.
It should be pointed out that Reed herself published this landmark book in her
Delphic Studios press, which would later publish such works as Photographs of
Mexico, by Anton Bruehl (1933), a book chosen by jury for an exhibit of American
book illustrators held by the American Institute of Graphic Arts; Art Young’s In-
ferno: A Journey through Hell Six Hundred Years after Dante, by Art Young (1934);

On the back of this photograph Reed has inscribed the following heading:
‘‘Felipe Carrillo Puerto, martyred governor of the Yucatán, known as the
‘Abraham Lincoln of the Mayab.’ ’’
26 Michael K. Schuessler

Three Dollars a Year, by G. Russell Steininger and Paul Van de Velde (1935), the
account of daily life of a Oaxacan Indian; Bowery Parade and Other Poems of
Protest, by Stella Wynne Herron, with illustrations by Orozco (1936); System and
Dialectics of Art, by John D. Graham (1937); Book of Job Interpreted, by Emily S.
Hamblen, with illustrations by William Blake (1939); and I, Mary Magdalene, by
Juliet Thompson (1940).

In 1997 I returned to Mérida, this time with a group of professors and stu-
dents from the United States International University in Mexico City. Among
the people I met during the trip was Lindajoy Fenley, a specialist in traditional
Mexican music who was traveling with her mother. She too was fascinated by
the legend of Alma Reed and, given her interest in Mexican popular ballads, had
already begun to investigate Reed’s life, motivated by the ballad that bears her
name. During the course of our excursion, which took us to major Maya archaeo-
logical sites, as well as to the ruins of various henequen haciendas, we discussed
this unique figure in Mexican history: Reed’s life and fate had been caught up
in the political designs of a country that, having overthrown the dictatorship of
Porfirio Diaz, was in the middle of an ideological and artistic renaissance, with a
special emphasis placed on Mexico’s cultural heritage. During our stay in Mérida,
Ms. Fenley visited Reed’s grave, which had been strategically placed near that of
her beloved Carrillo Puerto, himself interred next to his parents, siblings, and
estranged wife, from whom he had filed for divorce at the time of his execution,
to the shock and disdain of the traditional Catholic majority of Yucatán.
As previously mentioned, Alma herself had been briefly married to the busi-
nessman Samuel Payne Reed in 1915, but the marriage was annulled when he be-
came hopelessly ill soon after their wedding.39 Nevertheless, she liked the name
‘‘Reed’’ and kept it all of her life. Over the years, this decision has caused some
confusion, leading at least one researcher to assert that Alma was the sister of John
Reed, author of Insurgent Mexico.40 Obviously, this is not the case, as her last name
is Sullivan, one that she is said to have traced back to England’s Mary Tudor.41 Al-
though she was brought up in an Irish Catholic household, Alma had distanced
herself from Catholicism from an early age, according to her close friend Richard
Posner, when her mother told her that her pet dog would not go to heaven. More
tellingly, while kneeling in prayer at the Vatican, Alma was once accosted by a
priest. This was, as Posner recalls, the final ‘‘nail in the coffin,’’ as she would later
adopt a keen interest in Unitarianism.42
Recently I had the honor of accompanying Sr. Ruperto Poot Cobá, former di-
rector of Mérida’s Panteón General and the person responsible for placing Reed’s
funerary monument, on an excursion to visit her grave. There I was able to photo-
graph it and appreciate its discreet proximity to Carrillo Puerto’s monument.
Upon reviewing Alma’s correspondence shortly after her death, Reed’s friend
introduction 27

Funerary monument in honor of Governor

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, located in Mérida’s
Panteón General. His brothers and the
other members of his political party who
were murdered as a result of the
Delahuertista revolt also repose here.

and flatmate Rosa Lie Johansson discovered a letter dated a year before, in which
Reed requests that ‘‘if anything happens to me, Rosa Lie, I want to be buried as
close to Felipe Carrillo Puerto as possible.’’ 43 Upon learning that Alma’s ashes
had been kept for a year by the Gayosso funeral home in Mexico City because
of lack of payment, Johansson contacted Reed’s friend and patron Pablo Bush
Romero, founder of the Club de Exploraciones y Deportes Acuáticos de México
(CEDAM),44 which employed Alma as official historian.
In his unpublished memoirs, Joe Nash, senior Mexico City News reporter and
a resident of Mexico City for more than fifty years, divulges the mystery of Alma’s
ashes as well as that of her lost autobiography, an enigma that was partially re-
vealed upon his first encounter with Mr. Bush Romero in 1967:

I had never met Bush but enjoyed a warm welcome, being advised that
CEDAM’s Chairman of the Board was a constant reader of the decades-old
Sunday travel section of Vistas, ‘‘perhaps mainly because that’s where Alma
regularly appeared.’’
‘‘Don Pablo, do you have any idea where in the world Alma’s ashes
might be?’’
‘‘Right over there on the mantle.’’
One mystery had been solved. For the second question there was no
answer. He too was puzzled as to the disappearance of the text of her auto-
biography.
Bush said he was glad I had dropped in, for the following week there
28 Michael K. Schuessler

Sr. Ruperto Poot Cobá (left), former director of the Panteón General in Mérida, with
the editor at Alma Reed’s tombstone.

would be a brief ceremony at the Mérida Cemetery, where Alma’s ashes

would be placed in a small pink concrete shaft he had provided. He invited
me to attend at the lot the governor had given across the pathway from the
center of the mammoth hemicycle erected to the memory of and marking
the grave of her intimate friend, Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
I asked how Bush happened to acquire the urn of ashes. The courtly
gentleman of the ‘‘old school,’’ friend to the end, said: ‘‘It was simple. They
introduction 29

had been at Gayosso’s for more than a year with the family having no inter-
est at all in acquiring them, so with their permission, I paid the bill and
there they are.’’
Being advised that I had reservations for a travel trade exposition in
London but was sure my editor would make it a point to cover the Mérida
event, Don Pablo had one more thing to say: ‘‘By the way, tell him not to
mention the governor’s gift of the lot. There are still Carrillo Puerto de-
scendants, as there are Orozcos in Guadalajara, and they’re mossbacks
about Alma.’’
The editor was so advised but spiced up his report with mention of the
governor’s kindness to the memory of a patrician lady. The newsmen still
reside in Mexico City. Don Pablo chose to retire in El Paso, where he died at
the turn of this century.45

The director of the cemetery was able to comply with the governor’s wishes,
and he carved out a space for Reed’s cenotaph directly in front of Carrillo Puerto’s
tomb, under the canopy of a large tree and separated from her true love only
by a narrow road that passes between them. One side of the rose-colored shaft
bears the following epitaph: ‘‘Alma Reed: prolific writer and engaging lecturer.
She deeply loved Mexico, and Mexico honored her with the Aztec Eagle in rec-
ognition of her merits as promoter of the arts, critic, historian, and humanist.
Greece and Lebanon also distinguished her with their highest decorations.’’
From this discreet angle, Alma and Felipe are, albeit obliquely, united in death.

For my part, I didn’t forget the legend of Alma and Felipe’s tragic romance, al-
though five years would pass before they would again appear, this time in the
pages of her lost autobiography, which I found in an abandoned apartment in
Mexico City in August 2001. Several colleagues accompanied me, including Lois
Parkinson Zamora of the University of Houston, whom I had managed to get
involved in this ‘‘search and rescue mission’’ during our frequent ‘‘sit-downs’’ at
Mexico City’s time-honored restaurants, where I would describe the life of this
exceptional woman whose fascination with Mexico was mirrored by our own.
The succession of events that culminated in the recovery of Reed’s autobiography
is a complex one, as it involves more than a few people and places. However, the
key figure who eventually led to the discovery of the 110,000-word typescript was
Mrs. Lisette Parodi, whom I met in 1994 through her daughter Claudia, professor
of Spanish linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mrs. Parodi
was born in Poland but came to Mexico in the aftermath of World War II and
there married an Italian businessman. From the very start, she was active in the
cultural and social life of Mexico City. In that context in 1958, she met Richard
30 Michael K. Schuessler

Close-up of Reed’s funerary monument, showing one of the inscriptions

provided by Pablo Bush Romero, director of CEDAM. It reads: ‘‘Alma Reed:
prolific writer, emotional speaker; she loved Mexico dearly and Mexico
honored her with the Aztec Eagle in recognition of her merits as a promoter
of art criticism. Greece and Lebanon also distinguished her, bestowing upon
her their highest honors.’’

Posner, an aspiring playwright from New York who had recently arrived to teach
drama at Mexico City College—now the Universidad de las Américas, located in
Cholula, near the city of Puebla. Mrs. Parodi and Mr. Posner lived in the same
apartment building where I eventually recovered the typescript, located on Mel-
chor Ocampo Boulevard, in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood. Mrs. Parodi recalls
that she first perceived Mr. Posner melodically, as he had the habit of playing
classical music at a high volume, something that she quite enjoyed. One evening
introduction 31

they met at a cultural event, realized they were neighbors, and soon became fast
friends.
Several years prior to their encounter, around 1956, Posner had met and be-
friended Alma Reed at a reception held by a woman who had shown interest in
producing one of his plays. As he recalls, there were few people at the gathering,
but among them was a woman who stood out because of her striking figure and
rather unusual attire. As Posner would later learn, Reed never wore anything but
the most extravagant satin ensembles, many of which she had designed for her by
a local tailor, who created her trademark ample, flowing gowns, capes, and other
garments. Such outfits, often combined with wide-brimmed hats trimmed with

Close-up of the monument’s Maya-inspired design. Note the incorrect date

of birth.
32 Michael K. Schuessler

Reed in a satin gown and laurel-crown hat, later years.

a feather, netting, or a silk rose, never failed to call attention to this older woman,
who still conserved the radiant blue eyes and milky complexion so celebrated in
her ballad.46
Later on, when the two had become better acquainted and Posner worked up
the nerve to ask Reed about her eccentric apparel, she demurely admitted that
she suffered from ‘‘arrested development’’ when it came to contemporary fash-
ions, preferring the styles in vogue around 1912. However, as may be noted in
several of the reproductions included in this book, Reed also regularly donned
introduction 33

indigenous Mexican dress and jewelry, the first of which was the legendary traje
de mestiza, the traditional Yucatecan costume that Carrillo Puerto had had made
for her upon her first visit to Yucatán in 1923 and which is now conserved in
Mexico’s National History Museum. In two of her surviving portraits, the first
painted by Philip Stein—also known as Estaño, a name given to him by Mexi-
can muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros—and the second by Roberto Cueva del Río,
Alma dons native gear, including what appear to be pre-Hispanic earrings.
Her wardrobe later included embroidered huipiles, silk rebozos, and other out-

Reed wearing one of her signature hats. (Photo by Alice Reiner)

34 Michael K. Schuessler

Portrait of Alma Reed by Philip Stein, oil on canvas, 1957. (Courtesy of Elsy
Bush Romero)

fits still worn today by many Mexican women. Sometimes she would top off such
attire with an enormous rosary made of gold filigree, a gift from her beloved
Felipe. Immediately before his abduction by de la Huerta sympathizers, Felipe
sent to Alma, through a trusted courier, an engagement ring set with a large gar-
net. The ring is now apparently lost, although it might turn up among the items
recently donated by the nieces of Rosa Lie Johansson to the National History
Museum in Mexico City.
Before arriving in New York City in the late 1920’s, Reed had spent four years
studying classical archaeology in Greece and Italy. In 1933 she traveled to Chi-
cago with Orozco, who had been invited to show his work at the Arts Club, one of
the conservative bastions of the midwestern art world.47 Up to this point, Reed’s
introduction 35

activities are well documented, but little is known of her life between 1933 and
1941 when, at the age of fifty-two, she accepted a five-year stint as cultural editor
of the Press Register in Mobile, Alabama. During this period, she also hosted a
weekly radio program, dedicated to various cultural themes, and founded the
Society for the Friends of Mexico.48
Details of Reed’s activities during this period have recently surfaced in the
file that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) maintained on her activities

Portrait of Alma Reed by Roberto Cueva del Río, oil on canvas, 1966. Note the
Maya-inspired jade necklace, ear spools, and traditional headdress. (Courtesy of
Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City)
36 Michael K. Schuessler

Reed dressed as a ‘‘flapper,’’ wearing the gold filigree crucifix given to her in 1923 by
Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

in the United States and Mexico through the 1940’s and 1950’s, an expurgated
version of which I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Accord-
ing to an office memorandum sent to the director of the organization and dated
December 16, 1948, one of its informants

advised that she suspected Mrs. Reed might be connected with Commu-
nistic activity and suspected her of Communistic tendencies because of
introduction 37

her treatment of colored people and also because she had been connected
with the [George] Wallace campaign, having been away from Mobile about
two months last fall working for the Progressive Party. When asked about
Mrs. Reed’s treatment of colored people and in just what way it would indi-
cate that she is a Communist, [blank] explained that Mrs. Reed is a North-
erner and that the ‘‘Northern people like to stir up the colored people.’’

Six years later, on September 21, 1954, another anonymous informant mentioned
that ‘‘Mrs. Reed had attempted to have [blank] attend a meeting of an inter-
racial organization whose members included [blank]’’ and stated that ‘‘this, in
addition to several other things she observed in Mrs. Reed indicating a ‘strange’
attitude of friendship between Mrs. Reed and the colored people of Mobile, had
raised a question in her mind as to Mrs. Reed’s sincerity and reliability.’’
Reed’s alleged involvement with Communist activities in the United States
and Mexico is detailed in a later memorandum, dated August 18, 1954, in which
another unidentified FBI informant

reported that Miss Reed is reportedly a former member of the Communist

Party and was an active promoter of anti-Catholicism in Mexico in the early
twenties. During a trip from New York to El Paso, a period of nine days due
to engine trouble, Miss Reed, according to [blank], consistently defended
Russia and the Communist Party. He stated that she attempted to persuade
[blank] to join the ‘‘Movement for World Peace,’’ and made the statement
to the effect that [John Foster] Dulles and the United States wish to destroy
what is basic Christianity, the faith which has been given to us by Lenin,
Stalin, and all such great men.

As illustrated by several notations in Reed’s FBI file, many of these informants

were less than reliable, and some of them even had criminal records or were de-
scribed as compulsive liars. The lack of integrity on the part of the FBI’s local in-
formants—combined with the fervent anti-Communist atmosphere that in many
ways defined the mid-twentieth century and was fueled by now-discredited poli-
ticians like Senator Joseph McCarthy—must be taken into consideration when
determining Reed’s supposed affiliation with such potentially incriminating po-
litical organizations. At the same time it will be recalled that, beginning with her
‘‘soul mate,’’ Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Reed consistently supported socialist gov-
ernments but, at least on the surface, would always identify herself as a Democrat,
having been—according to the organization’s cofounder, newspaper reporter
Joe Nash—a charter member of Democrats Abroad, established in Mexico City
in 1942.
38 Michael K. Schuessler

Personalized Christmas card with a portrait of Reed at an

unidentified pre-Hispanic archaeological site, addressed to
Richard Posner. It reads: ‘‘For Dick with all my best wishes and
affection from Alma. Xmas ’63.’’

In 1952 Reed finally returned to her beloved Mexico for good, where she was
still a living legend and where her eponymous ballad was customarily performed
by local musicians upon her arrival at a restaurant or cultural event.
There Reed was soon hired by the owner of the Mexican daily Novedades,
Rómulo O’Farrill Sr., as a columnist for his recently founded English-language
daily, The News, which, after almost fifty years, only recently ceased publication.
She wrote a weekly column entitled ‘‘Alma M. Reed Reports’’ for its Sunday edi-
introduction 39

tion as she had for the New York Times in the 1930’s, when she published many
articles in its Sunday Magazine, often dedicated to pre-Hispanic and classical
archaeology.
It was at this time that Richard Posner and Reed, who lived around the cor-
ner from one another, became friends, and he would often accompany her to
various social and professional engagements in the capital. Dick, as she called
him, would become one of her closest confidants: ‘‘everything but lovers,’’ as he
would later recall. He would remain so until Reed’s unexpected death on Novem-
ber 20, 1966, the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution: a fitting coincidence,
given Reed’s extraordinary passion for freedom and democracy. As her friend
Joe Nash recalls in his unpublished memoirs: ‘‘Had she been able to designate a
date to terminate her militant career, that would have been it.’’
Several weeks before her death, Reed began to experience severe stomach
pains, and when they became unbearable, her friend and flatmate Rosa Lie Jo-
hansson referred her to a Swiss doctor who shared Alma’s political views and
sense of humor. Evidently, he misdiagnosed her condition, believing it to be a
severe case of ‘‘turista,’’ a common bacterial infection that often assails foreigners
in Mexico. When the pains worsened, Reed checked herself into the American
British Cowdray (ABC) Hospital, where a few days after exploratory surgery re-
vealed widespread intestinal cancer, she died.49 In a conversation in 2002, Richard

Reed with Richard Posner (standing on the right) and Rosa Lie Johansson (sitting next to
Posner) and other colleagues from the Mexico City News.
40 Michael K. Schuessler

Posner recalled Alma’s last words: ‘‘Dick, I never regretted writing anything, even
things that I never published.’’ For his part, Joe Nash remembers:

Few of her friends knew Alma was in the ABC Hospital. One of her reporter
friends visited her on November 19, and when questioning her about the
manuscript, she said she was being released the following day, a Friday, that
it was in her apartment and she would be sending it to her publisher on
Monday. She died early in the morning on the 20, a national holiday com-
memorating the Revolution. A long-standing law in Mexico decrees that
burials will be within twenty-four hours, so it was early in the afternoon on
the day after that friends gathered, notably on Sullivan Street, at Mexico’s
most famed funeral home. Her brother, Stanley, on being escorted from
the airport to the Continental Hilton, a block from the Sullivan Street wake
and meeting a welcoming committee in the lobby, said he was particularly
ingratiated that he had come, not realizing the popularity of his sister. She
was cremated beside the double circle of Mexico’s illustrious personalities in
the Dolores cemetery.50

The day Reed passed away, Posner entered her duplex apartment on Río Elba
#53, where he recovered many of the author’s papers and other documents, in-
cluding one version of her life story, which provides part of the contents of this
book. As mentioned earlier, he apparently stuffed all of her assorted papers and
folders—which neatly contained the first twenty-one chapters of ‘‘Peregrina,’’
along with Felipe’s love letters and numerous telegrams—into one of her many
henequen bags, or sabucanes, as they are called in Mayan. It was there that I found
them in the back of a bedroom closet, hidden behind several mildewed pillows
and blankets. On two previous occasions, accompanied only by Mrs. Parodi, I
had unearthed a copy of Alma’s last will and testament, as well as several Christ-
mas cards with her photo and salutations, but the fabled typescript was nowhere
to be found in the grimy flat.
But the third time was a charm: this valuable material had remained hidden in
Posner’s closet for almost forty years, and I was fortunate to have found it when
I did. As it turned out, the apartment had a leaky roof, and all of the contents
in the bedroom were ruined during a strong rainstorm only two weeks after I
retrieved them. A few days later they were carted off to a local garbage dump.

After living in Mexico City for almost seven years, in the summer of 2000 I moved
to New York City, where I had been offered a professorship in the Department of
Spanish and Latin American Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Upon my departure, Mrs. Parodi recommended that I contact Richard Posner,
introduction 41

One of Reed’s signature Christmas cards found in Richard Posner’s Mexico City
apartment. It message reads: ‘‘Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.’’

who had returned to Brooklyn from Mexico City in the early 1980’s because of
his mother’s illness. She passed away soon after his return to the United States,
and because of his own developing heart condition, Posner was unable to return
to the high elevation of Mexico City. After settling into my flat on the Upper West
Side, I called Posner and explained that I was a friend of Mrs. Parodi and that,
given my interest in Mexican culture, she had recommended I contact him. We
set up a meeting for the following week at a Chinese restaurant near his apart-
ment on Ocean Parkway, in Brooklyn. In the meantime I prepared my interview;
42 Michael K. Schuessler

I wanted to learn more about the personal and professional life of the Mexican
writer Salvador Novo, his close friend who had died in 1974. Posner was notably
enthused upon meeting someone with a common acquaintance who was also
very interested in Mexico’s cultural milieu during the mid-twentieth century. We
immediately became friends and began to meet—always near his apartment in
Brooklyn—on a regular basis.
Reed’s name never came up during our first conversations, as I was interested
in Novo and his relationship with other key writers, including Federico García
Lorca, with whom Novo was rumored to have been romantically involved. After
we had met on several occasions, Posner briefly mentioned Reed, assuring me,
however vaguely, that ‘‘there was a story there.’’ Still focused on my interest in
Novo, I failed to react, and my new friend apparently decided to wait for a better
moment to reveal his long-kept secret. This happened late one December evening
in 2000, when, as he was reminiscing about his friendships with various Mexican
artistic and cultural figures, including actress Dolores del Río and writer Celes-
tino Gorostiza, he again mentioned Alma Reed. After coolly reminding me that
he had already hinted at a special story regarding his dear friend ‘‘La Peregrina,’’
Posner began to discuss their unique friendship in detail, recounting how he was
one of only two people that Reed trusted to read her proofs at The News and how,
on many occasions, they traveled together to different parts of Mexico, often in
the company of her favorite niece and literary heiress, Patsy Berman, or such
noted figures as the archaeologist Eulalia Guzmán, who had allegedly discovered
the remains of Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor. Posner also recalled their
long conversations about Reed’s past and described the way Reed would close her
eyes and throw back her head when speaking, especially when remembering her
days with Carrillo Puerto, a topic that would invariably put her into a trancelike
state. I assume this must have been a special attribute, because Elena Poniatow-
ska also confessed to me one day that she was always afraid to approach Reed
when they coincided along with Yucatecan poet Rosario Sansores in the elevator
at the Novedades offices, because the former had the strange habit of closing her
eyes and humming to herself during the lift upstairs, perhaps intoning the lines
of ‘‘La Peregrina’’ and evoking her cherished moments with Felipe.
During our conversations, Posner recalled the names of other people—many
now deceased—who had also enjoyed a friendship with Reed during the last
years of her life. First and foremost, he mentioned Reed’s flatmate, the Swedish
painter Rosa Lie Johansson. After the two met during a trip to New York City,
Reed later invited Johansson to reside in her Mexico City apartment when she
was away on numerous lecture tours in the United States, often speaking about
Mexico for such organizations as the Columbia Lecture Bureau. Ms. Johansson,
who had been a student at New York’s Art Students League and in the 1950’s
was a regular at the celebrated Cedar Bar, where she often accompanied Willem
introduction 43

Reed standing guard at Carrillo Puerto’s monument on the anniversary of

his assassination, January 3, 1963.

De Kooning and Jackson Pollock, was eager to explore new horizons. She gladly
accepted Reed’s invitation to come to Mexico, arriving in 1960 and living there
until her death in August 2004.
Following Posner’s clues, I called the Swedish Embassy in Mexico City to re-
quest information about Johansson. Unfortunately, the personnel at the embassy
had no knowledge of her, and it wasn’t until Mrs. Parodi happened to read an
article about one of her exhibitions in the Mexican daily Excélsior that I was
able to track Johansson down. I headed to the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana in
the Roma neighborhood, where I inquired about the artist. Indeed she had held
44 Michael K. Schuessler

several exhibitions at the gallery, and upon my request the receptionist agreed
to phone Maestra Johansson and tell her that I would like to speak with her
about her good friend Alma Reed. After a brief conversation, the young woman
wrote down her telephone number on a scrap of paper. Later that afternoon I
called Ms. Johansson, and she agreed to meet me the following Wednesday at
her apartment, also located in the Colonia Cuauhtémoc, Reed’s old neighbor-
hood. At one time or another, Juan Rulfo, B. Traven, Juan José Arreola, Juan
Soriano, Octavio Paz, Pita Amor, and Gabriel García Márquez all resided on the
jacaranda-lined streets bearing the names of the rivers of the world: Nilo, Ganges,
Hudson, Elba, Ebro.
That Wednesday afternoon an elderly woman with watery blue eyes, wear-
ing traditional Swedish clogs and a tiny black ribbon pinned to her silver hair,
received me with an inquisitive smile. Upon entering her apartment, I was im-
mediately met by Reed’s gaze, for there on the mantelpiece sat the bronze bust
cast in 1924 by Vincenzo Miserendino, a photogram of which I had recently un-
covered in an issue of the Brooklyn Standard Union published that same year.
There were also portraits of Reed hanging on the walls of the sunny flat, in par-
ticular a canvas painted by Johansson of Reed standing in profile, with the pages
of various newspapers incorporated as a reference to her journalistic activities in
Mexico and abroad.
In the living room, the maestra had laid out a smorgasbord of various sweets,
cakes, and other treats on the coffee table, along with the ever-present coffee-
pot—covered with what appeared to be the lid of a tin can. After we sat down,
Ms. Johansson inquired as to my interest in Alma Reed.
At first the maestra was reserved about discussing the life of her dearly de-
parted friend, because, according to Johansson, she had told the author of Pas-
sionate Pilgrim, Reed’s biography, many things that later weren’t recorded cor-
rectly, and she was particularly incensed about the suggestion that Alma Reed
and artist José Clemente Orozco might have been romantically involved during
the time they worked together in New York. Ms. Johansson couldn’t bear the fact
May had suggested they were ‘‘two lonely people’’ who came together during a
time of emotional necessity. Indeed Orozco himself was obliged to clarify his re-
lationship with Reed, and in a letter to his wife, Margarita, dated November 16,
1928, he cautiously describes their unique friendship:

Your last two letters make me sad for various reasons. I see that you have
formed a very wrong idea regarding my relationship with Mrs. Sikelianos
and Alma Reed. It is true that they greatly esteem and care for me, but it
does not go beyond the purely intellectual plane, professional, that is, and
has nothing to do with the family. There is no reason that we might have
a personal relationship, and less with the dry and grim character of these
introduction 45

(above left) Bronze bust of Alma

Reed by Vincenzo Miserendino,
1924. This is a reproduction of a
‘‘Fotogram’’ that appeared in the
Brooklyn Standard Union on
November 30, 1924.

(left) Portrait of Alma Reed as a

journalist by Rosa Lie Johansson,
oil on canvas. This was Johansson’s
favorite portrait of the three or four
she made of her admired friend and
flatmate Alma Reed. (Courtesy of
Museo Nacional de Historia,
Mexico City)

people whom you already know something about. And you know very well
that they don’t understand favors or anything like that.51

Joe Nash would later inform me that Reed had confessed to him on several occa-
sions that she and Orozco were indeed in love, but that he was a married man and
Alma, who had lost Felipe—also married—several years prior, was unwilling or
unable to pursue this impossible romance.
Ms. Johansson’s initial reservations about my project were assuaged when I
46 Michael K. Schuessler

From left to right: Senator Bohorques, Alma Reed, Ethel Turner (widow of John Kenneth
Turner), and Mr. and Mrs. Harold Coy in Cuernavaca. Mrs. Turner was involved in the final
correction of Reed’s memoir, and her commentary has been annotated in the last two chapters.

happened to mention that I too was of Swedish ancestry and proceeded to tell
her how my great-aunt Esther, who lived to be 103, used to make coffee with
egg whites, often accompanying it with such delicacies as kroppkakor, diminutive
meatballs, and other Nordic specialties. Johansson paused for several minutes
in midsentence, apparently surveying my alleged Swedishness, and suddenly ex-
claimed; ‘‘Yes, now I remember. That’s how the farm people used to make their
coffee!’’ From that point on, she was more comfortable and insisted that because
I was a ‘‘good Swede,’’ I could be trusted with the information and materials she
was about to provide me. When she inquired as to my interest and knowledge
about Reed, I explained how I had come upon part of her autobiography. She
expressed astonishment that Posner also possessed a copy of the typescript, be-
cause the maestra thought that she was the only one with a copy. As it turns out,
introduction 47

more than one version of the document exists, but thanks to Johansson’s copy, I
was able to piece together what I believe to be the final edition, which is the con-
tents of this book. I soon discovered that Posner’s copy was missing the last three
chapters, which deal with the death of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and that the only
reason Johansson had them in her possession was because they were given to her
shortly after Reed’s death by Ethel Turner. The widow of John Kenneth Turner,
who wrote Barbarous Mexico to document the extreme abuse endured by Maya
peasants during the height of the henequen industry in the Yucatán, Mrs. Turner
had volunteered to edit Reed’s autobiography and apparently had just finished
correcting the last chapters when she received word of her friend’s death.
After several initial meetings, Johansson agreed to lend me her copy of the
typescript in order to compare it with the one I had already found in Posner’s
apartment. She also mentioned that there was more material to be had, but that
in order for me to gain access to it, I would have to secure a written contract from
a U.S. publishing house, thus guaranteeing that the book would finally be pub-
lished. Ms. Johansson handed me a rejection letter that she had received in the
late 1960’s from Crown Publishers of New York, which was preceded by others
sent to Reed herself, claiming that although Reed’s was undoubtedly a fascinating
story, it really held little appeal for wide audiences, as it covered a very particu-
lar time and place mainly unknown to U.S. readers. This was a severe blow for
Reed, who had spent many months writing her life story, a saga that was sup-
posed to be adapted for the big screen by producer and writer Budd Schulberg,
author of the award-winning novel What Makes Sammy Run? and screenwriter
of the critically acclaimed film On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando and
Eva Marie Saint. Apparently, Reed had even proposed that Elizabeth Taylor play
the role of La Peregrina.
Posner, a longtime friend of Schulberg’s, had always believed that Reed’s life
would make a wonderful film, and he knew very well that she didn’t want a Mexi-
can production of her memoirs, because she feared it would water down the po-
litical aspects of her relationship with Carrillo Puerto and highlight only their
tragic romance. Posner contacted Schulberg and told him about Reed, who had
already begun her autobiography, which was also a biography of Carrillo Puerto
and a political history of the Yucatán. They soon met at one of Reed’s fabled
‘‘crèche parties,’’ held at her apartment on Río Elba street during the Christmas
season and attended by such local celebrities as painters Raúl Anguiano, José Se-
gura, and Fito Best-Maugard; Howard Phillips, editor of the magazine Mexican
Life, where Reed sometimes published her articles; and José Luis Ramírez, owner
and founder of Editorial Diana, which would later publish a posthumous transla-
tion of Reed’s last volume on Mexican archaeology, entitled El remoto pasado de
México. Once assembled, Reed would introduce everyone at her party, while pre-
siding on the staircase above the crowd. According to Posner, Reed and Schulberg
48 Michael K. Schuessler

Reed with writer and producer Budd Schulberg at the entrance to Chapultepec Park, Mexico
City, in a photo taken by her friend and confidant Richard Posner.

got along from the very start and would often meet at a Polynesian restaurant in
the Zona Rosa for dinner and to discuss plans for the future film.
According to the producer, his interest in this project was sparked because of
the way the story was at once individual and collective. In an interview published
in The News on September 15, 1962, Schulberg explains:

Alma Reed’s personal story is tellingly intertwined with the struggle of

the Mexican people to achieve mature and liberal statehood in the face of
countless tragedies. As a longtime admirer of Mexican life and culture, I
have long been attracted to the relationship of two people from opposite
sides of the border who meet and work with common purpose to fight
against man’s inhumanity to man.
introduction 49

As I later discovered, Mr. Schulberg had been providing Reed with a stipend in
order that she complete her life story, an income that greatly aided her financial
situation, which was always precarious. Indeed, Posner himself was worried that
the project would never come to fruition because Reed kept postponing the com-
pletion of her autobiography in order to finish what would be her last work, The
Ancient Past of Mexico, a survey of the archaeology of Mesoamerica, published in
1966 by Crown Publishers and, as mentioned above, by Mexico’s Editorial Diana
in 1972.
Upon Reed’s death, the manuscript of her autobiography disappeared, and
the portion that Schulberg had already received is said to have been lost in 1985
when a deadly earthquake struck Mexico City, leaving his Colonia Juárez studio
condemned. According to Posner, the producer was never able to recover his be-
longings; he was prohibited from entering the structure, which was eventually
demolished. Although his movie was never made, Reed’s adventures in the Yuca-
tán had already inspired the 1938 film La Golondrina (The Swallow), directed by
Miguel Contreras Torres. More than twenty years after her death, Reed’s adven-
tures in the Yucatán provided the subject of the movie Peregrina (1987), starring
the Argentine actress and vedette Sasha Montenegro. The movie centered upon
Reed’s romance with Carrillo Puerto—just what she had most feared. Reed was
also featured in Julio Bracho’s 1973 film, En busca de un muro (In Search of a Wall),
the story of muralist José Clemente Orozco’s life and struggles in New York.
Another essential link in the series of events that led to the discovery of this re-
markable document, as well as its historical contextualization, was the informa-
tion provided by aforementioned journalist and longtime Mexico City resident
Joe Nash. After traveling to Mexico on bicycle in the early 1930’s with Frances
Toor’s groundbreaking guidebook under his arm, he had returned to live in Mex-
ico City soon after. He met Reed at The News during the early 1950’s, where at the
time he was a cub reporter specializing in cultural and historical topics. Mr. Nash,
now in his early nineties, has recently begun to record some of his most vivid
recollections of time spent working with Alma at The News, and these chronicles
help illuminate certain aspects of Reed’s character that would be otherwise for-
gotten. One of his most revealing vignettes documents Alma’s forays into the
heart of macho Mexico: the cantina, where, until recently, ‘‘decent’’ women were
not allowed. As Nash recalls in his memoirs:

No one knows who introduced her to the comeliness of the Negresco

cantina. At first sight of the first woman to patronize them, no one dared
evict such a patrician person. So without any formal introduction, her ac-
quaintance took root and grew as a meeting place far less stuffy than the
newspaper office, whose owners had no contract with the employees to pro-
50 Michael K. Schuessler

vide a den of inspiration. Following Alma’s passing, one of her confrères

asked for permission and provided a small envelope-size bronze plaque,
which read, ‘‘In this booth sat Alma Reed, ‘La Peregrina,’ who leveled yet
another barrier.’’ The sign prohibiting women is long gone. No one knows
what happened to the plaque in a city known for the wanton theft of bronze
ID’s large and small.

In another passage describing the inauguration of Acapulco’s International

Film Festival, Nash documents Alma’s keen interest in cinema, while divulging a
little-known incident that illustrates how La Peregrina could be roused to action:

Anatomy of a Murder was one of the films shown in the several nights of
the festival and [Otto] Preminger, as the director of that film, participated.
Some cub reporters for Mexico City papers were so awed by the Preminger
presence, they asked no questions. A dishwater blonde whose father was
posted at the Uruguayan Embassy and who did an occasional column for
El Universal, the oldest Spanish-language daily in the capital, was widely
unknown but there. A well-seasoned reporter, Alma started the jolly after-
noon with: ‘‘Mr. Preminger, do you suppose you will ever do anything for
cinematic art’s sake? I was so tired of having dirty panties rubbed in my face
through Anatomy.’’
‘‘I might. I accept assignments to make money, and this film is certainly
doing that.’’
Strangely, there was no newspaper photographer there. The cub report-
ers were so overwhelmed, they asked no questions. Alma sat to Preminger’s
right, and Miss Uruguay stood to his left until she directed a suggestion to
the dowager lady of legend: ‘‘Why don’t you shut up, you old bag, and give
someone else a chance?’’
All hell broke loose. Alma, half-rising from her deep-seated deck chair
clambered over Preminger to get at Miss Uruguay; the Mexico City editor
grabbed Alma’s skirt and tugged mightily to keep her seated; and Premin-
ger doubled over with his hands protecting his head. That well ended an
otherwise drab session of inconsequential questions.

Fortunately, Reed’s sustained dedication to Mexico and its culture didn’t go

unnoticed by Mexican authorities, and in 1961 she became the third woman in-
ducted into the Orden del Águila Azteca in recognition of her outstanding con-
tribution to Mexican culture over a period of almost fifty years. Other women
to have received the honor were aviator Amelia Earhart and opera diva Grace
Moore. That year was pivotal for Reed because she was also inducted into the
introduction 51

Reed bearing her Águila Azteca medal.

Order of Welfare by the Republic of Greece in acknowledgement of her contri-

bution to the recovery of classical Greek culture through the foundation of the
Delphic Society in New York, as well as her translations of the poetry of Angelo
Sikelianos.
She was later awarded the Cross of the Holy Sepulcher by Patriarch Damia-
nos as well as the Order of Merit from the Republic of Lebanon. It is my hope
that through the recovery and publication of this most extraordinary autobiog-
raphy Reed’s place in the cultural histories of Mexico and the United States will
52 Michael K. Schuessler

Reed receives the Order of Welfare decoration from the ambassador of Greece to Mexico, her
close friend Leander P. Vourvoulias.

be duly recognized and that the still unexplored contributions of other outstand-
ing US women—such as Frances Toor, Margaret Shedd, and Ione Robinson—
to post-revolutionary Mexican culture will be object of future documentation
and study.

About This Edition

Throughout the preparation of Reed’s autobiography, a complex process that
began with the transcription of the twenty-three typewritten chapters that make
introduction 53

up Peregrina, my principal goal has been to respect the author’s perceived in-
tent, knowing that she had planned to send the manuscript to her publisher at
Crown the day after she was released from the hospital, thus confirming that, in
Reed’s opinion, her autobiography was practically complete. The changes I made
to her text were to correct typographical errors and the misspelling of several
Spanish words, as well as several inconsistencies in dates, names, and titles. Some
additional minor copyediting changes were also made.
As Mr. Posner’s copy of ‘‘Peregrina’’ was missing the last three chapters and
Ms. Johansson’s was complete, I relied heavily upon the material contained in the
latter, as I believe that it was Reed’s final edition. After comparing both versions,
often side by side, I detected corrections made in Alma’s hand to Johansson’s
copy of what, in the first twenty chapters, was essentially a facsimile of Posner’s
document. However, I spliced two versions of chapter 21 because they were both
fragmentary but, when combined, created a coherent unit. As the last three chap-
ters bore no title, I inserted my own, while attempting to replicate the kinds of
titles Reed had employed in her preceding chapters, often borrowing a phrase
that the author had used in the body of the chapter. As mentioned previously, I
have included endnotes throughout the text designed to assist readers unfamiliar
with Mexican Spanish or Mexico’s pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern history,
particularly that of the Yucatán. I have also provided bibliographical information
where necessary, as Reed often refers to other historical and political works, espe-
cially in her re-creation of the events leading up to the death of Carrillo Puerto,
the only event described in her autobiography that she did not witness herself.
The photographs included in my edition are principally those given to me
by the late Rosa Lie Johansson, which I selected from more than five hundred
images that she had inherited from Reed and stored in a cardboard box in her
living room. They include an early photomontage depicting Reed as Mrs. Good-
fellow, pictures taken by official photographers during her first trip to the Yucatán
with the Carnegie Expedition, often accompanied by Carrillo Puerto, as well as
studio portraits taken of her to accompany her books or publicize lecture tours
in the United States. Several of the photographs I took myself during my research
in Mérida, Yucatán, and at the National History Museum in Mexico City, while
some I located in other archives, particularly that of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion. Where possible, the provenance and appropriate acknowledgment of all
photographs is noted in each accompanying caption.

—Michael K. Schuessler
mexico city and manhattan, 2003--2005
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 selected bibliography

works by alma m. reed

José Clemente Orozco. New York: Delphic Studios, 1932.

Orozco. Translated by Jesús Amaya Topete (Spanish translation). Mexico City:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1955.
Orozco. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.
Los cronistas de México. Translated by Jesús Amaya Topete. Puebla: Grupo
Literario Bohemia Poblana, 1957.
The National University of Mexico: The Story of University City. Mexico City:
Editores Asociados, 1957.
A Man and His Liberal Heritage. Mexico City: M. Casas, 1958.
The Mexican Muralists. New York: Crown Publishers, 1960.
Uxmal and the Cities of the Yucatán’s Low Hills Region. Mexico City: self-
published, 1960.
El cenote sagrado de Chichén Itzá cede de nuevo antiguo tesoro [The Sacred Well
of Chichén Itzá Gives Up Ancient Treasure Once More]. Publicación Club
de Exploraciones y Deportes Acuáticos de México, no. 8. Mexico City:
P. Bush, 1961.
The Ancient Past of Mexico. New York: Crown Publishers, 1966.
El remoto pasado de México. Mexico City: Editorial Diana, 1972.

Works Translated by Alma Reed

Fiego, G. Consoli. Cumae and the Phlegraean Fields. Naples: Mary E. Raiola,
1927.
Sikelianos, Angelo. The Delphic Word . . . The Dedication. New York: H. Vinal,
1928.
56 Selected Bibliography

monograph about alma reed

Finer, Neal. Alma Reed: A Unique Bicultural Bridge between North American
and Mexican Cultures in the Twentieth Century. Tempe: Arizona State
University Press, 1979.

works cited in the introduction

Anreus, Alejandro. Orozco in Gringoland: The Years in New York. Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
Benton, Thomas Hart. An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Auto-
biography. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1969.
Delpar, Helen. The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations be-
tween the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935. Tuscaloosa and London:
University of Alabama Press, 1992.
Givner, Joan. Katherine Anne Porter: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1982.
Glusker, Susannah J. Anita Brenner: A Mind of Her Own. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1998.
May, Antoinette. Passionate Pilgrim: The Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed. New
York: Paragon House, 1993.
Orozco, José Clemente. Autobiografía. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1970.
. Cartas a Margarita, 1921–1949. With introduction and notes by Tatiana
Herrero Orozco. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1987.
Rivas Mercado, Antonieta. Obras completas de Antonieta Rivas Mercado. Ed.
Luis Mario Schneider. Lecturas Mexicanas, no. 93. Mexico City: Secretaría
de Educación Pública, 1987.
Robinson, Ione. A Wall to Paint On. New York: A. P. Dutton and Co., 1946.
Ross, Ishbel. Ladies of the Press: The Story of Women in Journalism by an Insider.
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936.
Smith, H. Allen. The Pig in the Barber Shop. Boston: Little, Brown, 1958.
Walsh, Thomas F. Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico: The Illusion of Eden.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
PEREGRINA
by Alma M. Reed
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 author’s foreword

a moral obligation to history is incurred by anyone who has

shared the hopes and aims of a great public leader sacrificed to the causes he
courageously served. In writing Peregrina I have attempted to discharge a sacred
responsibility of this character. The idealist who entered my own life to embody
for me the archetypal reality of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful was Felipe
Carrillo Puerto, martyred Governor of Yucatán, often referred to as the ‘‘Abra-
ham Lincoln of Mexico.’’
My commitment was assumed with his full knowledge during the autumn
of 1923, when we decided to unite our destinies. In that ecstatic hour of faith
in our common future, we planned to collaborate on a book for which Felipe
Carrillo had provided the title. The proposed autobiography, ‘‘Details from the
Life of a Socialist Leader,’’ was designed to project the fruits of his years of inten-
sive labor and study, of incessant struggle and constant peril. The work was to
have contained his educational, social, and economic program for lifting within
a generation hapless millions of the five continents out of their age-old Karma
of ignorance and fear, superstition and desperate poverty.
The world is gradually catching up with Felipe Carrillo’s vision and initiative.
Many of the ideas and movements he pioneered in Yucatán are taking root in
contemporary thinking and action as well as in the policies of government and
the declarations of the United Nations. Simple justice demands that the creator
be identified clearly with his significant creation.
Still another consideration impels me to ‘‘give testimony’’ now. A lie in his-
tory has been likened to a fly embalmed in amber. There comes a day when the
organism is so firmly imbedded in the solidified mineral and the falsehood in the
hardened human consciousness that to dislodge either one becomes a virtually
impossible task.
Despite the homage that Felipe Carrillo’s name evokes in every part of the
Mexican Republic and indeed, far beyond Mexico’s national boundaries, sinister
reactionary forces persistently strive to tarnish his memory. They are the same
60 Alma M. Reed

forces that conspired to end, through a hideous crime, his invaluable public ser-
vice. They are, too, the same forces that destroyed Hidalgo, Morelos, Melchor
Ocampo, that defamed and continue to defame Benito Juárez, and for identical
reasons! Like Felipe Carrillo, these Mexican patriots were champions of the lowly
and the dispossessed, the ‘‘inarticulate ones’’ as Felipe used to refer to them. An
analogous situation exists today in certain sections of the United States with re-
spect to Abraham Lincoln. How often one hears the Great Liberator designated
by epithets that do not bear repetition in print. In each country the venom of the
slave owner suddenly deprived of his slaves has been voiced in similar fashion.
Through the slave owners’ egocentric frame of reference, Abraham Lincoln in
freeing the Negro slaves on the cotton plantations of the Deep South and Felipe
Carrillo in initiating the emancipation of the Maya and other slaves on the vast
henequen empires of Yucatán are guilty of an unpardonable offense. Both dared
to challenge the sanctity of ‘‘private property,’’ however illegitimately acquired.
Both refused to accept the slave owner’s contention that human beings are to be
regarded as negotiable chattels.
Obviously, ‘‘Details from the Life of a Socialist Leader,’’ as Felipe Carrillo and
I had planned it, will never be written. But the final chapters of his heroic epic
embrace certain chapters of my own personal story. In consequence, Peregrina is
both biographical and a partial autobiography. But I have always thought of the
happenings the book records as part of a larger story of our world in transition—
a phase in humanity’s revolutionary ascent from the predatory violence of the
jungle to the practice of the Golden Rule. More specifically, I feel that the bio-
graphical aspects outline the story of a major American continental effort in the
never-ending endeavor to rescue man from the inhumanity of his fellow man.
There has been no attempt to separate or divert the various currents that
flow in the mainstream of the narrative. I have merely set down events as I en-
countered them and have evaluated situations as they impressed me against the
background of my youthful emotional and rational awareness and inevitable
prejudices.
I venture to hope that both the documentary and the subjective elements of
Peregrina will provide or at least indicate the existence of new sources of informa-
tion and illumine already known facts in the life of Yucatán’s humanist apostle.
In any case, I am confident that future historians will be occupied increasingly
with research on his radiant personality, his bold vision of a happier scheme of
things and his enduring contributions to a worthy concept of true civilization.
One distinguished historian-economist, Dr. Ernest Gruening, long in the high
echelons of the United States government and who knew Felipe well, has already
written of him: ‘‘Like a great comet he came out of age-long darkness, lifting
men’s eyes and hearts, a fiery token of cycles reaching out into the vast unknown,
peregrina 61

a vision unforgettable. He was a cosmic figure. He linked in his single person the
far-flung epic of the great American race and the undying epic of man’s quest for
freedom.’’
Throughout all the years that have passed since that fateful dawn of Janu-
ary 3, 1924, Felipe Carrillo has retained, for me and for all who truly knew him,
his creative force in the living present. I find no yesterdays at journey’s end. For
the images that have vanished from physical sight still dominate the inner pros-
pect and are more intelligible for heart and mind than the concrete realities of
the passing hour. ‘‘That which was can never cease having been.’’ These words of
the sixteenth-century Spanish philosopher Saavedra de Fajardo are now recalled
with fresh poignancy, in the ‘‘ceaseless’’ quality of everything that relates to Felipe
Carrillo. But while his spiritual presence and influence function in continuum
for the Maya race, the Mexican people, and for tomorrow’s world, the date at
which ‘‘it all began’’ for me is clearly noted between the purple leather covers of
my 1923 diary. As I read its pages, memory reconstructs this ‘‘beginning’’ and
all the unutterable magic and pain that followed, as distinctly as though I were
viewing the sequence on a TV screen.
And so,
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 outline of bo ok , by alma m. reed

Peregrina

this book of approximately 110,000 words, which i have tentatively

called Peregrina, concerns my first visits as a young journalist to Mexico, my sig-
nificant experiences there during the so-called Renaissance following a decade of
Revolutionary chaos, and mainly the tragic involvement of my own life with that
of the historic personage Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto of Yucatán, known as
the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico.
The opening chapters deal with my own youthful newspaper crusading on
behalf of the unjustly treated Mexican nationals in my native California and my
meeting with Governor Carrillo in February 1923, when I visited Yucatán as a
member of the Carnegie Expedition to survey the Maya ruins, as a feature writer
for the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Felipe (as I shall henceforth refer to him) had invited the Carnegie archae-
ologists to explore the ruins of the ancient capital of Chichén Itzá, which he had
made accessible by fine highways. As a direct descendant of Nachi Cocom, the
last Maya king to make a stand against the invader and to resist the Spanish Con-
quest, Felipe was regarded as the natural leader of his people, as a race, enslaved
on the great henequen plantations, or haciendas, of Yucatán, under a perpetual
debt of enganchado systems.1 He had lived a life of sacrifice for them—statements
by his heroic mother to me reveal that the work of redeeming his people began in
his childhood—and had served various terms in the Penitentiary for defiance of
the Díaz Dictatorship. Once, he served several years for translating the Mexican
Constitution into the Mayan language, the only one that the enslaved Indians
could understand.
After Felipe had obtained their freedom, the Maya Indians and the Mestizo 2
Yucatecans, representing 95 percent of Yucatán’s population, elected him Gov-
ernor by an overwhelming vote. As Governor he was able to put into practice
his dreams and longings for the advancement and resuscitation of the Mother
Race of the American Continent. He encouraged the revival of ancient arts and
crafts, the colorful ritual dances, and now was determined upon a long-range
64 Alma M. Reed

program for restoring the great palaces and temples, which according to the emi-
nent American archaeologist Dr. Herbert J. Spinden of the Peabody Museum
represent ‘‘one of the four really great and coherent expressions of beauty that
humanity has produced since the dawn of history.’’
But Felipe’s concern with antiquity was rooted in his hope of reviving the
crushed spirit of his people and equipping them for a more dynamic role in con-
temporary life. He instituted not only the most modern type of government but
the most advanced economic system and educational methods known in Mexico.
He organized and maintained the first Birth Control Clinic in the entire New
World (under state auspices); he established a university where humanist phi-
losophy dominated. He built model villages with roads for the small farmers to
carry more conveniently their produce to market. Of major importance was the
fact that his program was universal in scope. He aimed to lift by an educational
‘‘shortcut’’ the millions of the earth to a point where they could compete with a
complex civilization. Discarding, for the time being, ‘‘the mid-Victorian learn-
ing,’’ he planned to teach these millions whom he called the inarticulados 3—
people without newspapers or radios—the essentials of modern living (hygiene,
basic science, etc.), to enable them to live a full and productive life. Thirty years
after Felipe’s time, this very thing is happening to the great masses of the world’s
population. Even the Vatican has come out for most of his reforms.
Our mutual attraction was instant and potent at our very first meeting. I saw
him for the first time when I went with the distinguished North American ar-
chaeologists—Dr. John C. Merriam, President of the Carnegie Institution; Gen-
eral William Barclay Parsons; Dr. Herbert J. Spinden; Dr. Marshall H. Saville;
Dr. Sylvanus Morley; and others—to make our official call immediately after our
arrival in Mérida. He received us at the headquarters of his Liga de Resisten-
cia,4 the humble office he preferred to the pompous Governor’s Palace, where so
many of Yucatán’s exploiting chief executives, under the pay of the multimillion-
aire hacendados, land barons who controlled the enormous henequen industry,
had ruled.
We saw Felipe dispensing ‘‘compassionate justice,’’ suggesting a kindly father
among his own children. His radiant personality, his physical beauty, poise, his
quiet authority, above all, his naturalness and his evident sense of mission, made
a profound impression on the entire group, especially since he had been de-
scribed to us aboard the Ward Line steamer Mexico, by the Yucatecan ‘‘aristo-
crats’’ who were returning home for the Carnival celebration, as a ‘‘red dragon
with eyes of jade,’’ a ‘‘monster’’ guilty of unidentified crimes.
I had no sooner returned to the elegant home of my host, Felipe G. Cantón,
relaxing in a hammock prior to dressing for the brilliant festivities of the eve-
ning—the banquet, official reception, and departure by train at daybreak for the
peregrina 65

ruins of Uxmal—than the servant rushed excitedly up the great marble staircase
to announce, ‘‘The Governor of the State is here!’’ Felipe had come to ask me to
accompany him to his model Socialist village at the far end of the new highway,
which he had just completed to replace a stony trail, and ‘‘to enjoy the unusually
beautiful sunset.’’ Two chapters are devoted to the ‘‘Road to Kanasín,’’ to the three
unforgettable hours in which I learn of his achievements, his aims, his sincerity,
and become unalterably convinced of his true greatness and his congenital right
to leadership. Before the end of the trip, I realize how outrageously he has been
maligned by his political enemies and the forces of the reaction. I am completely
on his side and know that I shall always remain there. He leaves me at the gate
of the Cantón mansion. I want to remain there, to relive each ecstatic moment,
to pin down the thoughts and the emotions that possessed me, in poems, rather
than in journalistic reports. But there was time for only one brief entry in my
diary that evening. It read: ‘‘He is a miracle of Goodness and of Beauty!’’ I used
the Spanish word milagro—‘‘miracle’’ seemed weak and inadequate. I describe
the ball, my lovely opalescent sequined and emerald chiffon gown, and the Yuca-
tecan aristocracy. Felipe ‘‘breaks his rule’’ to dance with me. My swift realization
that I am hopelessly in love.
A magical two weeks follow. Dances, native festivals staged in honor of the
visitors, trips by train, automobile and horse-drawn coach to the majestic Maya
ruins, Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Kabah, Labná, etc., to the pueblos where the ejidos,
or communal lands, were given back to the villagers in colorful ceremonies, lands
of which their ancestors had been robbed. A visit to the great caves of Loltún,
where the lights fail and our party is believed ‘‘lost,’’ until Felipe with words of
command in his native Maya quells the panic and orders the guides to find a way
out, to the admiration of the frightened scientists. Part of a chapter is devoted
to a review of the various theories on the origin of the Maya, the opinions of
the visiting archaeologists, their feuds and rivalries. A review of the period—the
heyday of archaeology, the popular interest in Tut-Ankh-Amen and the golden
treasure flowing from his tomb, accompanied by far-reaching curses on the de-
spoilers. Felipe’s new roads and invitation to United States science to explore the
Maya ruins send a thrill through the travel bureaus as well as the halls of science.
The ‘‘confession’’ made to me by Edward J. Thompson of his recovery of a half a
ton of ancient treasure from the Cenote Sagrado, or Sacred Well, on his hacienda
at Chichén Itzá. He confesses to me because ‘‘the story must be told sometime,’’
and because I am ‘‘the most simpática American journalist’’ he has ever met. He
tells me how he learned the diver’s art, when he realized that his Cenote was the
well of sacrifice of maidens of flawless beauty, educated with an ideal of sacri-
fice for their people, drowned in a mystical wedding ceremony that united them
to the deity they wished to appease, while the nobles rimmed the great circu-
66 Alma M. Reed

lar well and threw in their most precious jewels, at the moment the priests flung
the maiden into the Cenote’s depths. Thompson told how, as American Consul,
under an appointment secured by the American Antiquarian Society, he sent
back the treasure he had retrieved, in the Consular mail pouches each month,
to the Peabody Museum, over a period of years. My story claimed eight-column
headlines in the national and metropolitan papers and was hailed as the ‘‘greatest
archaeological adventure of the New World.’’
My return to New York with the Carnegie party—my articles in the Times, the
first to describe the long-neglected Maya ruins and sympathetically the Socialist
‘‘experiment’’ of Governor Carrillo in a New York newspaper series, both angles
arousing tourist interest in the Yucatán.
Felipe’s daily letters and telegrams were filled with his dreams and plans for
a ‘‘new order,’’ the resuscitation of his people—and his love. I quote several of
his extraordinary letters, my own fears and strange premonitions of doom. The
natural conflict born of conservative traditions and convent education, a pas-
sionately patriotic home where all national holidays were observed with Ameri-
can flags decorating the dinner table. Despite my own liberal convictions and
personal emancipation from church dogma, I could not really shake off the rather
sinister connotations that the very word ‘‘Socialist’’ held for me. But I realized
that Felipe dominated my heart, that he claimed my total admiration as a man,
a leader, an authentic voice for humanity. Yet what seemed to me at the moment
a break with the past loomed as too great a step. I tried to evade destiny. I asked
Mr. Ochs, the New York Times publisher, to send me to Turkey to interview Kemal
Pascha, but he insisted that I return to Mexico to interview President Obregón,
Calles, and others, for, as he explained, the cultural articles I had written for him
during my first Mexican visit and the Yucatán series, had convinced him that the
new Obregón administration was ‘‘serious and permanent’’ and that he was con-
sidering announcing his support and recognition of the Mexican Revolutionary
Government by the United States.
At the time, Felipe was staging the greatest reunion of the Maya race since
the Conquest, at a ten-day Festival in the one-thousand-foot-long Ball Court at
Chichén Itzá. He had invited the entire Indian population of Yucatán, arranging
for their transportation to Mérida from distant places, and providing for them
during the Festival. The event was the first and only authentic revival of ancient
dances, music, ritual dramas, and costumes of the Maya in modern times. He was
most eager to have me present at the historic occasion. I sailed again for Mexico
and did not disembark at Progreso, but Felipe had anticipated my decision and
sent out a little launch decked with floral arches and carrying an orchestra, to
greet me. His English-speaking secretary, Manuel Cirerol, who is one of the per-
sonages of the story, handed me a letter urging me to leave the ship and come
peregrina 67

to Mérida. I explained that I was not free to do so, and then a second letter was
handed to me, which announced that if I could not accept his invitation, Felipe
himself would come to the Mexican capital at the conclusion of the Festival. He
did come on the next boat, and we became formally engaged on the day after his
arrival. A marvelous month followed—idyllic visits to Xochimilco, the pyramids
of San Juan Teotihuacán, the elaborate dinner parties arranged in his honor by his
great admirers, President and Sra. Obregón and the cabinet ministers, including
the man later responsible for his assassination, Adolfo de la Huerta. Everywhere
Felipe was acclaimed as a devoted public servant, a friend of the Indians, a truly
worshipped public figure. The warning of the remarkable seeress Doña Juana,
who had foretold the deaths of Madero, Pino Suárez, Carranza, and other offi-
cials, and before whose house on Donato Guerra Street there was always a long
line of carriages, had told me of past and current events in my own life, and I
insisted that Felipe visit her. Despite his rationalistic viewpoint he saw her to
please me. He emerged pale. She had told him of situations of which he alone was
aware, of present dangers, machinations of political enemies, in great detail, and
warned him that his life was in grave peril. She did not know Felipe’s identity,
for he had not been in Mexico City for three years.
At the end of his month’s annual leave, Felipe returned to Mérida to prepare
to receive hundreds of delegates to the first American Continental Press Confer-
ence, which he arranged for mid-September. I returned to Yucatán as a delegate,
representing the New York Times Magazine and the United Press. At Veracruz, our
little party of North American press representatives from Mexico City was met
by the South and Central American delegations, and we all boarded the Mexican
battleship Jalisco, bound for Progreso. The North American party included two
journalists in the pay of Adolfo de la Huerta, who were attending the congress for
the specific purpose of influencing delegations against Felipe and to initiate pro-
paganda for de la Huerta as Obregón’s successor to the presidency. Felipe favored
General Calles. The trip from Veracruz to Progreso in a terrible ‘‘norther.’’ All
are reported ‘‘lost’’ in the press of the capital, but the Jalisco rode the storm that
night, and in the raging hurricane, I was to hear for the first time the lovely strains
of my song, ‘‘Peregrina,’’ played and sung outside my cabin by a quartette, which
Felipe had sent to Veracruz to give me a surprise serenade. I already knew the
words of this song, which had been written during my first visit to Yucatán by
the eminent Yucatecan poet Luis Rosado Vega, on Felipe’s suggestion and inspi-
ration. The musical accompaniment had been completed after my departure by
the beloved Ricardo Palmerín. Today, ‘‘Peregrina’’ is one of Mexico’s most cher-
ished songs and is known, in fact, all over the Spanish-speaking world. While full
of tenderness, its underlying nuances suggest infinite sadness, and the antiquity
and mystery of the land of the Maya. Our arrival in Yucatán, Felipe’s welcome,
68 Alma M. Reed

elaborate entertainment, his eloquent appeals for continental solidarity, visits

to the pueblos, ruins, etc. At an official banquet given in our honor by the city
of Progreso, Felipe dramatically reads a telegram, announcing the recognition
of Mexico by the government of the United States. My own desire to kneel in
thanksgiving, aware of my own share in the historic event. Earlier I had written
the editorials, for which I managed to obtain the necessary advance information
on the Obregón 1924 budget, for the New York Times and a series of articles for the
Hearst papers when, in view of the position of the Times, they decided to switch
from ‘‘intervention’’ to ‘‘recognition.’’ I remain in Mérida for a month after the
departure of the journalists and during this period arrange with Felipe for our
future home, the Villa Aurora. Felipe secures a divorce from the wife he had not
seen for three years and who was living in Cuba, while his mother acted as his
official hostess. Conflict between man and leader, his sense of pain that his own
‘‘easy divorce’’ laws might be interpreted by political enemies as a move to ob-
tain his own marital freedom, despite the fact that they were framed more than
a year before he met me . . . My return to New York and then to San Francisco to
prepare for our wedding there, for which invitations were engraved and arrange-
ments completed, with the Consul General Alejandro Lubbert serving as ‘‘best
man.’’ The strange premonitions of catastrophe communicated in Felipe’s wires
and letters a whole month before the so-called de la Huerta revolt paid for by the
rich hacendados, whose vast holdings—the smallest, four square miles—Felipe
had reduced, in conformity with the Mexican Constitution, giving the unculti-
vated lands to communities of small farmers for the production of other crops
beside henequen, to enable them to meet the needs of their daily existence. A
small garrison, made up of troops from the North, specifically planted by de la
Huerta, and armed with machine guns, suddenly turns upon an unarmed popu-
lation, since Felipe was a pacifist and was so certain of the devotion and loyalty
of his people that arming them seemed unnecessary. He had been warned re-
peatedly, however, by such hardheaded realists as Crossette, Herbert Hoover’s
representative in Yucatán, with whom Felipe was then negotiating for direct ex-
change between the farmers of the United States and of Yucatán for the ‘‘green
gold,’’ or sisal hemp, upon which the binding of our own grain crop depended.
On the outbreak of the military revolt for which the commander of the garrison
received $250,0005 from the hacendados, Felipe, his three brothers and a small
group of followers left Mérida en route to Cuba, where they planned to await the
arrival of Manuel Cirerol, who had been sent to New Orleans a few days earlier to
purchase arms for the defense of the unarmed populace. This was a difficult de-
cision for the pacifist Felipe to make, but he faced the situation realistically when
warned of the conspiracy and its threat to throw back into slavery the people to
whom he had dedicated a life of struggle and sacrifice. I document every inci-
peregrina 69

dent from the time Felipe left Mérida, the brief stops at stations along the route
when the Maya came out by the thousands with their machetes, offering their aid.
But he told them that their machetes were powerless against machine guns and
begged them to remain calm until he returned with adequate defense weapons. I
give eyewitness accounts of the treason of the owner of the launch, who discon-
nected the engine so that Felipe and his followers were prevented from reaching
the ship that was to take them to Cuba, how Felipe was urged by his brother to
shoot the small detachment of soldiers who advanced to capture them and how
he refused to give permission for ‘‘violence,’’ merely saying, ‘‘let us be taken.’’
I give descriptions of Felipe wading through the water, carrying high his som-
brero in which was sewn my photograph—the one he called the periodista—the
journalist—his favorite photograph. I give eyewitness accounts of his ten-day
imprisonment at the Juárez Penitentiary, which he had converted into a model
prison that had aroused the admiration of prison officials everywhere, even in
New York. I include summaries of the mock trial, record of his eloquent pleas for
the lives of his three younger brothers, his efforts to send letters to me, the singing
of ‘‘Peregrina’’ outside his cell as an added torture, the night before his assassi-
nation. I include descriptions of his last moments, his final words and his last
recorded act—his stepping forward to ask a soldier of the firing squad to deliver
to me my ‘‘Maya’’ wedding ring, a triangular-shaped garnet. I record the hero-
ism of his remarkable mother, who said to the messenger of Ricardo Broca, who
ordered the execution of Felipe, his three brothers, and his six assistants against
a wall in the Mérida Cemetery at dawn on January 3, 1924: ‘‘Go tell your master
that, in the last hours of my sons, he would not permit me to console them even
for a moment and that I am strong enough not to look at their mangled bodies
now.’’ Doña Adela, who was then 70 years of age, designed Felipe’s tombstone—a
white marble slab, bearing his name, date of birth and death, and the simple red
marble triangular emblem of his Socialist Party and its slogan ‘‘Tierra y Liber-
tad’’—‘‘Land and Liberty.’’ Under the rigid restrictions of her son’s murderers,
she had fully condemned them and told the story of his heroic martyrdom in
three words.
In a ‘‘throwback’’ chapter, the material of which is drawn from his own words,
the accounts of his mother, brothers, and sister Elvia, much of it in their own
handwriting, I tell the story of his extraordinary childhood and young manhood,
the renunciation by his father of the high and lucrative post of jefe político 6 under
Díaz, because he found that his ‘‘chief duty was to return escaped Maya slaves to
their owners.’’ There is an account of Doña Adela’s heroism, when she used to
keep vigil at night in the days when Felipe and his brothers were organizing the
Ligas . . .7 When bombs were left in front of the family home in Motul, she would
go out and with her bare hands, pick them up, and deposit them in the plaza.
70 Alma M. Reed

The text also relates the aftermath of the tragedy. My own visits to Washing-
ton to interview Samuel Gompers, who was instrumental in causing the United
States to place an arms embargo on Mexico following the assassination of Felipe,
to foil the de la Huerta rebels, who were crushed in order, since the movement
represented no just revolutionary or popular cause, but merely personal ambi-
tion. Accounts of how Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Secretary of the Navy, one of
Felipe’s admirers, ‘‘swept the seas’’ in the hope that Felipe had escaped, as the
thoroughly frightened ‘‘rebels’’ announced to avoid vengeance . . . My own return
to Yucatán on the first boat, sailing on the Rajah with the Carnegie scientists to
resume work as a newspaperwoman and to face all the terrible facts of the tragedy
‘‘for history.’’ Only on the very last day of my three-months’ stay in Mérida was I
capable of looking at the Villa Aurora, the home he had so beautifully adorned
in ‘‘puro Maya’’ style with such love and hope.
In addition to the documented story of Felipe’s life, excerpts from his let-
ters, his public addresses, and recorded conversations, the book gives a picture of
post-Revolutionary Mexico, of the men whose vision and initiative were respon-
sible for the so-called Renaissance, most of them alive and still serving Mexico—
Dr. Manuel Gamio, Jorge Enciso, Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Francisco Valladares,
Luis Montes de Oca, Roberto Casas Alatriste, Aarón Sáenz, Juan de Dios Bojór-
quez, Vasconcelos, Dr. Atl, and many others.
Despite the severance of all means of communication with the outside world,
Felipe’s faithful Maya Indians nevertheless tried to advise me of the tragedy. Brav-
ing the shark-infested waters off Progreso, a group of them swam out to a British
ship anchored some distance from the docks, to send me a radio cable. Their
message never reached me, for they had sent it addressed to ‘‘Pixan Halal,’’ my
name in Mayan, the only one they knew . . . Months later, the cable was recovered
in the Mackay radio offices of the Fairmont Hotel, where I resided.
 1. Yucatán Assignment

T
he friendly assistant editor wished me luck as he handed me last-minute
cable instructions. But in his Tennessee drawl there was unmistakable dis-
approval of the project that claimed his publisher’s keen personal interest.
‘‘For a quiet girl out of the Far and Golden West,’’ he said, ‘‘you’ve certainly
picked yourself the most incongruous pair of assignments around this man’s
office since ‘Rum and Romanism.’ ’’
When I asked him why, he answered: ‘‘That one is not hard to figure out. Have
you ever heard of a more absurdly mismatched copy team than archaeology and
free love? If you can name one, I’ll buy you a nice luncheon at Delmonico’s the
day you land back in town.’’
I reminded him of the well-known attraction of opposites, but I admitted
frankly that on the spur of the moment I couldn’t think of a more flagrant case
of incompatibility myself. Obviously, he would be spared the frightful expense
of the Delmonico affair.
I seriously doubted that the ‘‘free love’’ angle, a favorite theme of current yel-
low journalism when dealing with Yucatán, would meet the authenticity require-
ments of the respectable New York Times.
It struck me as just another one of those distorted slants so easy to get on our
nearest Southern neighbor. During my three months’ stay in Mexico the previ-
ous autumn I’d seen clever, even brilliant newspapermen become perfect dupes
of the oil interests. Unconsciously or otherwise, they were serving the highly
financed effort to overthrow the new Obregón Government. Their reports, for
the most part, were confused, inaccurate or thoroughly prejudiced, containing
little or no information on the immediate progress or constructive achievements
of the Social Revolution following the restoration of order after eight years of
bitter, bloody conflict. But I didn’t stop to argue the point. It was nearly eleven
o’clock. A registering taxicab was waiting downstairs, and I was scheduled to sail
at noon.
Yet the assistant editor’s rather flippant references to the venture that marked
72 Alma M. Reed

the most important step to date in my young professional life bothered me con-
siderably. I kept mildly brooding over it all the way to the Ward Line pier where
the steamship Mexico was already taking passengers bound for Gulf and Carib-
bean ports. It annoyed me most that not even a flash of Thackerayan ‘‘cab wit’’
had appeared to taunt me with a scintillating reply I might have made to him.
Still worse was the sneaking thought that he might be right.
It was a clear, vivid morning—a Thursday—and the date was February 8, 1923.
A southwest wind was gently stirring the winter numbness into a premature joie
de vivre of spring. Before going aboard, I stood in a brief, sentimental leave-
taking of Manhattan at the foot of Wall Street, my glance following its deep,
narrow canyon to where the dwarfed and unrelated steeple of Old Trinity closed
it on Broadway. I had been in New York for less than two weeks, barely long
enough to skim more than the dazzling surface enchantment. But the great city
on such short acquaintance had been cordial and exciting. I arrived from my
native San Francisco with a few established friendships among stage folk and in
the literary world. At the home of George Creel and his wife, Blanche Bates, I
met the Barrymores, Henry Miller, Ruth Chatterton, and other celebrities. Sev-
eral of my former colleagues, transplanted to the metropolitan newspaper row,
were flourishing in top editorial posts. Life soon became a festive sequence of
formal dinners, theater parties, intimate luncheons, and thés dansants. I loved
every instant of it and was looking forward to my return and to closer acquain-
tance with the town’s myriad wonders almost as eagerly as I anticipated the high
adventure of the Yucatecan jungles.
Romantic lingering in farewell of Wall Street was prompted by nostalgic
thoughts of my father. In all the hectic rounds of daily sightseeing, nothing had
evoked a deeper emotional impact than this same downtown district, which he
had so often feelingly described to me and his seven other children as a sacred
national shrine. The whole area was intimately associated in my mind with his
intense patriotism. It recalled the little American flags that always decorated our
family dinner table on national holidays, even for the observance of the less her-
alded anniversaries such as the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17. It brought into
new and more appreciative focus the big steel engravings that adorned the walls
of our old-fashioned dining room—Franklin Before the House of Lords and the
Delaware Crossing, balanced by full-length portraits of Henry Clay and Patrick
Henry in heroic attitudes, while, on either side of the tall mirror above the white
marble fireplace, George and Martha Washington looked benignly down upon
our evening meals from their oval-shaped walnut frames. The real memory link
between my distant home and Wall Street’s mighty canyon was Fraunces Tavern.
For, tucked in among the skyscrapers at Pearl and Broad, stood the small, white-
porticoed square brick building in which General Washington bade farewell to
peregrina 73

his officers in 1783. I can still hear my father relating the historic episode with
colorful detail, his voice vibrant with feeling that brought us all to the verge of
tears, especially the moving line that invariably closed the narrative—‘‘and then,
with thoughtful mien and slow step, he walked silently down to Whitehall.’’
But the appeal of the glamorous present and of the unknown, vaguely peril-
ous future soon broke in upon my reveries of cherished past things. With my
favorite traveler, George William Curtis, the poetic Howadji of the Nile Notes,
I could jubilantly announce that ‘‘to our young eyes, everything was picture.’’
Through my charmed perspective even the huge mechanical forms assumed out-
lines of beauty against the clouds. Diffused in white sunlight, they became chal-
lenging symbols. I likened their great towers to silver spears piercing heights of
the uttermost quest, demanding fulfillment of youthful dreams and ambitions.
And I knew that they would gracefully rise in my memory forever.
The sailing of the Mexico was a quiet, rather casual affair. There was none of
that flower-laden gaiety of sailing days I had known since childhood, when I
would accompany my parents to the San Francisco wharves to watch our friends
and relatives depart on the queenly Pacific liners for Hawaii, Australia, and the
far Orient. On deck, I noted but one familiar trace of bon voyage atmosphere. It
was provided by the reporters and their attendant cameramen, who, on the trail
of ‘‘close-ups’’ and interviews, had cornered several distinguished scientists rep-
resenting American museums, universities, and learned societies. The scientists,
like myself, were journeying to the ruined cities of the Maya in Yucatán. They
had been invited to assist in a preliminary survey for the large-scale explorations
to be launched the following year by the Carnegie Institution of Washington,
D.C., at Chichén Itzá, most renowned of the ruined Maya cities.
I accompanied the party as New York Times correspondent. Mr. Adolph Ochs,
the publisher, had engaged me to write a series of special feature articles for
the Sunday Magazine, and the managing editor, Mr. Carl Van Anda, wanted
cabled news coverage for the regular daily editions of the paper. I held, besides, an
order from Collier’s Magazine for a personality story on Yucatán’s Socialist Gov-
ernor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, whose radical labor and divorce legislation (‘‘free
love’’ program to the assistant editor) was then causing widespread and heated
controversy.
The early twenties represented the archaeologists’ heyday in practically every
corner of the globe. From Sweden to Mesopotamia, discoveries of ancient civili-
zations were numerous and startling. The archaeological theme all but monopo-
lized the daily press. Front-page headlines announced that the silence of cen-
turies had been broken at Carthage, Nineveh, Baalbek—that Ethiopia’s desolate
wastes had been invaded by the armies of science. Special editions in rotogra-
vure and in color were required to handle, adequately, accounts of the spec-
74 Alma M. Reed

tacular ‘‘finds.’’ Whole pages were devoted to descriptions of the dazzling ava-
lanche of treasure pouring from newly opened Egyptian tombs. Columns under
famous bylines were given over to the vanished splendor of Tut-Ankh-Amen and
the attempts to trace to their fated denouements his far-reaching curses on the
desecrators of his golden sarcophagus. Even New York Times editor Van Anda
turned Egyptologist to write a book on the exploits of Lord Carnarvon and
Howard Carter near ancient Thebes.
To all this massive publicizing a captivated popular imagination responded
with postwar gusto. Isis-inspired headgear and scarab jewelry became the vogue.
The ultra-fashionable managed to conform to mummy-case silhouettes. But
throughout this unprecedented archaeological activity—much of it financed and
engineered by United States expeditions—little or nothing was known by the
average American of the magnificent Maya temples and palaces within compara-
tively easy reach of New York and our southern ports. The apathy of the general
public in regard to these ancient monuments had long been, in fact, something
of an international scandal. As far back as 1831, a leading London gazette had
superciliously commented that if the Maya ruins were located in a country ac-
cessible to British travelers, they would have created a sensation unrivalled by
Pompeii or Herculaneum.
There was no lack of literature on the subject. Commentaries on the Spanish
Colonial chronicles of priests and navigators were plentiful. Outstanding was the
research of the French abbot Brasseur de Bourbourg, who in 1863 found in the
archives of the Academia Real de la Historia in Madrid, the manuscript to which
we owe our knowledge of the Mayan alphabet. The manuscript, An Account of the
Things of Yucatán was by Fray Diego de Landa, a Franciscan who served in Yuca-
tán between 1549 and 1562 and, during the later years, Bishop of the Province.
Moreover, there existed numerous works in many languages on the history of the
Maya and their pre-Columbian way of life. There were fascinating accounts by
such scholarly travelers as A. P. Maudslay, Désiré Charnay, the Baron Alexander
von Humboldt, to mention only a few. Paradoxically, North American scholars
were the major recent contributors to our knowledge of the Maya culture. One
of the most vital discoveries in the field of Middle American research had been
made by the California journalist and publisher J. T. Goodman, who, after years
of painstaking study, first deciphered, in 1890, the so-called Initial Series method
of dating, from hieroglyphic inscriptions on the monuments, basing his find-
ings on Maudslay’s detailed reproductions of the Maya sculpture. Incidentally,
Goodman, as editor of the Virginia City, Nevada, Enterprise, also enriched En-
glish Literature, when, with encouragement and guidance, he helped the young
Samuel Clemens to develop into the brilliant humorist known and loved as Mark
Twain. Even the standard book on the Maya ruins, Incidents of Travel in Central
peregrina 75

America, Chiapas, and Yucatán was written by an American explorer, John L.

Stephens. The notable work, published in 1841, was profusely illustrated by the
British artist Frederick Catherwood.
With the Carnegie-sponsored Maya survey, made possible through the ini-
tiative of Governor Carrillo, our national interest in the age-old architecture and
sculpture suddenly awakened. Public curiosity, finally shaken from its uncon-
cern, now focused the spotlight of information full glare upon the buried treasure
of the New World. We were no longer indifferent to our own archaeological heri-
tage. At last, it became a widely publicized theme. Press releases received by the
Times told of months of preparation for the survey in Yucatán. A year before the
event, the local archaeological society, headed by Governor Carrillo and com-
posed of prominent Yucatecans and one American woman—Mrs. W. James—
met in Mérida, the Yucatecan capital, to draft plans for the visit of the archae-
ologists and to initiate organized tourism. At a meeting held at the home of Sr.
Felipe G. Cantón, Governor Carrillo announced his intention to construct im-
mediately a twenty-five-mile highway between the railroad terminal at Dzitas
and the ruined city of Chichén Itzá, where only a stony trail led through the
jungles. As a repercussion of the announcement in the United States, a thrill of
hope ran through the halls of science as well as through the travel bureaus. And
both hailed the survey as the prelude to the greatest archaeological adventure of
western hemispheric research.
Keenly alive to the momentous possibilities involved, I looked forward to
the outcome with the greatest eagerness. Naively, I anticipated results, confident
that the excavator’s spade would in no time lay bare the secrets of the American
mother culture—secrets more baffling than those of forgotten Nile dynasties. If
the origin of the Maya race were definitely known, whole pages of recorded his-
tory would be subject to revision, countless pages of prehistory would no longer
remain blank. The enigma of our own continental beginnings had completely
captured my imagination and directed much of my reading. I could hardly wait
for the time-defying riddles to be solved and the wordy battles of the archaeolo-
gists settled without further discussion.
A few years earlier, two members of the survey party, Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley
of the Carnegie Middle American Research Program and Dr. Herbert J. Spinden
of the Peabody Museum, independently established the earliest date on a Maya
monument that could be regarded as historical. The time glyph engraved on the
nephrite carving known as the Tuxtla Statuette and found in the state of Vera-
cruz, coincided, according to Dr. Morley, with our year 96 b.c., while Dr. Spin-
den’s correlation fixed the date as 100 b.c. To the more academic gropers in the
Maya darkness, this decade—a century before the Christian era—loomed as a
solitary guidepost, and against it they leaned heavily. Meanwhile, however, they
76 Alma M. Reed

conceded that an equation derived from three identical ancient calendars—the

Aztec of the Valley of Mexico, the Cakchiquel and Quiché of Guatemala—gave
November 10, 3,485 b.c., as the first day of the Maya era. Between these widely
separated time markers and far beyond them and coherent history, speculation
was free to wander uninhibited along a choice of alluring paths. For, on all the
major problems of the Maya genesis, one man’s guess was still as good as an-
other’s. No one could make any unchallenged statements as to the whence, when,
and how of the Maya’s advent into Central America. The cradle of this mysterious
people had been variously placed in Asia, Africa, Polynesia, and North America.
Dr. Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution, whom I had interviewed, be-
lieved the Maya had crossed over from Asia either by way of an existing land
bridge north of the Bering Strait or by way of Kamchatka, using the Aleutian
Islands as their ‘‘stepping-stones.’’ This theory received the widest scientific ac-
ceptance. But other anthropologists insisted that the Maya was a true autoch-
thon of America, that he had evolved from lower forms on the continent and
had carried his culture to Egypt and other Mediterranean lands. There were, too,
many adherents of the ‘‘realist’’ school. A prominent one, D. G. Brinton, held
the Maya to be of remote Appalachian stock, a blood brother to our Seminole
and Creek and hailing from no more distant a provenance than Florida or the
Mississippi Valley. In another camp, under heretical ban, outside the wall of the
scientific dogma, was the large following of a ‘‘mystical’’ cult, influenced more
or less by Rosicrucian teachings. The mystics penetrated into shadowy realms
where fact and fable merge, clutching fervently at tenuous legends that linked
the Maya to a Lost Atlantis or to the allegedly sunken continent of Mu.
The sources advanced for the unique architecture were equally divergent. It
was generally classed as an ‘‘exotic’’—transplanted to Yucatán late in the Maya’s
development. But Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, Japan and Buddhist India,
Ceylon, Cambodia, and the Malay Peninsula could all put forth plausible claims
to the honor of nurturing an art regarded by Dr. Spinden and other eminent au-
thorities as ‘‘one of the few really great and coherent expressions of beauty so far
given to the world.’’
The Mexico was late starting on her ten-day cruise. But now, it was time to sail.
Amid the laughter and tears of last-minute ‘‘good-byes,’’ the ‘‘all-ashore’’ gong
sounded. But before the visitors hurried off toward the gangplank, a stronger
hand impulsively tightened its grip over my own on the deck rail. Into my pri-
vate ear a man’s husky voice whispered: ‘‘Dearest in all the world, go for a little
while that will seem eternity, and keep me in your heart.’’ Then the anchors were
lifted. We moved out into the open waters. From the receding dock, the charm-
ing romanticist who met me at the boat and who had been an admirable friend
and guide—if unreliable philosopher—since my arrival in New York, was waving
a final ‘‘bon voyage.’’
peregrina 77

This was my first Atlantic voyage. The occasion seemed to merit postal cards
to my family in San Francisco, all bearing the single news item that I was about
to pass the Statue of Liberty. The event, I knew, would give them as great a thrill
as it would give me. Far Western Americanism of the day paid ardent if distant
devotion to the goddess whose arms extended generous and perpetual welcome
to the oppressed of the earth from the Eastern edge of the continent. California’s
patriotic orisons may, it is true, have included the postscript: ‘‘Let the oppressed
of the earth stay right there on the Atlantic seaboard, dear Lord! We already have
far too many foreigners on the Pacific Coast.’’ But as we sailed down the bay and
approached ever closer to the torch that lights the world, my own homage to
the gracious symbol of our national meaning was uncomplicated by doubts or
question.
A distinguished-looking young Mexican cut short my reflection with deck
pleasantries. He introduced himself as Roberto Casas Alatriste, member of the
Chamber of Deputies and chairman of the Committee for the Settlement of Mex-
ico’s National Debt, then meeting with the International Bankers in New York.
We talked about his country, which I had left only six weeks before. I learned
that Liberty’s light-shedding torch was a symbol tragically entwined with his
own story and his present unexpected trip. He had just been advised of the death
of his mother, who was a member of the family of Aquiles Serdán, the Revolu-
tionary leader and martyr. He related how she had escaped almost miraculously,
when, on November 18, 1910, nineteen of her relatives and dearest friends were
massacred in the Serdán home in Puebla, with the discovery of the impending
Madero revolt. Plotted outbreaks scheduled to occur simultaneously over the
Republic on November 20 had been revealed when Madero’s correspondence was
seized. Sr. Casas Alatriste, a youth of eighteen at the time, went to the railroad
station in Mexico City to board the train, intending to join the Puebla Revolu-
tionists according to plan. Boys at the station were selling the evening newspaper,
headlines announcing the shooting of his cousins Aquiles and Máximo, with
seventeen other ‘‘Anti-Reelectionists’’; when outnumbered and surrounded by
the Díaz police, Aquiles had stood to the very last, shouting defiance of the des-
pot. Roberto did not go to Puebla that day. On his father’s side, Sr. Casas Alatriste
was descended from the brother of Bartolomé de las Casas, the revered humani-
tarian Bishop of Chiapas who devoted his life to the cause of the exploited Indians
after the Conquest. Tall and of robust build, the young official had the regular
features, brown hair, and clear, fair complexion of pure European ancestry. But
the intense pride that flashed in his dark eyes, whenever, during the voyage, we
discussed ‘‘Revolución Social,’’ left no doubt as to his faith in a Mestizo Mexico.
His plans were shaped and his hopes were colored by the conviction that the
merging of two venerable cultures in the ‘‘Third Race’’ and the achievement of
a stable patria 1 represented his country’s highest destiny.
78 Alma M. Reed

Another Mexican, Sr. Luis G. Molina, was seated at my table in the dining
salon. In appearance, temperament, and viewpoint, he was the direct opposite
of Sr. Casas Alatriste. A Yucatecan, Sr. Molina had long been a resident of New
York. He was returning to his native Mérida for a brief holiday during the Carni-
val season. Apparently in his mid-forties, he was short and muscular, with sandy
hair and light hazel eyes. Glistening thick-lensed glasses heightened the contrast
of a tropical pallor and emphasized a general misanthropic aura. He was the
grandson of Olegario Molina, Yucatán’s multimillionaire governor in the Díaz
regime. I was already aware that the name ‘‘Molina’’ was synonymous in Mexico
with the iron rule of the hacendado, or landed proprietor. I had heard and read
of the able executive and his unbridled pre-Revolutionary power. He had orga-
nized an oligarchy of fifty land barons and had solidified the peonage labor sys-
tem, under which the hacienda, or estate, yielded its vast revenues in sisal hemp
known as the ‘‘green gold’’ of Yucatán. His condemnation of Indian communal
lands in his capacity of Governor, for personal aggrandizement in the capacity
of hacendado owning fifteen million acres of land in Yucatán, was a notorious
and often cited case in the struggle for agrarian reform. In my long talks with Sr.
Molina he would invariably extol the greatness of his state in ancient, colonial,
and científico 2 times and dismiss the present as a ‘‘hopeless muddle.’’ His disap-
proval of all governments since the fall of the dictatorship and particularly that
of the Partido Socialista, was sweeping and complete. To Governor Carrillo, the
head of the party, he attributed serious faults and shortcomings as well as de-
structive social and economic policies. It was from him I first learned that the
Governor was known to the hacendados as the ‘‘red dragon with eyes of jade.’’ He
felt, he said, that it was his duty to warn me against the ‘‘dragon’s’’ wiles. I did not
doubt Molina’s sincerity, but he did not deceive me. His evaluation of any Social-
ist, or, as he called it, ‘‘Bolshevist,’’ government, was of little worth; his reason-
ing seldom strayed beyond class interest. Nevertheless, I welcomed his opinions
and wrote them down for future reference. It indeed seemed a streak of luck to
learn in advance from so authoritative a spokesman the arguments and political
views of the hacendados. We discussed the henequen market and philosophies of
government.3 Impersonal issues—but before Carnival season came again, they
would enmesh our personal destinies. In all the years ahead, this quiet, uninspir-
ing fellow voyageur would call up tragic memories for me. Yet no premonition of
a star-crossed future disturbed our deck conversations. Cultists of the dead past
who, with a blind faith, worshipped the name of Molina had already marked its
victim. But through those pleasant Caribbean hours, no warning was flashed of
an onrushing doom, impelled by lex talionis, the law of revenge.
 2. Southward

O
n board the Mexico were several other Yucatecans, all of them members
of the landed aristocracy and shareholders in the one-hundred-million-
dollar sisal industry. It seemed logical that they wished to be known as
Yucatecos, as their feeling for Mexican nationality was, at best, lukewarm. They
showed, at least, no enthusiasm for the progressive currents then quickening the
Republic into vigorous life. The boundaries of their ‘‘patria chica,’’ 1 or little coun-
try, defined their patriotic horizons. One might easily suppose them to be citizens
of a foreign land or of some isolated racial group about as remote from happen-
ings in the Mexican capital as our own Aleuts from the affairs in Washington, D.C.
All appeared to share Sr. Molina’s prejudice against the Socialist regime. Some
were openly bitter. But no one of the group was willing to be pinned down to spe-
cific charges or to be quoted on the new government’s alleged ‘‘flagrant injustice’’
and unidentified ‘‘crimes.’’ Their mystifying innuendos aroused my curiosity but
failed to stir indignation.
I was not unprepared for the existing hatred of the old reactionary against the
new Revolutionary order. Fortunately, I had read a remarkable book, Barbarous
Mexico, by John Kenneth Turner, which exposed the shocking conditions dur-
ing the Díaz dictatorship with particular emphasis and documentation on the
virtual enslavement of the Maya and Yaqui Indians to the lords of the henequen
empire of Yucatán.2 And while in Mexico a few months earlier, I chanced upon
a detailed study of the current Yucatán situation in The Pulse of Mexico, a small
English-language review published monthly in the capital.
The author, Mr. A. G. B. Hart, analyzed the program of Yucatán’s Socialist ad-
ministration, of which Felipe Carrillo Puerto had assumed control as Governor
on February 5, 1922, having been elected to office by an overwhelming popular
vote. The article gave a brief historical background of henequen development
and distribution and an account of the fluctuating fortunes of the hacendados
since the First World War. His article, Mr. Hart modestly claimed, ‘‘made up in
truth what it lacked in craftsmanship,’’ and unlike much American reporting on
80 Alma M. Reed

Mexico, often from an easy chair in some comfortable office many miles north
of the Rio Grande, it had been written in an atmosphere of personal experience
and had come ‘‘hot forged from the anvil of immediate contact.’’ For me the
article was a determinative event. I thought it tremendously exciting and pro-
foundly significant that such a forward-looking, courageous system as the author
indicated was being given a trial anywhere on the American continent, although
Mr. Hart was careful to point out, everything was either quite tentative or in
an incipient stage. Maurice Becker’s caricature sketches, which illustrated the
article, contained no element of propaganda. They were decidedly unflattering to
Governor Carrillo, the Socialists, Feministas, Maya Indians, and all concerned.
Yet my imagination was intrigued by this New World Ultima Thule.3 I wanted to
know more about it, to investigate it for myself.
During my first Mexican visit I had written weekly articles for the New York
Times Magazine. Before my departure from San Francisco on that trip in late Au-
gust 1922, Mr. Ochs had requested a series on the nation’s new cultural, social,
and economic trends. While in Mexico City, I learned of the proposed Carne-
gie Survey to be launched the following spring. The prospect of accompanying
the expedition as a journalist was a glamorous temptation. But while I informed
Mr. Ochs of the project, I did not seek the assignment. Nothing could have ap-
pealed to me more at the time than a visit to Yucatán’s ruined cities, even though
the trip would upset an established order. None too willingly, I had been granted
by my editors a three-month leave of absence from my San Francisco news-
paper commitment and in addition there were public activities, university study
courses, and even an incipient political career to be considered. Common sense
and conscience dictated my return to the daily routine at the conclusion of my
brilliant Mexican holiday. I doubtless would have obeyed these ‘‘practical urges,’’
if the Hart article had not reached me at a psychological moment, even though a
letter from Mr. Ochs suggested that I come to New York immediately after Christ-
mas to make the necessary arrangements to accompany the Carnegie scientists
to Yucatán. It was the Hart article that had definitely sounded an inner sum-
mons, determining all my ‘‘important’’ actions. I wired acceptance of the plan
and returned to San Francisco on Christmas Day to announce my temporary
withdrawal from journalistic and social activities there.
The sudden decision to break with the pleasant rhythm of work and study, and
the promising future career I had so painstakingly fostered, was partly due per-
haps to a growing awareness that my life pattern was to be involved with Mexico.
Promptings far more cogent than expediency or acquired habit interpreted as
duty had been steadily if unconsciously drawing me southward since young girl-
hood, when I first became an earnest student of Mexico’s past and present.
As we sailed through tranquil Antillean seas—in those days, Havana was a
five-day journey from New York—I indulged in mental and emotional stocktak-
peregrina 81

ing when not conversing with the scientists or my new Mexican friends. One by
one I reviewed the links in the chain of events that finally attracted me to the
land constantly dominating my imagination and to which I was now returning.
I knew that the first steps in Mexico’s direction, like most of my deeper urges,
could be traced to the influence of my father. As a young mining engineer, he had
spent some months in various parts of the Mexican Republic. He had learned to
speak a passable Spanish and had carried away with him happy memories of the
country and a warm regard for its people. His fascinating accounts of village fies-
tas and of the quaint charm of old colonial cities captivated my childish fancy.
Later, my intensive reading of travel books and cursory archaeological studies
fanned my interest into an absorbing hobby.
But the predestined road to Mexico began to assume concrete shape when I
started a daily feature column in the San Francisco Call, with the aim of various
forms of social service. Significantly, the general period of my newspaper activi-
ties was marked by rampant scheming of the interventionists. The Mexican in the
United States and particularly in California received no coddling and scant sym-
pathy. In most quarters he was regarded as an inferior being and, in the common
usage of the day, was referred to as a ‘‘greaser.’’ When he was unfortunate enough
to clash with the law, he was often the victim of questionable justice. Usually, he
found himself at the mercy of intolerant jurors, the logical spokesmen of a biased
public opinion. Popular prejudice was heightened by the keen competition that
followed the influx of cheap Mexican labor across the international boundaries
during and after the long period of Revolutionary chaos.
Many refugees from Mexico’s violence and insecurity were stranded in differ-
ent parts of the Pacific Coast and were financially unable, after peace had been
restored, to return to their homeland. Wherever labor competition was especially
intense, these uprooted Mexicans formed deeply resented minority groups. Jobs
were particularly scarce in the Bay region, where discharged veterans of the First
World War swelled the ranks of the unemployed. Hundreds of ex-servicemen in
Oakland and in San Francisco were still living on the free meals doled out by
civic relief agencies. Aggravating the tense situation were the recurrent echoes of
the familiar threat: ‘‘Let’s send the military into Mexico and protect American
investors.’’ The chauvinistic slogan was frankly voiced in the statewide California
press and in the street meetings of the rabble-rousing ‘‘one hundred percenters.’’
Wealthy Mexican exiles—die-hard reactionaries of the ousted Díaz regime—
ever hopeful of staging a comeback, subsidized the more belligerent journalism
and the curbstone Ciceros. Often their efforts at stirring up hatred met with suc-
cess, since border raids on neighboring states were still fresh in public memory.
The new Obregón Government had not yet had sufficient time to demonstrate
its stability and constructive policies.
Under these conditions, needy Mexican families were daily being brought to
82 Alma M. Reed

my notice, and I always welcomed a chance to help them. I was not only inter-
ested in Mexico but also admittedly prejudiced in its favor, sympathetic with the
struggle of its people for release from exploitation and enormously intrigued by
their mysterious past. Moreover, among our family friends were Mexicans of rare
culture. I had come to know our Southern neighbors well—to appreciate and
respect them. The injustices and discourtesies these ‘‘strangers in a strange land’’
were forced to endure and the growing threat to their national sovereignty ig-
nited my congenital crusading spirit. I had inherited from the Irish poets of my
father’s ancestry a tendency to champion unpopular causes; from my mother’s
long line of Virginia Revolutionary patriots—framers of the Mecklenburg Dec-
laration of Independence in 1775 and later Kentucky Abolitionists—the urge to
remedy abuses. In cooperation with local and national labor organizations, I en-
gaged, as a writer, in campaigns to benefit Mexican workers. One such movement
attempted to improve the disgraceful living conditions of seasonal laborers in
the Alaskan fisheries.
In my daily column, I described, under the pen name of ‘‘Mrs. Goodfellow,’’
cases of want and suffering among San Francisco’s impoverished families, a large
percentage of whom were Mexican nationals. In several instances, the generous
response to my appeals had resulted in the relief of immediate distress and had
opened up for these helpless Mexicans opportunities for normal living.
The incident, however, that dramatically brought me in close touch with the
Mexican government, and with the Mexican people, grew out of my interest in
prison reform. It had been my practice for some months to visit San Quentin
Penitentiary on Wednesdays, often with an older woman, who was a well-known
social worker. When occasion arose we would make ‘‘last mercy’’ calls on men
who were sentenced to die the following Friday morning. I learned from the
celebrated Tom Mooney, during one of his frequent court appearances in San
Francisco, that I was known to the inmates of San Quentin as ‘‘the Rose of Mur-
derer’s Row.’’
On my weekly visit of January 19, 1921, I saw quite by accident on the warden’s
desk an undelivered engraved invitation to the scheduled hanging of the sixteen-
year-old Mexican boy Simón Ruiz. When I inquired, the warden, with a trace
of compassion in his voice, informed me that the condemned youth spoke no
English and that not a single person had called on him during his two months’
imprisonment at San Quentin. Moved and shocked, I asked permission to see
him, offering to forgo the privilege of my next week’s prison visit. ‘‘Why not?’’
replied the warden as he signed my pass for my return to the prison yard. I ques-
tioned the guards, including the one chosen by lot for Friday morning’s grim job.
Some of them expressed sympathy as they commented on the incredible facts of
the Mexican boy’s trial, later confirmed by Simón himself when—never more
peregrina 83

thankful for my ‘‘workable’’ if un-academic Spanish—I interviewed him in the

death house.
Simón’s story disclosed that a year before he had come to Bakersfield from
his home in Sonora to work as a carpenter’s helper and that since his arrival
his record had been flawless. His father had been killed in the Revolution and
from his twelfth year he was the chief support of his widowed mother and several
younger sisters and brothers. In a fit of anger provoked by an insult on his race—
he had been called a ‘‘greaser’’—and spurred on in his resentment by an older
Mexican, Miranda, known as a ‘‘bad hombre,’’ Simón waylaid the foreman and
assaulted him. The two fought for some fifteen minutes, and three weeks later, the
foreman died of the effects of the blows. Miranda fled across the Mexican border.
After two trials—the first ending in jury disagreement—the boy was sentenced
to hang. But he entered San Quentin unaware that he had been condemned to
death. He did not understand the verdict, and the court-appointed lawyer did
not take the trouble to have the sentence translated for him. He learned his fate
only a few days before the scheduled execution from a Spanish-speaking pris-
oner who sat with him in the condemned men’s box at San Quentin’s Christmas
vaudeville show. Upon hearing the truth, Simón shrieked and fainted and had to
be carried back to his cell. Believing that the boy, who looked even younger than
his years, was doomed to die a horrible death within a few hours, I left him emo-
tionally shaken and in tears. But I lost no time in telephoning my editor, Emil
Gough, the kindly ‘‘boss’’ and the father of two young sons. As an enterprising
newspaperman, he instantly saw the possibility of arousing strong public feel-
ing over the imminent hanging. He gave me carte blanche to use all the ‘‘white
paper’’ necessary for the telling of the whole story. Although ‘‘precious little time
remained,’’ he observed, ‘‘there was a chance in a million’’ for us to obtain a stay
of execution.
My lengthy exposition of the case with its flagrant miscarriage of justice
—which construed provoked manslaughter, carrying a ten-year sentence—
together with the boy’s story, an analysis of the state’s outmoded penal code and
my interview with the hangman, appeared on the front page of all six editions
of the San Francisco Call the next day. The article opened with the line: ‘‘Invita-
tions are in the mail today to the hanging of sixteen-year-old Simón Ruíz,’’ and
was followed by a stark, realistic description, as told to me by the hangman, of
precisely what the state’s guests would see at the ghastly function to which they
had been formally invited. I had asked the hangman not to spare my feelings,
and in my account I did not spare my readers. The newspaper was hardly out
on the street when telegrams, letters, and telephone calls began to pour into the
Call editorial rooms and to the Governor’s office in Sacramento.
Before midnight, editor Gough phoned me to announce the good news carried
84 Alma M. Reed

in an Associated Press dispatch. At the last hour, Governor Stephens had granted
a thirty-day stay of execution. I immediately decided to give up all other activities
and devote myself exclusively to an intensive effort to save the young Mexican’s
life. I wrote daily articles, organized ‘‘mercy’’ crusades, and addressed scores of
groups and organizations on the injustices involved in the Ruíz murder convic-
tion. By the time the reprieve expired, so many protesting delegations of club-
women, educators, humane societies, and religious bodies—several of which I
personally led—had descended upon Sacramento that it was not too difficult to
obtain three later reprieves.
But another youth—a few months older—committed murder before the ex-
piration of Simón’s final commutation of sentence, and in the emergency, I con-
ceived the idea of changing California’s law in regard to capital punishment for
minors. Under the existing statute, the death penalty could be exacted at four-
teen years of age. Accordingly, I framed the so-called Saylor Bill, the state’s only
woman legislator, Mrs. Florence Saylor, permitting me to use her name. A lobby,
which I headed, was organized by the bill’s supporters, and I went to Sacramento
to direct the work of the committees and to write the arguments—based on statis-
tics showing the inadequacy of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime—
for the speakers. The moving eloquence of a family friend, Representative Roy
Fellom, father of the state’s Public Defender Act and other progressive legislation,
secured passage through the Lower House. But in the Senate the measure was
tied. The deciding vote belonged to the President, who was on record as strongly
opposing the bill. He had once assured me that it was ‘‘just as final to be clonked
on the head by a youth of sixteen as by one of eighteen.’’
Believing all hope was lost, I sat on the Capitol’s steps and wept profusely. For-
tunately, I had selected a spot near the gentlemen’s cloakroom for giving emo-
tional vent to my disappointment and profound sorrow. While I was weeping,
a kindly senator, John N. Inman, stopped as he passed by to inquire the cause
of my distress. Without even looking up, I answered through my sobs, ‘‘I’ve lost
the Boy Hanging Bill!’’
‘‘And by how many votes, may I ask?’’
His question brought on a fresh flood of tears. My head still buried in my
hands, I managed to tell him—none too coherently—that the score was tied and
I knew the president would cast a decisive negative vote.
‘‘Well, young woman, since you are taking this matter so much to heart, I’ll
go back and change my vote, that I will.’’
Thus, by Senator Inman’s ballot, Lieutenant Governor Young was prevented
from voting and the way was opened for reconsideration. As a result, California’s
antiquated Penal Code—a survival of lawless ‘‘sheep stealing’’ days of the early
1850’s—was altered by the slender margin of a single vote, and the minimum age
peregrina 85

for capital punishment was fixed at eighteen years. Before the drafting of the act,
I had tried to extend it, to have it coincide with the age at which a citizen is quali-
fied to exercise the right of suffrage. But in order to win any concession beyond
the statutory fourteen-year minimum, I was forced to accept the compromise.
I was given public credit for the adoption of the humane act both from groups
who approved and from groups who disapproved. Entirely unknown to me at the
time, the Mexican press, which had closely followed developments, applauded
my successful campaign. Shortly after the Simón Ruiz case and the passage of
the ‘‘Boy Hanging Bill,’’ as it became popularly known, I received a platinum
vanity case that bore the inscription: ‘‘Respectfully presented by the Mexican
Government to Alma M. Sullivan Reed, in high appreciation of her altruistic
efforts.’’ A few days later, the Consul General, Sr. Alejandro Lubbert, delivered to
me an invitation from President and Señora Obregón to visit Mexico as a semi-
official guest.
Friends and relatives strongly opposed acceptance of the invitation, predict-
ing that I would be ‘‘murdered in my bed’’ or, at least, kidnapped as a result
of such a foolhardy adventure. Even my father gently cautioned me, as he saw
me board the train at the Oakland pier, against the ‘‘often fatal attraction of the
exotic.’’
All the fears and doubts, however, proved to be groundless, even though I
myself faced sad disillusion at the international border. I had eagerly been wait-
ing to shout, ‘‘Beautiful Mexico,’’ as I crossed over the Rio Grande from El Paso
to Ciudad Juárez. Instead, I smothered the exclamation, ‘‘Poor Mexico!’’ At that
period, the entire Juárez business section looked to be nothing more than a series
of swinging cantina doors opening upon unpaved streets. The offensive odor of
stale beer and the equally offensive jazz from wheezy phonographs further pol-
luted the atmosphere. The few dwellings along the dusty road that led to the rail-
road station were ugly hovels. It did not occur to me then that American enter-
prise was largely responsible for the crude, unwholesome aspect of Juárez and
that, far from being a typical Mexican town, it was merely the messy backyard of
Texas. I learned later that the section I saw that day was maintained almost exclu-
sively for ‘‘los gringos’’ and that ‘‘los gringos’’ owned most of the swinging-door
establishments.
On the Pullman, the passengers—all Mexican men—had a very disconcert-
ing, casual sort of way of throwing their pistols about as they arranged their lug-
gage or overcoats for the journey. The dismal prophecies of friends and relatives,
which I had so lightly laughed off, now started to ring in my ears with nerve-
wracking insistence.
It was through blurred eyes that I took a parting glance at Old Glory wav-
ing from the top of the Hotel Paso del Norte on our side of the frontier bridge.
86 Alma M. Reed

An executive of the National Railways who occupied the seat opposite, trying to
cheer me, said: ‘‘Don’t look so downhearted, young lady, just because you are
going into a country where no man’s afraid of a traffic cop and where each man
believes he’s an emperor!’’ His well-intentioned analysis of Mexican psychology
was hardly reassuring. Yet it carried more comfort than my father’s haunting
words of farewell: ‘‘Mexico is enchanting, but it is also a land of illusion!’’
But once past the dreary ‘‘coyote lands,’’ the enchantment became a real-
ity. Gradually, the unique Mexican pageant unfolded in fleeting, ever ascending
glimpses of distinguished old cities and of humble pueblos—warm with color
and vibrant with the music of guitars that drifted after the moving train. One
little group of mariachi singers, at the Aguascalientes station, I think it was, sang
‘‘Alma de mi Alma’’ with such an appealing note of personal welcome in their
voices that I decided to do my gift shopping on the spot and, from the car win-
dow, I stocked up with enough opals to bring years of disaster upon any normally
superstitious household. By the time I reached the luxurious altitudes of ‘‘la capi-
tal,’’ I felt thoroughly at home—never more conscious of being in an American
country or of my New Worldishness. I was met by a small caravan of automobiles
and carriages, and when, at the head of a triumphal procession, I arrived at the
Hotel Regis, I found my apartment and bathroom bulging with huge bouquets
of gorgeous flowers, with a birdcage or two added for good measure. Almost
accusingly, I asked myself: ‘‘Where have you been all your life?’’
 3. Antillean Interlude

T
he five and a half sailing days separating Manhattan’s Broadway and Ha-
vana’s malecón 1 were passed in avid pursuit of ‘‘background’’ material.
During the early sun-drenched hours, I read absorbing books on Mexico’s
ancient and modern history. I would interview, in the long afternoons, archae-
ologists on their previous findings in the Middle American field or question them
about their theories of Maya origin. In frequent conversations, I gathered from
totally different viewpoints—represented by the Yucatán reactionary Don Luis
Molina and the progressive young economist Sr. Casas Alatriste—opinions on
the Reform, the Revolution, the Constitution, and on all the tragic events and
the top-level treachery that had stained the pages of the Mexican story between
Madero and Obregón. A note in my diary, dated February 11, indicates the seri-
ousness with which I regarded the Times assignment. ‘‘I have determined to work
today as never before,’’ I wrote. ‘‘My one desire now is to prove myself worthy of
the confidence that Mr. Ochs placed in me. I will not, must not, let him down.’’
But at night in my cabin all the energetic efficiency of youthful ambition dis-
solved into waking dreams. Romantically, I lingered over flattering memories of
the recent past—hearing again the endearing words of the husky-voiced charmer
who had accompanied me to the dock and who eagerly awaited my return. Or,
picturing myself at the side of the great Unknown Beloved, I fashioned an ideal
future scheme of things.
At moments, I felt I was drifting—helplessly yet willingly—towards some im-
mense reality that would suddenly divert the currents of my thought and action
to broader, deeper channels. Then, with an ever-present spirit of self-criticism, I
would reprove my imagination for its reckless Icarian soaring towards the regions
of the wing-singeing sun. Hope and desire, however, continued to color unin-
hibited speculation. I kept wondering what new knowledge, what life-shaping
events and personalities, I would encounter on this second visit to the country
that had already so mysteriously yet so definitely seemed related to my individual
destiny.
88 Alma M. Reed

And, half in promise, half in warning, a new awareness spoke in my heart:

‘‘You are sailing to Ultima Thule to keep your most decisive rendezvous with
fate.’’ Yet even in the land of the enigmatic Maya, it would be difficult, I realized,
to recapture the magic of that first Mexican visit, which I could now appreciate
in clear perspective. I began to see, too, that Mexico’s tremendous emotional im-
pact had been due not merely to my own temperamental responsiveness, but to
historic reasons that were constantly being clarified for me by my new shipboard
acquaintances.
My arrival six months earlier in the Mexican capital—it gradually dawned
upon my Antillean reflections—had coincided with a golden moment in the na-
tional existence, a moment without precedent or possibility of duplication. Now,
as I looked back, it all seemed as though I had been watching a great century
plant, that aggressive, symbolic agave, so indispensably a part of the Mexican
pattern, burst suddenly into magnificent flowering to fill the scene with joyous
repercussions of its release to the light after a long darkness. And this, I now
understood, was its appointed hour of florescence, Mexico’s true Centennial!
Exactly a hundred years had passed since the birth of national freedom. Inde-
pendence dated from September 16, 1810, but the violent conflict of separation
from Spain lasted for another twelve years, and it was not until 1822 that the first
Mexican Congress met to draw up a Constitution and lay the cornerstone of the
future Republic.
The deck conversations with Sr. Casas Alatriste, whose own background was
dramatically entwined with every period of post-Conquest Mexican history,
clarified social, political, and economic situations that had previously seemed
vague or obscure. His illuminating facts also served to highlight new aspects of
Mexican character and heroism. Now more than ever Mexico became for me not
only the scene of an eager professional interest but the object of my sincere ad-
miration and affection. With poignant awareness, I could now fully appreciate
the generous hospitality that had been showered upon me from the moment of
my arrival in the Mexican Republic. For knowing at first hand the people and
their emphasis on human values, on the things of the heart and the spirit, I could
more readily understand the gracious invitation of President Obregón to visit
his country. It no longer seemed extraordinary but merely a Mexican gesture
that, burdened as he was with heavy responsibilities and grave perils, he should
have reached out from his war-torn land across a continent, to a nation that
still withheld recognition from his government, to acknowledge gratefully the
sympathetic understanding and the acts of friendship of a young and relatively
unknown newspaper writer.
With fresh emotion, I recalled, as we sailed, all the enchantment I had ab-
sorbed during those three eventful months. I responded anew to the high ad-
peregrina 89

venture of nation building in which I had been a privileged spectator and, on

occasion, even a participant. I relived the vivid experiences of the officially ar-
ranged tours under ideal and, for the period, unique conditions. At that time,
Mexico could count on very few friends anywhere. I was spontaneously received
as one of the small company and, wherever I went, was received as a ‘‘goodwill
ambassadress.’’ But I carried no portfolio other than my little inscribed platinum
vanity case. I did not have the slightest need of any formal title or sponsorship.
For, on all my travels, poetic accounts of the Simón Ruíz incident, which had
been featured in the press of the capital and of the larger cities, preceded me. Even
in the isolated villages of Jalisco, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Puebla, where news-
papers were scarce, some primitive yet remarkably functional ‘‘grapevine’’ must
have been responsible for the fiestas and the banquetes given in honor of ‘‘la niña
periodista,’’ as they called me.2
At the time, I was a tall, slender young woman with an oval face, chestnut
brown hair, classic features, fair skin, and very large dark blue eyes. Despite an
early idealistic marriage that had soon ended in divorce and despite my almost
daily contact with life’s misery and tragedy as a journalist and as an apprentice
social and prison worker, I was continuously being assured: ‘‘You have such a
happy, angelical, ‘little girl’ look, as though you have never known sorrow or had
ever been in love!’’
But the most important consideration, perhaps, in establishing my popularity
was the elusive, inexplicable fact that Mexico had found me personally simpática.
In official circles, the federal departments arranged conferencias and invited me
on expeditions to distant places, so that I might have ‘‘eyewitness’’ information
on the nation’s problems. On several occasions, I was received at Chapultepec
by Sra. Obregón and at the National Palace by the President, with whom I led
the grand march at an Armistice Day Ball on November 11, 1922. I was frequently
entertained at the homes of cabinet ministers and members of Congress. Under
the potent spell of Mexico’s Renaissance, I had discovered among the Mexicans
unimagined levels of individual and collective inspiration. An irresistible surge
of creative effort in all fields of constructive activity accompanied public elation
over the end of bloodshed and the restoration of order. It was the moment at
which the Mexican people first realized that they could counterbalance their ter-
rific losses with material and spiritual gains. Victory had cost nearly a decade
of destruction, misery, and sorrow and the toll of approximately two million
lives. The prevailing courage to reshape an unsatisfactory scheme of things could
hardly have been more in evidence at any time, anywhere.
An atmosphere of political calm apparently provided a smooth course for the
return of normalcy. President Álvaro Obregón had assumed office in December
1920, and during the year and a half that followed, there had been a steady swing
90 Alma M. Reed

to public order. Fortunate internal and external events combined to hasten sta-
bilization. Restored railroad service and property protection were among the
more encouraging first results of the process. Business flourished—the oil output
of the year just ended breaking all records, due to Supreme Court decisions in
favor of the petroleum companies, without loss of Revolutionary ‘‘face.’’ In June,
Mexico had assumed full obligation for the principal of her foreign debt and for
the defaulted interest; technical details of the agreement were later worked out
in New York by the committee of which Sr. Casas Alatriste was chairman. Treaties
had just been concluded with France and England, and friendly relations with
the United States had not yet been strained by the implementation of the ad-
ministration’s oil and agrarian policies. Newspapers of the capital were carrying
statements from the Mexican Embassy expressing hearty approval of Washing-
ton’s moves on behalf of persecuted Mexican laborers in the Texas oil fields. The
important Mexico City daily, El Mundo, ventured the first prediction of early
recognition. Secretary of War Serrano reported a definite trend towards peace,
the only statement of its kind to come from his office in many years. Interrupted
momentarily by a flurry of charges and denials that Catholic priests were sup-
porting Fascism with the aim to control the government, there was, in effect, a
truce with the church, while enforcement of the anti-clerical provisions of the
Constitution still remained in abeyance.
Labor organizations again came out into the open with increased member-
ships and added influence, after their drastic suppression under Carranza.3 Rival
unions freely aired their quarrels in spirited demonstrations. From my window
in the Hotel Regis, I watched daily parades along Avenida Juárez. The objective
of the workers, carrying red-and-black CROM 4 banners, was the plant of El Uni-
versal, where the entire staff of 250 members had just formed a new union of
newspaper writers and pressmen. The owner, Sr. Félix F. Palavicini, intellectual
leader of the Renovators 5 during the Constitutional debates of 1917, closed down
his paper for a week in protest against an attempt by Luis G. Morones to force
his staff to join the politically powerful CROM. When I visited El Universal in
late September with Sr. Elías G. de Lima, the building was still barricaded against
further assaults and we had to take a roundabout way to Sr. Palavicini’s edito-
rial sanctum. But publication had been resumed and, for the time being at least,
‘‘freedom of the press’’ was triumphant.
Outside of a few permanently irreconcilable elements, whose spokesmen I
occasionally met at social functions in the Casino Español or in the home of Díaz
regime families, President Obregón appeared to be the idol of a united people.
His ruddy ‘‘Irish’’ face, genial smile, and thoroughly human personality, and his
one arm marking him as a hero and identifying him with sacrifice for his coun-
try, became a rallying point for popular enthusiasm whenever he appeared in
public. Everywhere, there was faith in his promise to educate Mexico in the prac-
peregrina 91

tice of democracy. This faith grew stronger as it became daily more apparent that
he shunned military dictatorship and hastened political rehabilitation. It was
capped in December 1922 by the passage of a bill granting amnesty to all politi-
cal prisoners. The fervor of Indian orators at pueblo celebrations, particularly at
fiestas connected with the ejidos 6 programs, their prolonged and vigorous ¡vivas!
for government officials, individually and collectively, indicated a new spirit of
confidence. It was evident that the masses, encouraged by the fulfillment of old
promises to distribute lands, emerged hopefully from the cataclysmic wreckage
of the peonage system to duly exercise their guaranteed rights and liberties.
During the first months of his administration, General Obregón established
some twelve thousand elementary schools, most of them developed from the
‘‘Missionary’’ units.7 Practical rural education was under the direction of Ramón
P. de Negri, Minister of Fomento y Agricultura,8 whom I had known in San
Francisco when he was Mexican Consul General there. The forceful official, with
the swarthy complexion, broad shoulders, and compact build that distinguished
many of the Mexican Revolutionary leaders, was almost as prominently in the
limelight as the administration’s ‘‘strong man,’’ General Plutarco Elías Calles him-
self. With pronounced and radical convictions, de Negri dealt boldly with the
agrarian question, upon which the current peace and hopefulness rested. In sev-
eral interviews he had outlined for me his proposed development of land grants,
cooperative organizations, speedy return of ejidos to Indian communities, and
his daring plan of complete nationalization of the land.
With the engineers of the Department of Forestry and Fisheries, I journeyed
into mountain regions of the state of Hidalgo to see how the government worked,
through the reforestation and preservation of timberlands, to prevent ‘‘dust
bowls’’ for future agriculturists.
Unforgettable mornings were spent in the recesses of the National Archives,
examining Mexico’s documentary treasures. The director, Don Rafael López, the
Jaliscience poet-author of that thunderous invective against ‘‘the Monster of the
North’’—‘‘La Bestia de Oro’’ 9—would take from their intricate wrappings age-
yellowed parchments containing Papal Bulls, Royal Edicts, and Vice-Regal De-
crees and the faded manuscripts and letters of cronistas 10 and Conquistadores for
my study. We were often joined in these sessions by the frail co-director, Don
Luis González Obregón, whose volume of tales, Las Calles de México, tracing the
legends and dramatic events behind the names of the capital’s streets, was the
inevitable companion of my frequent tours of the city’s old colonial sections.
I went with Dr. Manuel F. Gamio and his group of experts—ethnologists, soci-
ologists, linguists, economists, and archaeologists—on their first field survey of
Oaxaca. We climbed to the heights of Monte Albán that overlooked the city. On
the terraced ‘‘White Mountain,’’ where excavations were in progress among the
mounds and vaulted chambers, the youthful and scholarly head of the Depart-
92 Alma M. Reed

ment of Anthropology formally launched his study of the region. Marking the
occasion with a brief address to the members of the little group, he said: ‘‘Any turn
of the spade now may reveal the tombs of Zapotecan kings. But, compañeros,11
what is more important for us and for Mexico is the light that these excavations
will throw upon the humble lives being lived in the valley below.’’
The great purpose that lay beyond their immediate effort was to form a coher-
ent and definite nationality out of Mexico’s many racial units, differing widely in
characteristics and in historic antecedents. The task that Dr. Gamio began that
day in Oaxaca with the triple vision of the scientist, humanitarian, and patriot, he
had already accomplished in the Valley of Teotihuacán. His monumental work,
La Población del Valle de Teotihuacán,12 representing ten years of unremitting re-
search throughout changes in government and the chaos of revolution, had been
published earlier that summer and had served as my chief source of information
on many aspects of both the ancient and contemporary Mexican scene.
In the field of esthetics, from the start, Dr. Atl 13 was recognized as the true
pioneer of the mural movement, organizing before 1910 the Centro Artístico,
the nucleus for the Syndicate of Painters, Mechanical Workers, Engravers, and
Sculptors, whose members had been given public walls in 1922 shortly before my
arrival.
His studio was in the old ex-convento de la Merced,14 in the ancient quarter
back of the Cathedral. To attend night parties there, I would have to pass through
interminable corridors and grope my way through dark, deserted patios, while
my art-conscious escort would light matches to show me the beautiful carved
columns. Then we would ascend great stairways and pass along other corridors
before reaching the far end of the enormous edifice where our host held court.
Rumor associated Dr. Atl with fantastic adventures and escapades and curious
personal habits. It was said that he slept nightly in a coffin in order to accustom
himself to the ‘‘feel of death,’’ and that he had resented the rumor as ‘‘half truth.’’
He explained that he slept in a coffin merely because he ‘‘rested better that way.’’ I
used to look with suspicion upon every covered object in the huge candlelit room,
cautiously lifting the edges of tapestries thrown over the furniture, to make sure
I was not sitting on any long, narrow, black box that might serve the versatile
scholar as a bed. Topics of studio conversation ranged from early Chinese land-
scape and the influence of St. Francis of Assisi on the painters of his day, to the
Freudian whimsies of ecclesiastical architecture. There were spirited discussions
over technical problems, which usually culminated and ended in arguments over
efforts of the leading muralists—José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros,
Diego Rivera, Francisco Leal, Jean Charlot, Carlos Mérida, Fermín Revueltas,
Xavier Guerrero, Ramón Alva Guadarrama, Roberto Montenegro, Adolfo Best-
Maugard, Ramón Alva de la Canal, and of course, Dr. Atl—to rediscover the
peregrina 93

buon fresco of Giotto, or at least to find in the Mexican shops ingredients equiva-
lent to those mentioned by the Italian master’s son-in-law, Cennino Cennini, in
his treatise on fresco technique.
Sometimes, the young Nahui Olin (Aztec for the ‘‘four winds’’), daughter
of the well-known Díaz militar General Mondragón, would recite her Poemas
Dinámicos. The artists and the literati, who were seated on the floor against the
walls, already knew what she explained for my benefit, that ‘‘the words made
no pretension to sense, but were rich in plastic values,’’ a virtue I was not in a
position to appreciate until some years later through my reading of Gertrude
Stein and James Joyce. Her thick blonde hair, worn in a long Egyptian bob, was
severely banged across her wide forehead, and her large round eyes, with iris
rims as black as India ink, were fathomless, suggesting the eyes of one of Foujita’s
introspective cats. In the mellow, flickering candlelight, there was both a strik-
ing and a gossamer quality to her strange beauty. Somehow she impressed me
as a graceful symbol of at least one aspect, and a fascinating one, of the Mexican
mood, of an elusive glamour that was as poignant as a moonflower at midnight,
radiant with a white intensity that was uncertain of its tomorrow. Her person-
ality seemed a composite of all the lively mental curiosity, the dazzling unfin-
ished projects, the feverish haste, and the impetuous plunging into the untried
that characterized much of the impassioned, often quixotic, ‘‘direct action’’ of
the post-Revolutionary era and which no one more vividly than Dr. Atl him-
self summarized when he explained: ‘‘Our object is to purify knowledge already
acquired and to fling a new missile through a new space.’’
In any other country, the ‘‘Bohemia’’ of the Mexican capital might have bank-
rupted fantasy. But in its own setting it was all a very natural expansion of the
popular psychology and the general spirit of rapture, in which the ‘‘carryings-
on’’ of the oversouls were not etched in any bold or bizarre relief. A surrealist
mood permeated the social gatherings of the intelligenzia, but it was the same
mood that had produced Mexico’s very original popular arts. If, according to
New England standards, the Normal at times in this circle suffered severe dislo-
cations from historic backgrounds or violent wrenchings from their accustomed
settings, so did many phases of the ordinary daily life that one encountered in
the streets. On my way, for instance, to luncheon at Sanborn’s, the famous House
of Tiles, I would pass three stages of human evolution telescoped into a sun-
drenched moment, and a foot or two of stone pavement on Avenida Francisco
Madero. For there, as travel writers were to record years later, an Indian peladito
wrapped in a red serape, his head and shoulders all but hidden in the protecting
depths of a big straw sombrero, ground his midday meal on a tezontle metate of
the Neolithic period.15 He leaned against the wall of a resplendent blue-and-gold
tile built under the feudal system of Colonial times for feudal purposes. Part of
94 Alma M. Reed

the façade had been transformed into a store and behind its plate-glass show win-
dows were displayed electric irons, refrigerators, automatic heaters, and other
gadgets of the Machine Age.
The surrealist attitude asserted itself most vigorously perhaps in the amaz-
ing decorations of the butcher shops and the pulquerías.16 Above the doors of
the latter appeared such typical firm names as ‘‘Wise Men Who Never Study,’’
‘‘The Magnificent Jewess,’’ ‘‘The Errors of Cupid,’’ ‘‘No One Will Ever Know,’’
and ‘‘Who Cares, Anyway?’’ But the uniquely Mexican brand of fantasy found
its most typical and uninhibited expression in the toys and candies sold at the
puestos, or stands, of the Alameda Central and elsewhere for the approaching
feast of ‘‘Los Muertos’’ (All Souls’ Day) on November 2. These decidedly differ-
ent candies were little sugar skulls and cadavers, brightened with bits of gold and
silver paper. The toys were gaily adorned hearses and other miniature trappings
of the grave and the funeral parlor. And dramatizing the acceptance of death as
a fact of life, and the general casual approach to it, were the tiny white coffins—
real ones—for which people shopped, as they did for other household commodi-
ties, from the stacks that were piled high on the sidewalks around the Zócalo,
the great central Plaza of the Constitution. When President Obregón assumed
office, the infant mortality rate in the Republic, I was informed by Health Minis-
ter Alberto J. Pani, was 85 percent. Only fifteen out of every one hundred babies
born survived their first year.
Within the short period of two years, the mural movement, initiated by the
progressive Minister of Public Education, Licenciado José Vasconcelos, had de-
veloped the greatest figures of contemporary art.17 Summoning the nation’s out-
standing painters from different parts of the country and from their studies
abroad, he turned over to them the walls of new public buildings and those of
certain colonial churches, which had been converted into workers’ libraries and
classrooms. There was no attempt to dictate propaganda or to impose technical
specifications. The artists organized into a sindicato, or union, and, working as
day laborers at a modest wage, were regarded as responsible creators over whose
output no committee, politician or contractor had the slightest control. On one
occasion, when, with Vasconcelos, I visited the patio of the National Preparatory
School where José Clemente Orozco was then painting his powerful frescoes, the
official called up to the muralist on the scaffold: ‘‘I heartily dislike what you are
doing. It is terrible! But the wall is yours—Go ahead!’’
In 1922, Orozco was still experimenting with the fresco medium, which the
Mexicans had revived for monumental muralism for the first time since the great
Italians. His theme was the laborer, or obrero, a carpenter of Galilee or Cuautla,
about to swing an axe into a heavy wooden cross that he had already partially
destroyed. A work of serenity, of ample volumes, characteristic economy of line
and controlled dynamism of inner action, it represented a supreme plastic in-
peregrina 95

terpretation of the renovación theme. Uncompromisingly, Orozco had projected

the idea of the necessary abandonment of whatever in the tradition had lost its
integrity, or had been perverted to ignoble uses, becoming like so much dead
wood in relation to its original meanings.
The obrero must reject the symbol that inspired his mission of brotherly love,
because now it is borne by priests advancing amid the bayonets of battle to urge
men to slaughter their fellow men in causes just and unjust. The obrero will find a
new symbol through his contemplation of nature’s miracles—the stars, the sun,
the planets—one of which now serves as a halo. Or, he will take from the ether
some immutable sign of order, beauty, and ultimate justice in the universe—the
geometric form of pyramid, cone, sphere, or cube. Orozco’s significant obrero
was partially destroyed, but the idea survived intact and assumed even greater di-
mensions ten years later at Dartmouth College. On the walls of Baker Library he
painted a flayed Christ whose cross has already been chopped down and thrown
upon the Calvario of discarded, junked emblems of humanity’s physical and
moral bondage.
On a vaulted surface of the National Preparatory School patio Orozco in-
terpreted the eternal evolutionary process. I watched him as he painted ‘‘Man’’
leaping over an abyss, hurled forward by an inner force that forever drives him
onward, the means and end of his own striving. There is no knowledge that Man
may not wrest from the remote eons, even that well-guarded secret of his very
existence, by an Olympian plunge into the cosmos of his own consciousness.
This essential idea that underlies many of Orozco’s universal concepts is a plastic
synthesis of the exalted thought and bold action of that little band of Mexican
idealists who, motivated by Mexican grievances, ceaselessly hacked away at the
bases of Mexican despotism between 1900 and 1910, until the formidable struc-
ture toppled and opened up the road for Madero 18 and liberation.
For hours at a stretch, the muralist in complete oblivion to all about him,
and enwrapped in creative silence, labored at covering the venerable ecclesias-
tical walls of San Ildefonso with the revitalizing symbols of a humanistic faith.
It was the faith of the precursors of Revolución Social, and, with equal dedica-
tion and purity of purpose, he was registering the precise nuances of their honest
words and courageous deeds, his genius enriching the synthesis until it glowed
with the splendor of a fixed star for the guidance of history in the making. Like
most Mexico-conscious California journalists, I knew that the trailblazers of the
New Order had looked to Ricardo Flores Magón, intellectual anarchist, for spiri-
tual leadership. Magón had been an exile in Southern California and between
1906 and 1910 published his celebrated Regeneración there. But I was still unin-
formed as to the significant role played by Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Socialist, in
the national emancipation. At the time I was not even aware of his association
with the brothers Flores Magón and other organizers of the Partido Liberal,19
96 Alma M. Reed

whose ideology was first articulated by the young poet Praxedis G. Guerrero of
León, Guanajuato, when he wrote: ‘‘I am action. Progress and Liberty cannot
exist without me!’’ Later, this same Humanistic Faith, the real foundation stone
on which the structure of a modern Mexico was laid at the turn of the century,
was defined by Ricardo Flores Magón himself, then a hunted and often hungry
man in the United States with a price on his head. Through Regeneración, the
Liberal Party organ, he flung out this challenge: ‘‘We are moving from illusions
towards life. Yesterday Heaven was the People’s objective. Today, it is the Earth!’’
Ricardo Flores Magón’s public funeral in Mexico City marked the emotional
climax of a year tempered to the highest pitch of national consciousness. His
death on November 21, 1922, in Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas, tugged at
Mexico’s heartstrings, releasing long pent-up tears of private and general grief.
The event revived memories of unwept noches tristes 20 and dramatized the tragic
power of the indomitable spirit that has sustained a people through their pro-
longed agonies. During the five years of his imprisonment for violation of the
wartime espionage act—he had consistently preached Peace—Flores Magón had
been failing in health and was gradually going blind. Millions of his admirers in
the United States and in Mexico fought for his freedom. Many urged him to apply
for a pardon, which was his for the asking. But he steadfastly refused liberty that
required an admission of guilt. In the demonstration with which Mexico paid
him posthumous honor, his austere black coffin was borne through the streets,
followed by a throng carrying ‘‘Land of Liberty’’ banners and singing his mov-
ing Songs of Deliverance. I saw Mexicans to whom the word ‘‘Anarchist’’ or even
‘‘Socialist’’ was anathema, reverently standing with bared heads as the simple
cortege passed, in tribute to the nobility of Flores Magón’s life and death. Old
Revolutionaries forgot his fiery, whole-souled denunciations of ‘‘compromise’’
or ‘‘sell-out’’ on the various proposals that had been submitted to the people
as solutions, including the ‘‘Plan of San Luis Potosí.’’ 21 They remembered only
his innately Mexican yet timeless and universal dream, which, like a dirge and
a paean, echoed in their hearts: ‘‘Life should be full of poetry; full of passion
that runs through the veins. Life was never meant to be put in the straightjacket
with which monopoly has bound it. Consent no longer by your submissiveness
that idle hands become masters of what belongs to you, of what belongs to all
humanity. Take possession of this earth to which you have given your toil and of
its fruits, which have been denied you, with humanity’s supreme cry, ‘Land and
Liberty!’ ’’
I, too, recalled Flores Magón’s stirring message, but in my nationalistic out-
look it was translated for me into the words of another American—our immortal
Thomas Jefferson, who declared: ‘‘The earth belongs to him who tills it!’’ 22
 4. Caribbean Reflections

A
t Nassau, some nine hundred miles from Manhattan, the Mexico made its
first stop, anchoring close enough to the big coral island of New Provi-
dence to permit one to verify the claim of the Ward Line folder that the
capital of the Bahamas ‘‘faces the ocean smilingly.’’ In the pale light of the early
morning, the town was as vivid and as economical of detail as a Raoul Dufy
gouache. In a few deft strokes the sensitive artist might have caught all the ele-
ments of its insouciant charm—an emerald hill in the background crowned by
the gray walls of the old Fincastle fortress; a fringe of coconut palms in the fore-
ground, bordering the prim lawns around a wooden Georgian structure, the new
Colonial Hotel; here and there, the white dot of a low building; and, with just a
tilt of cocksure bravado in their gay sails, nestled the tiny craft of the ‘‘mosquito’’
rum fleet in the turquoise harbor.
During the waiting interlude, when several passengers disembarked, the
history-minded archaeologists exchanged tales of the turbulent past of the Ba-
hamas—legends of early buccaneers who seized passing Spanish galleons, of the
hidden loot of later pirates, among them the notorious Blackbeard, terror of
the British merchantment. There were stories, too, of the blockade runners who
landed arms and military supplies for the Confederate States, receiving for En-
gland cargoes of cotton and other products of the South.
Again, we headed southward, and for the rest of the day the Mexico’s course
lay over the ‘‘tongue of the ocean,’’ a deep chasm west of Andros, largest island
of the group. Occasionally I would run up to the skipper’s bridge, where Cap-
tain Peterson, poring over his navigation charts, would take time out to trace our
route through the intricate channels and around the shoals and coral reefs of the
West Indies, sometimes dramatically describing the more sensational features of
the pelagic landscape below us. We were skirting the Great Bahama’s banks, the
vast submarine plateau that forms the base of the islands and their innumerable
cays and reefs, where islets and atolls by the hundred have been known to emerge
and vanish overnight. Soon we would leave the shallow waters and veer due west
into depths of a thousand fathoms, to sail along the northern coast of Cuba.
98 Alma M. Reed

The West Indian archipelago had always attracted me, but chiefly, up until that
time, because of its historic background and external beauty. When I thought
about that far-flung island group at all, it was mainly in terms of the lugubri-
ous chronicles of two or three humane friars and their shocking account of the
cruelty of Spanish colonists against the defenseless natives, or the glowing de-
scriptions of modern travel writers, most of whom pictured a fanciful paradise of
palm-lined avenues, glistening strands of sheltered coves by moonlight. In gen-
eral, the Bahamas and the Greater and Lesser Antilles existed for me as points
on a map, representing a vast domain that begins fifty miles off the Florida coast
and stretches southeastward from the Mexican Gulf for fifteen hundred miles,
according to certain flamboyant Latin American poets, like a crescent of dia-
monds in a sapphire sea. Except for several outstanding personalities—literary
figures or heroes of independence movements—I was only vaguely aware of the
contemporary spiritual stature of the Antilles, of the many vital contributions
stemming from the rich and varied currents of tradition and art that have met
and mingled and flowered into significant new patterns of life on the windswept
ocean, shored by the oldest and the youngest of the continents.
Yet I did recall one Antillean dream with reverence for the dreamer. At the
close of the nineteenth century, the Cuban Apostle, José Martí, in his exalted
vision of continental solidarity, conceived and labored for the plan of an Antil-
lean Confederation as part of his larger aim to ‘‘unite with inviolable bonds the
Latin American Republics of the New World.’’ Martí was the moving spirit in a
group of West Indian patriots and intellectuals who attempted to merge the po-
litical and economic fortunes of the Greater Antilles—his beloved Cuba, Santo
Domingo, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica—islands which, he insisted, ‘‘must stand
together or disappear from the roster of free peoples.’’ America he saluted as ‘‘the
continent of human hope.’’ Fixed in his constructive ideas, unswerving in his
pure purpose, the poet-statesman struggled throughout his entire life span of
forty-two years for human rights and the dignity of man. He failed to unite the
Greater Antilles, and as a result of the epochal lost opportunity, age-old social
problems that might then have been solved have since weighed down upon the
West Indian peoples as their dark heritage.
The leisurely seafaring days, however, were destined not only to broaden the
dimensions of my individual work outlook but also to give stimulating direc-
tion to my personal and professional activities. It was there, for instance, on the
vessel’s forecastle deck, studying maps of the underwater topography or gazing
down on the dolphins as they cavorted in the swirling foam that trailed the
starboard prow, that I experienced intense desires which later found realization
in absorbing pursuits. I longed to know firsthand the ‘‘feel’’ of that motion-
less, silent world beneath the sunlit surface, the mysterious realm that occupies
peregrina 99

that major portion of the global area. I can trace my enthusiastic involvement
with submarine archaeology, as well as persistent research into the extraordinary
career of the gentleman-privateer Jean Laffite, to those hours of tranquil detach-
ment aboard the Mexico. Viewed through a magic sextant in which yesterday and
tomorrow loomed on an equally remote horizon, these immediate new interests
captured my imagination and left their deep and lasting impressions.
Suddenly, on the fifth day of the voyage, like a mirage in alabaster, appeared
Havana’s mingled mass of cupolas, spires, and battlemented walls. Suspended
in diaphanous light between the dark blue of the water and the unflecked azure
of the sky, the city’s arresting contours glowed with an ethereal splendor. In my
initiation to ‘‘tourist culture,’’ however, the Pearl of the Antilles proved to be real-
istic enough when, docking shortly after dawn, the Mexico allowed its passengers
a whole day to explore Havana’s widely heralded attractions. I was invited to join
a party consisting of an Austrian woman psychiatrist, two Yucatecan hacenda-
dos, Sr. Casas Alatriste, and Mr. and Mrs. John F. Barry of New York. As the editor
of Commercial Mexico, a national business journal, Mr. Barry was keenly alive to
the expansion in tourism and henequen trade that would likely result from the
Carnegie Expedition publicity and was, in fact, making the Yucatán trip in order
to submit an advertising program to Governor Carrillo.
Even at that period, two years before the Machado dictatorship, sightseeing
in Havana was rigged to conform to what some wishful-thinking guide assumed
was American taste in entertainment.1 After a visit to ‘‘Sloppy Joe’s’’ for spuri-
ous if delectable ‘‘native’’ beverages, our own guide, Pedro, rushed us through
the main thoroughfares and along the elegant Prado and Malecón Boulevards
as though bent on saving time for his idea of worthier objectives. These turned
out to be Havana’s breweries and cigar factories, and apparently his aim was to
impress us with their number and size.
In any event, our first stop was an American-owned beer garden in a tropi-
cal setting; the second, a rambling establishment where an army of skilled and
unskilled workers were engaged in sorting and rolling brown tobacco leaves
into choice puros or mass-producing machine-made cigarrillos—an industry that
next to the island’s sugar refineries was the chief source of its flourishing econ-
omy. En route to these and similar places of his personal and doubtless pecuniary
interest, Pedro would grudgingly pause to point out some celebrated Cuban
landmark.
Fortunately his sketchy itinerary included Havana’s immense Hispano-
American-style Cathedral with its uninspiring Tuscany façade and dismal in-
terior. With the enchantingly decorated and architecturally superior Mexican
churches still fresh in my memory, the pompous structure suffered by compari-
son. Begun in 1704, the ecclesiastical edifice was nearing completion in 1796,
100 Alma M. Reed

when the supposed coffin of Columbus arrived from Santo Domingo and was en-
crypted in its walls. Prolonged and solemn ceremonies attended the event. The
sepulcher of the Great Navigator, so inextricably a part of the opening chapter of
the Cuban story, became a revered national shrine. The remains were continu-
ously honored until Spain claimed them a century later. Only after Cuba had
surrendered the venerated bones was the deception of ‘‘error’’ admitted; they
were not those of Christopher but probably of his son, Diego Columbus.
Havana was at its gayest, lustily enjoying the season of the February fiestas
then in full swing. The pageantry of extravagant masquerades and colorful pro-
cessions—the traditional comparsas—was staged only at Carnival time, and the
pleasure-loving populace was making the best of its eagerly anticipated annual
event. In the evening, we joined in the street revelry, visited the elegant National
Casino and, after dinner, danced until midnight on the roof terrace of the Plaza
Hotel, thus completing, according to program, the ‘‘perfect day’’ of the travel
agency. In compliment to the American guests, the Plaza orchestra played the
tuneful and rollicking ‘‘Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Sheen,’’ the current song sensation
of New York’s Ziegfeld Follies. The musicians—moon-faced young men flashing
rows of white and gold dentistry in perpetual smiles—wore beige satin toreador
jackets with wide yellow or scarlet cummerbunds. Their jet black hair shellacked
to a scintillating brilliancy, the gleaming chrome of the ornate bandstand on
which they rhythmically gyrated and performed clownish antics, added up to an
apt symbol of the prevailing mood—one that reflected the smugness of the night
spot’s chief patrons, the affluent subsidized sugar planters and the North Ameri-
can owners of the fabulously lucrative gambling establishments. In the effusive
deference to the tourists from the United States, there was everywhere an obvious
recognition of Uncle Sam’s generous benefactions and a bid for their continu-
ance. Between rumbas and daiquiris, table conversation turned hilariously upon
our ‘‘personally conducted’’ adventures of the afternoon. The topic suggested
other tales about professional guides who totally misrepresented their countries.
Among the more amusing stories in this vein was Sr. Casas Alatriste’s account
of his first visit to the United States. In his school days, he dreamed of travel-
ing through the rich, powerful land across the Rio Bravo that loomed so formi-
dably in the imagination of Mexican youth. In preparation for the momentous
event, he diligently applied himself to the study of English, even reading our
poets and economists. The long-anticipated day for his crossing over the inter-
national boundary line finally arrived, and one morning at the beginning of the
First World War he found himself in San Antonio. But a weird sight greeted his
unbelieving eyes. He felt there surely must have been some terrible mistake and
that he had landed in Darkest Africa instead of the neighboring Lone Star State.
For, under a torrid noon sun, lined up in front of a gaudily ornate tattoo par-
peregrina 101

lor, stood a double queue of soldiers and civilians patiently waiting their turn at
having their bodies decorated like so many Ubangi savages. Happily, as the cour-
teous Sr. Casas Alatriste explained, he remained long enough in Texas to correct
his first startling picture of ‘‘typical’’ American customs.
In sharp contrast to the Plaza’s dazzling gilt and glitter was the small candlelit
hideout at Guanabacoa Beach, several miles beyond the city, where, at the invi-
tation of a Cuban painter friend of one of the Yucatecan hacendados, we dramati-
cally ended the evening’s revels. Here, in a thatch-roof hut, in the cavernous re-
gion that local superstition associated with the nocturnal prowling of zombies, or
newly disinterred dead, the gaunt, Negroid devotees of Ñáñigo, outlawed cult of
Santa Bárbara, performed exotic ritualistic pantomime.2 Bare-legged, but trail-
ing bizarre, multicolored draperies from their loins or shoulders, they swayed to
the scarcely audible rattle of the maracas and the muted thumping of the bongo.
At intervals, they intoned the hypnotic sounds and meters of the Antillean tun
tun de pasa y grifería, the ‘‘Danza negra,’’ and the ‘‘Lamento,’’ or improvised
plaintive incantations.3 That night, the voice of the Caribbean masses reached me
as profoundly human rather than as purely literary expression. I had but lately
become aware of Afro-Cuban poetry through the occasional sones published in
the ‘‘Little Reviews’’ for the consumption of the intelligentsia of the Parisian Left
Bank or Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.4 But in the black, shifting shadows of
the secret Guanabacoa rendezvous, the poetry of Negrismo made articulate for
me the primitive emotions of inarticulate peoples everywhere. Through a uni-
versally understandable idiom triple-rooted in the continents of Africa, Europe,
and America, it spoke for the exploited and helpless millions of the earth.
Evidently our Cuban artist escort enjoyed the full confidence of our exotic
hosts, for they appeared to be oblivious to any intrusion upon their private voo-
doo rites. Quite casually, they even asked us to join the ‘‘sacred circle’’ for the
baptism ceremony and then, in the most matter-of-fact way, proceeded to tie
the left leg of each female spectator seated in the magic ring to the right leg of
the male beside her. Meanwhile, the ebony-hued neophyte chosen for the sacra-
mental waters lay stretched out in the center space, writhing as one possessed of
a demon. During the drama-packed two hours that followed, the Ñáñigo cultists
were intent only on expressing an enormous racial capacity for joy and anguish
through uninhibited dance movements or, in conveying in bold onomatopoeic
verses, awe and reverence before the mysteries of love and birth and death. Often,
leaping sharply above the low, steady rhythm of dry seeds rang a cry of fear at
the menacing elements or the perils of jungle and swamp. Again, a wail of physi-
cal pain at the brutality of ‘‘civilized’’ overlords through the centuries. When not
smothered in sigh of despair, the cry became a shrill call to revolt. But there were
moments when, as if in complete release from hurt and humiliation and forget-
102 Alma M. Reed

fulness of ancient wrongs, the pulsating rhythms swung in wild abandon to the
orgiastic, combining in Ñáñigo’s ecstatic sensuality the rumba’s sultry passion
and the volcanic intensity of the conga—those whom the god of the heights had
forsaken, seeking god in the depths.
Delayed loading and unloading of cargo won for the Mexico’s passengers an-
other half-day stopover. Despite the strenuous festivities of the previous night
and lack of sleep, a few of the same intrepid members of the ‘‘sightseeing’’ party
decided to take advantage of the early morning hours to ‘‘get acquainted with the
real Havana.’’ This time, Sr. Molina offered his services as guide, and we started
out in an open carriage, amid the furious cacophony of multi-toned bells, clang-
ing simultaneously all over the city. We drove slowly through narrow, winding
streets, pausing wherever and as often as we wished to admire some colonial bal-
cón, an interesting wrought-iron grille or an impressive old gate still bearing its
half-erased armorial escutcheon. We were free to look and listen at leisure, and
there was plenty to see and hear during the colorful procession of food vendors
who usher in Havana’s ten o’clock café con leche.
For miles, our road followed white beaches and then turned to the open coun-
try through rows of royal palm and gorgeous flowering trees. On either side
stretched vast sugar and tobacco plantations varied with well-kept fincas,5 each
with its broad terraced villa, or virgin hectares of lush, tropical forests. Over all
this luxuriance that flourished under the Cuban sun, and that in its decay re-
turned to enrich the Cuban earth, seemed to hover the spirit of the Discoverer,
whose eloquent letters were imperatives of my preparatory reading. For notwith-
standing his sense of inadequacy, Columbus will always remain for the percep-
tive traveler the most vivid interpreter of that ‘‘loveliness his tongue could not
express nor his pen describe.’’
The report made to their Spanish majesties after his landing near the Bay of
Nuevitas in late October 1492 is unrivaled both for accuracy of detail and feeling
for the soil. ‘‘The clearness of the water,’’ he wrote, ‘‘through which the sand at
the bottom may be seen; the multitude of palm trees of various forms, the high-
est and most beautiful I have met with, and an infinity of other great and green
trees; the birds in rich plumage and the verdure of the fields, render this country
of such marvelous beauty that it surpasses all other in charm and graces, as the
day doth the night in lustre.’’
Nothing had changed, it occurred to me, and I almost expected the original
inhabitants of this Elysium to emerge shyly from the groves of ‘‘lofty palms and
flowering trees.’’ Columbus had described the natives—the Cubeños 6—in a letter
to his friend, Sant Ángel, Treasurer of Aragon, observing: ‘‘If anything they have
and it be asked for, they never say ‘no,’ but do rather invite the person to accept it,
and show as much loving kindness as though they would give their hearts.’’ And
peregrina 103

once the Discoverer was quoted as saying: ‘‘These people are very gentle, know-
ing not what is evil nor the sins of murder and theft . . .’’ Peter Martyr, the Italian
scholar at the Court of Isabella and later member of the Council of the Indies,
had also described the Cubeños and their Utopian confraternity that might have
been planned by St. Francis of Assisi himself. ‘‘It is certain,’’ wrote the erudite
churchman, ‘‘that the land among these people is as common as the sun and the
water; and that ‘mine’ and ‘thine,’ the seeds of all mischief, have no place among
them. They are content with so little that in so large a country they have rather
superfluity than scarceness, so that they seem to live in a golden world, with-
out toil, living in open gardens, not entrenched with dykes, divided with hedges
or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without
books, and without judges. They take him for an evil man who taketh pleasure in
doing hurt to another; and albeit they delight not in superfluities, yet they make
provision for the increase of such roots whereof they make bread, contented with
such simple diet, whereby health is preserved and disease avoided.’’
Where were these gentle Cubeños? In that spot, marveling at such beauty in
Nature and in the human soul, I might have absentmindedly inquired of the huge
Negro—jet black son of African slaves—who shuffled along the dusty road. But
I remembered Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and his Brief History of the Destruc-
tion of the Indies, that humane priest whose life was spent in a fruitless effort to
alleviate the sufferings of the Cubeños and to prevent their final, total extermi-
nation.7 For, in the thirteen years after the Conquest of Cuba by the Adelantado
Diego de Velázquez in 1511, Fray de las Casas and other eyewitness chroniclers
relate that between 300,000 and one million Cubeños disappeared in a mass mur-
der, which for hideous cruelty had no parallel, until the Hitlerian genocide, in
history. Enslaved—encomendado is the official word—and put to work at labor
beyond their physical endurance in the rivers and among the rocks where the
Spaniards believed there was gold, starved, tormented, they died or committed
suicide, unable to bear the agony of life. Other thousands were killed outright or
through slow torture. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas records that it was not an un-
common sight to see ‘‘processions of slaves chained together like droves of pigs
to furnish food for the dogs. The more humane of the captains killed them first,
but others turned the hungry dogs loose upon the terrified living victims.’’ He
describes the hanging of thirteen Indians in a row, strung up at a height where
their toes barely touched the ground, ‘‘prodded with sword points, care being
taken to prolong their agony.’’ This episode, he adds, ‘‘was in honor of Christ and
the twelve apostles, for it was a feast day.’’
Another encomienda 8 sport, which he describes, was the ‘‘roasting of Indian
captives wrapped in straw at a slow fire.’’ ‘‘Have I really seen these things or were
they horrible dreams?’’ asked the bewildered priest as he penned his account of
104 Alma M. Reed

the atrocities, which he did not permit to be published until forty years after
his death. ‘‘No, they were not dreams,’’ he assures his future readers. ‘‘All these
things, alas, my own mortal eyes have beheld . . .’’
I recalled another priest, Luis Bertram, and his moving chronicles of the
Cuban Conquest. Like Fray de las Casas, he tried, but in vain, to protect the Cu-
beños from the savagery of the encomenderos, or holders of allotments of lands
and of Indians, in keeping with the colonization system of Hispaniola. Through
those evil years there must have been many others, I thought, whose names
one would never know, inedited names, but breathed in gratitude for some act
of kindness by a dying Cubeño, as he crumpled under the lash or perished at
the stake.
Yet in comparison with the long-continued, enormous grievances, I could
count in the historic record very few protectors, not only in the Caribbean lands
but also in the whole problem of Indian peoples in my own country. Compas-
sionate thinkers of courageous action, true friends of the friendless, defenders
of the disinherited heirs of the American continent, these formed a pathetically
small group. Was the man I would see tomorrow—Socialist Governor of Yuca-
tán—numbered among them? A passage in the Hart article, which I had just
reread in order to phrase a question for my first interview, led me to believe that
he might belong to that heroic company. ‘‘The Mayas,’’ Mr. Hart had written,
‘‘have deified Felipe Carrillo, the man they have elected to govern them in Yuca-
tán. Is he the very savior of the Indian in his state, a man whose feet are set firmly
upon a rock and whose ideals will surely materialize in glowing deeds?’’ Mr. Hart
stated that on the night he wrote that particular passage, he fell asleep wondering
also ‘‘about their god, Felipe Carrillo, and the pedestal on which he stands.’’
I wondered about him, too, that afternoon, as once again we sailed westward
while Havana receded into the flood of white sunlight from which on the day
before it had so dramatically emerged . . . And far into the night, Maya idols
dominated the pensive hours, as, through the luminous darkness and the vibrant
silence, we followed the route of the earliest Conquistadores—Hernández de
Córdoba, Juan de Grijalva, the Montejos, Hernán Cortés—over those storied
sixty leagues that forever separate—forever link—the Isle of the Cubeños and
the Maya peninsula of Yucatán.
The playful dolphins of the open sea were replaced by menacing sharks at
the Mexico’s waterline when anchors were dropped in the roadstead off Pro-
greso, Yucatán’s port of entry, about three miles from shore. Waiting on deck for
the ship’s tender, some of the Mérida-bound passengers amused themselves by
watching the wide-jawed man-eaters. I was not amused. I even shuddered with a
strange superstitious revulsion at the sight of what Mr. Barry called our ‘‘official
welcoming committee.’’ Later, in my diary, I noted this sensation of dread, in-
terpreting the presence of the ugly creatures as an evil omen. But the unpleasant
peregrina 105

feeling dissolved in happy excitement when, borrowing Dr. Merriam’s binocu-

lars, I studied the coastal bank fringed by trees and scattered buildings on the
faintly discerned ‘‘low, level plains’’ mentioned by the Spanish navigators.
Courteously rushed through the customs and medical inspections, we
boarded the electric trolley car and sped for an hour past great haciendas, planted
row on row to the limit of vision with Yucatán’s ‘‘green gold.’’ Piled high along-
side bulging warehouses, bales of henequen, all ready for export, indicated the
prosperity of the state’s basic industry.
Our arrival in Mérida was ceremoniously greeted by native bands and local
archaeological groups and children bearing flower-entwined bienvenida 9 ban-
ners. In a fleet of automobiles, Governor Carrillo’s English-speaking personal
representative, Manuel Cirerol, had us whisked off to the headquarters of the
Liga Central, where, as he explained to us en route, the Governor carried on both
the affairs of the state of Yucatán and the business of the Partido Socialista del
Sureste,10 of which he was founder and president. Sr. Cirerol also informed us as
we passed the impressive stone structure of the Palacio de Gobierno 11 that his
chief had turned over his sumptuous official chambers there to the people as a
public library and archaeological information center.
At the modest wooden two-storied Liga Building, we climbed up a narrow
stairway and entered a long, sparsely furnished assembly room. We were wel-
comed with warm but simple phrases by a man of exceptional magnetism and
rare physical beauty. He was attired in a crisp white linen suit and, in his over six-
foot height, towered head and shoulders above the assistants and petitioners who
crowded around him. To each of the fourteen members of our party he heartily
extended his hand with a cordial expression that embraced some personally di-
rected word or two and the hope that our stay in the ‘‘Land of the Maya’’ would
be both joyous and rewarding.
He asked our permission to return momentarily to his desk while we ‘‘made
ourselves at home,’’ explaining that he wished briefly to dispose of a couple of
matters that were under consideration when we arrived at the Liga. One was a
Maya mother’s appeal for a scholarship for her son in the newly opened Mérida
technical school. After reading the reports and recommendations from the boy’s
teachers, he assured the gratefully smiling woman that the desired scholarship
would at once be arranged. Next was the petition of a delegation of five Inditos 12
from a distant pueblo. They wished to form a local orchestra and asked for musi-
cal instruments. This request, too, was swiftly granted but not without a pater-
nal caution, which Cirerol translated for us. The petitioners would receive their
trombones and their drums, but only on the condition that they solemnly prom-
ised to make sweet music, not ear-splitting noise that disturbed the sleep of their
hardworking neighbors.
Standing beside me was Brigadier General William Barclay Parsons, the emi-
106 Alma M. Reed

nent construction and railroad engineer. A Carnegie Trustee and the senior
member of our group, he voiced what was obviously the amazed reaction of
his fellow expeditionaries when he whispered: ‘‘This is the most personable red
dragon I’ve met with in any of my safaris . . . What do you think, young lady?’’
With total conviction, I unhesitatingly answered: ‘‘He’s my idea of a Greek
god!’’
As guests of the state, the Carnegie party members were housed in leading
hotels or in luxurious private homes. I was escorted by Sr. Cirerol to the mansion
of Felipe G. Cantón, a rich scholarly hacendado who was president of the Yucatán
Archaeological Society. Within a half hour after my arrival there, I was relaxing
from the tensions of the eventful day in a hammock on the terrace outside my
elegant quarters. Suddenly, I heard an uproar in the patio below. Three Maya
servant maids rushed upstairs in clamorous excitement to announce: ‘‘Señorita,
Señorita, el Gobernador del Estado . . . The Governor of the State is here to see
you!’’ With equal if less articulate excitement I rushed into my room to change
my lounging robe for a more appropriate costume in which to receive my official
caller.
 5. The Road to Kanasín

A
ntonio, ayudante particular,1 was at the wheel. I sat beside the Governor
of Yucatán in the big red official car. In animated mood we freely ad-
mitted finding each other more congenial than we had reason to expect
from the ‘‘advance publicity.’’ I assured the handsome, dynamic Don Felipe—in
Spanish bristling with adjectives but deficient in verbs—that the project of inter-
viewing ‘‘a crimson dragon with green eyes’’ had caused me anxious moments.
It was a relief to see that I would be spared this perilous ordeal. For his part, he
was enchanted to discover that the periodista Alma Reed was no female version
of those formidable American journalists one encountered during the Revolu-
tion. A number, he confided, turned out to be genuine—verdaderos—monsters
of the North.
He beamed at my rambling praise of Mérida’s Old World charm, at my com-
ment that quite justly the beautiful capital of his sovereign state was known as La
Ciudad Blanca.2 His startling eyes—in some lights gray, in others a clear jade—
flashed instant response to my effervescent delight in the sunset pageantry, flood-
ing to the distant horizon vast expanses of sisal with rose-tinged gold. And in
the play of luminous shadow over his broad forehead, vigorous chin, and firm,
generously modeled mouth, the mellowing splendor highlighted the kindliest
expression I had ever seen on a human face.
Clusters of stunted palm and lofty ceiba trees . . . the thatched roofs of pink
and blue adobe naas,3 half hidden beneath vermilion showers from the flamboy-
ant tree . . . low stone fences splashed with the royal purple of bougainvillea . . .
forever they border the white road to Kanasín, then as now, my personal symbol
of the questing spirit that moves towards its dimly descried joyous fulfillment.
I kept trying to remember what passing moment in my life had been drama-
tized by an equally immediate recognition of spiritual worth in any individual.
I could think of none, nor of a single occasion when mere proximity had left me
with a deeper sense of related destinies.
Quite abruptly the man beside me said: ‘‘From the moment you entered the
Liga, I was desperate to talk with you . . . I am lonely . . . solo . . . solo!’’
108 Alma M. Reed

His candid words cut sharply through the laughter and our defensive cli-
chés, those self-conscious pleasantries that at a first intuitively significant meet-
ing screen emotion with the chatter of conventional ‘‘normalcy.’’ The earnest
intensity of his voice made me long to give some sincere, sympathetic reply. In-
stead, I discreetly pursued our mildly bantering mood to observe that lonely men
in my country seemed less cheerful than those in the land of the enigmatic Maya.
‘‘I am too busy, it is true,’’ he said, ‘‘to write versos melancólicos 4 . . . I am lonely
nevertheless . . . and alone! Even my brothers to whom I am devoted and who
are devoted to me are only soldiers in my cause.’’
He had seemed surprisingly youthful when we first met earlier in the after-
noon. The natural elation in his open countenance, his spontaneity and frank di-
rectness, heightened the illusion that he was years younger than his age, which—
I learned from the Hart article—was forty-six. But during our unhurried visit
with him at the Liga when with unstudied formalities he welcomed us, his guests,
I had been observing him closely as he moved among his Indians and the heads
of renowned American institutions. Before we left the Liga, I had another im-
pression of him.
Within a few moments I became aware that a gentle paternalism was his domi-
nant psychic quality and the motivating urge of his action. I felt his power to
shape the environment—quietly and without effort, to fill the atmosphere with
a calm yet incisive personal force. I studied him in moments of thoughtfulness,
as he gravely put on his glasses to read some communication, his face assuming
a judicial expression as he read. I observed his poised bearing and cordial dig-
nity when speaking with the scientists, his patience and kindness when dealing
with the humble folk who sought favors. Above all, I was conscious of his own
sense of mission, the acceptance of his inherent right to leadership. There were
moments when he looked the patriarch and my imagination endowed him ten-
tatively with a flowing beard and clothed his commanding over six-foot stature
in classical robes.
And now . . . as we drove along his new highway, I was trying to reconcile the
various aspects of him. It dawned upon me that they were not in conflict. Like
diverse themes of a symphonic orchestration resolving into ultimate harmony in
a stirring coda, his qualities merged and integrated in a unique personality. The
discovery held for me the dramatic implications of some phenomenal happening.
A suggestion of unreality flared in the very notion that here in this far-off corner
of the world on the margin of Caribbean jungles, I was chatting with a charming
man in tailored business attire, a veritable synthesis of twentieth-century cul-
ture and a highly evolved modern attitude, yet who personified the immemorial
Orphic concept of unity that made athlete, priest, and prophet One.
But, through all the tingling excitement occasioned by his unexpected visit
to the Cantón residence, newspaper instinct had not failed me. I had, in fact,
peregrina 109

delayed my impetuous caller long enough in the patio to locate a list of ques-
tions that I had prepared aboard ship. I brought it along in the hope that there
would be an opportunity to interview him during the ride. The pointed queries
were based on the Hart interview and other published articles, some of them
quite unfavorable. Showing him the list, I assured him that it was an invaluable
paper. ‘‘It will enable me to check up,’’ I explained, ‘‘on how well you have kept
the promises made a year ago!’’
Keenly amused, he assured me that however seriously tempted, he would not
rob me of such a treasure. But he urged me to take the precaution of hiding it from
him until Friday. On that day . . . at the hour arranged for the formal interview,
he would, with the greatest pleasure, place himself entirely at my disposition to
answer all the ‘‘embarrassing interrogations.’’ He would, moreover, provide me
with volumes of facts and figures . . . so many . . . that I would finally ‘‘plead for
mercy . . .’’ but today it would make him so happy if ‘‘without a single preoccu-
pation’’ we would visit the model Socialist village at the far end of the new road.
It was no ordinary sunset . . . the trip would take only an hour or two . . . and if I
wished, while we were driving, he would tell me something of his aims and give
me an idea of what had already been accomplished but, with my permission, in
his ‘‘own way.’’
His voice was rich in poignant resonances and in tender, lingering inflections.
Long after the sound of it had faded, the overtones remained with me like the
rhythmic measures of a poem, helping me to remember his words.
‘‘You may, and I hope you will,’’ he began, ‘‘find the living Maya and their
progress as deserving of your study as their ancient monuments. Unfortunately,
we cannot carry out all our plans at once. We must work hard and unceasingly for
another generation. But we move steadily forward. We have made much progress
in a year. You learned at the Liga that our slogan is ‘Land and Liberty.’ These
words are not only emblazoned on our banners. We have carried them in our
hearts for many years, through bitter struggle and countless sacrifices. They have
guided the very purposes of our lives. They are stern objectives that will give us
no rest—no peace—until they are won!’’
Ordinarily, the warnings of Sr. Molina and his hacendado friends concern-
ing the Governor’s ‘‘wiles,’’ together with my own distrust of panaceas acquired
through newspaper training, would have influenced me to withhold judgment
on the Socialist program until after personal investigation. But I had already
grasped the quality of the man who had conceived and executed it. Intuitively,
I knew that he was utterly sincere. This certainty and his absolute humaneness
bridged our brief acquaintance, and without doubt or hesitation my allegiance
made the crossing to his side. In a flash of perception, I knew, too, that it would
remain there.
Any possible doubt of his integrity implanted by the innuendos of the re-
110 Alma M. Reed

actionaries or his political opponents had, at our very first meeting, been up-
rooted from my mind. I was now fully conscious of the presence of a great man—
one who had been born great. And in some inexplicable yet decisive way, I felt a
deep personal kinship with him. Even his face looked familiar—a vague, bewil-
dering composite of dearest facial expressions at home.
He did not remotely suggest the ‘‘foreigner’’ in our provincial use of the term,
and I found him closer to my native California than to his own Yucatán in that
real or fancied relation that people bear to locale. I could not easily identify him
with these austere, calcareous plains sweltering beneath a relentless sun. I pic-
tured him in our high Sierras hiking over mountain trails, or camping in cool
groves of sequoia. I placed him—and it seemed poetically flawless—against the
mighty profile of El Capitán, that Yosemite rock with enough granite in its tower-
ing mass to rebuild New York and which, after summers spent in its shadows,
had become my favorite symbol for all that was dependable and sure of itself.
I told him that if I were to guess his nationality by looking at him, I would say
that he was an American from the West or Southwest and that his ancestry, like
my own, was Scotch-Irish. My hypothetical guess intrigued him. ‘‘That is most
curious,’’ he exclaimed. ‘‘Mother Jones—perhaps you know the marvelous vieje-
cita 5—told me the same thing when I talked to her miners once, in Colorado.’’
I scarcely realized that he was not speaking English. His language had the
lucidity one might hope to find in some universal tongue. It occurred to me
that anyone, anywhere, would be able to understand him. He addressed me as
‘‘Almita,’’ often adding niña (child), and asked, por favor, to call him ‘‘Felipe.’’
‘‘It is the custom among our Socialist compañeros to use the first name,’’ he
said. I conceded that it was a nice, human custom. I could think of no one, ex-
cept my father, who had given me so profound a sense of spiritual security. As
we talked, it seemed we were merely resuming a fated conversation interrupted,
I forgot just where, or how long ago!
One of Felipe’s more kindly critics aboard the Mexico had described him to
me as ‘‘idealistic and visionary’’ by way of censure. I was willing now to admit
that he was both.
His words, evidently impelled by an inner necessity, were clothed at times
with the fervor of the zealot. His extraordinary eyes, so large and luminous that
they almost created the effect of a halo, reflected nevertheless precise nuances of
thought and emotion. They were compassionate when he described the bond-
age of his people, flashing with decision when he pledged their redemption. Yet
whatever his passing mood, one could readily tell that he was no ineffectual soña-
dor,6 no wishful thinker ‘‘after the dawn.’’ His enthusiasm served to clarify rather
than to obscure the sharp outlines of his thought, to throw into bolder relief the
solid structure of realism beneath his eloquent arguments.
peregrina 111

Through journalism, social service, and activity in public movements, I had

been brought into almost daily contact in San Francisco and in the Mexican capi-
tal with orators of various types. My ears were quick to detect the dogmatic ha-
rangue that throws an audience into nervous tension but fails to persuade the
heart. In Felipe’s attitude, I found no trace of that hard, dry fanaticism or the
hollow note of the builder of purely theoretical castles. His ‘‘ideals and visions,’’ I
realized, were workable and of the kind that would demand concrete action and
material form. They would never be content to languish indefinitely in the astral
sphere of the unborn. Thought and action seemed balanced in his intention and
performance like the equal wings of the great bird that soars serenely through
contemporary Greek poetry.
Felipe sketched the background of his problem—the exploitation of the Maya
in Yucatán. I recognized the old familiar pattern of moral and physical enslave-
ment, common scourge of the Antilles and of all the lands washed by the Carib-
bean. The purple splendor of the tropical sunset had mellowed now into golden
gloom. Something in the sad monotony, in the nostalgic spell of mists that
gathered and encroached upon the low-growing shrub, made me suddenly ‘‘map
conscious.’’ I looked out over the vast, level spaces, and the San Francisco hills
seemed very far away. As one might remark at a play when the scene has shifted
for the next act: ‘‘Well, here we are now, in the latitudes of slavery.’’ All my fever-
ish reading in preparation for this and my first Mexican trip suddenly coalesced
into a twilight mirage of the tragic past of these lands. From the letters of the
explorers, the chronicles of friars and conquerors, from commentaries and statis-
tical reports, emerged and passed before me, on the stage of New World history,
debased men and women—helpless beings herded into cattle-holds of ships, de-
livered into strange, distant environments at so much per head to brutal over-
lords, into lives of toil and suffering without hope of relief.
As though the Great Disc that records all sound in its endless repercussion
through the Cosmos were broadcasting for my special benefit, the wail of Carib-
bean peoples over the centuries echoed and re-echoed across the peninsula. Out
of the Gulf, up from the coastal jungles, it rose in an anguished cry or in passages
that registered wild, flaring shrieks of revolt. It died amid the hissing of bullets,
the heavy thud of blows, with a sob of despair that filled the vault of All Hear-
ing. Slavery no longer seemed a settled issue of historical geography. Bodies and
dreams broken through the greed of ‘‘civilized’’ races became the living dramatis
personae in the still unfinished tragedy of the Caribbean—a tragedy in which the
unassuming authoritative man beside me was playing a hero’s role.
‘‘Our Indians’’—Felipe always referred to them as Inditos or pobrecitos 7—
‘‘though nominally free, were owned body and soul by the hacendado heirs of
their Spanish conquerors. They lived on these vast henequen plantations under
112 Alma M. Reed

the watchful eye of the mayordomo.8 They labored inhumanely for long hours
in our burning sun. Their reward was humiliation, misery, cruelty. They had no
possessions. Food and clothing were doled out to them as to incompetents. Even
in the most sacred relations of life the Indian was left no power of decision. Speak-
ing only Mayan, he knew nothing of his rights under the law. Like a tree, he was
rooted to the land he tilled. Like a tree, he went with the land when it was sold.’’
I mentioned that some Yucatecans of the clase aristocrática, who had sailed
with our party from New York, had spoken of schools for the Indians, in a more
favorable portrayal of hacienda life.
‘‘Yes, there were schools,’’ Felipe replied, ‘‘but for the Indian none worthy of
the name. In fact, every effort was made to prevent him from gaining knowledge
that would further his mental development. The church fostered his ignorance.
The priests attached to the haciendas filled his mind with superstitious fear. Many
of them were propagandists for the capitalist tyranny that kept the Indian en-
slaved. They taught him that obedience was the chief virtue, that the mayordomo,
as Christ’s representative on the hacienda, must be implicitly obeyed. The Indian
was caught in an iron trap of skillfully organized labor control. He was helpless
and defenseless.’’
Felipe’s words brought forcibly to mind one of the statements he had made in
the Hart interview, which, almost intact, had persisted in my memory. ‘‘I shall
not rest content,’’ he had said, ‘‘until I have eradicated ignorance, superstition,
and priestcraft and have driven them disgraced from my country. While there is
one child in this state who cannot read or write, I shall strive untiringly until he
can. I intend to take the school to the child and not drag the child to the school.’’
Months before, when I first read this statement in the Mexican capital, I wel-
comed it as a fearless reaffirmation of the principles of Benito Juárez and Melchor
Ocampo.9 It had a positive, serious ring to it and provided no loophole for vacila-
das, freely translated as ‘‘monkey business.’’ I took it as an indication that in one
Mexican state, at least, the local government proposed to ‘‘follow through’’ with
the great Benemérito’s 10 essential objectives.
Every American journalist in Mexico at the time knew only too well what
powerful and subtle pressures were being exerted on both sides of the border to
pull teeth from the Leyes de la Reforma. Felipe’s picture of pre-Revolutionary
collaboration of priest and hacendado—their mutually helpful offices in cement-
ing common bonds of interest—not only illumined his own clear-cut position,
as quoted by Mr. Hart, but also served to define boldly and frankly for me, for
the first time, an analogous situation in my own country.
In some parts of the Mexican Republic, one could still see at pitiless close
range the ‘‘iron trap’’ of skillfully organized ‘‘labor control’’ in clumsy, noisy
operation. Or one could witness, as I was now doing, naive and primitive mecha-
peregrina 113

nisms being smashed to bits and exposed in public warning. But in New York or
Chicago, Detroit or San Francisco, and in other cities of the United States, the
mechanism was a far more intricate and complex device, which ran smoothly and
with a disarming precision. The names of respectable people, great corporations,
and celebrated institutions lent it a false glamour. Yet here, in the perspective
of distance, one recognized it as the same ruthless trap—under a gold veneer—
describing the same circle of operations with the identical objective of ‘‘labor
control.’’ Colossal wealth building, equipping, maintaining churches and col-
leges. Churches and colleges condoning, ignoring the essential injustice of colos-
sal wealth. Both conniving to mold the embryonic shape of collective thinking
and feeling to ‘‘acceptable’’ patterns, plotting cold-bloodedly to kill off at birth
all ‘‘different,’’ construed as ‘‘dangerous,’’ tendencies.
I did not share these thoughts and impressions with Felipe then. He had fin-
ished with the negative side of the Yucatecan picture, and his mood swung to
hope and optimism. There was hearty emphasis in his voice as he said: ‘‘You shall
see, Almita, that inhumanity to man is doomed here. The Maya has awakened.
His old civilization is proof that he can build things of beauty and of perma-
nence. It is our guarantee of his future. It is the promise of his fulfillment, of his
ability to make Yucatán an example not only to Mexico but to all the world.’’
He leaned forward and gripped Antonio’s shoulder with the easy gesture of old
comradeship . . . ‘‘What do you say, Antonio? . . . Speak up . . . hombre!’’
Antonio murmured ecstatic affirmatives. With joy unutterable, his typically
broad Maya face seemed to expand to greater width. His massive features and
the array of golden dentistry between his full lips suggested an ancient sculp-
tured mask smiling in bliss perpetual from a temple façade. Yet his fine, dark eyes
were ever watchful, roving as he spoke, from side to side, on the lookout, one
suspected, for the enemigos.11 And fires kindled—one knew instantly—by un-
bounded faith in Felipe, and undying loyalty smoldered in their depths. He had
been listening as he drove us at leisurely speed, straining to catch every word.
He must have heard the Socialist program expounded many times before, yet it
still held novelty and fascination for him. Occasionally, in his own excitement
or out of sensitive consideration for my note taking—carried on unsteadily and
at times even surreptitiously—he had brought the car to a full stop.
A camión passed us on its way to Mérida. As it rattled by, I saw that it was an
old Ford converted into a bus, its seats running lengthwise on either side. The
passengers—ten or more—were all Indians in spotless white camisas and wear-
ing sombreros of paja.12 Felipe and Antonio called out to them in Mayan. In mild
voices, the Inditos returned Maya greetings and smiled and waved at us, gently.
Baskets filled with fruit and vegetables were bulging from the vehicle at all angles,
attached between fender and radiator and tied to the top. ‘‘You will see others,’’
114 Alma M. Reed

Felipe said. ‘‘They take their products into market at this hour. Before the road
was finished last September, these pobrecitos used to walk the long distance, in
all the heat, carrying their heavy baskets over the rough, stony trails. It used to
take them an entire day, and after the toil and the fatigue they received only a
few centavos or a peso at most. Now they even enjoy themselves, while carrying
heavier loads. They are earning more and the housewives of Mérida buy their
vegetables at lower prices. We are building several roads that will connect Mérida
with still more distant pueblos and bring similar benefit to other Indians.’’
Felipe related how the ten-kilometer road happened to have been so quickly
completed. He said that when the people of Kanasín learned that the Socialist
Government intended to construct highways for the betterment of the state, they
organized through their Liga a committee to determine the most effective way
that the community as a whole could contribute. After various meetings, the out-
standing Liga members presented their resolutions, which Felipe described as
‘‘very simple, very practical, and probably unique.’’ He explained that each day
squads of fifty men, selected by vote, were required to labor in the project and
without compensation. In case any one of those selected did not wish personally
to give his services, he could name a substitute, paying him a wage not less than
$2.50 pesos a day. After the motion had been unanimously approved, Felipe di-
rected Ingeniero Rafael Gasque to take the first steps for the building of the road.
In appreciation of the town’s attitude, he ordered a squad of one hundred men
to begin work from the Mérida city limits so that the two groups would unite at
the middle of the road. This plan made it possible for the first stretches to be in
use the previous June.
There were slight changes in the landscape as we neared Kanasín, although
its low, even sweep continued, unbroken, to the azure rim of the horizon. Small
milpas,13 with their fertile vegetable patches and gay, flowering gardens, varied
now the dull stretches of sisal. Broad, cultivated fields appeared. Their abun-
dant crops were tubers and maize and squash of strange varieties—‘‘grown only
in Yucatán,’’ Felipe announced with visible local pride. Windmills silhouetted
against the sky revealed the presence of underground streams and the secrets of
hidden cenotes,14 with deep caverns through which the rivers flow on their way
to the sea. Felipe promised that I would be shown ‘‘some wonderful cenotes . . .
the great Sagrado at Chichén Itzá, of course, and another one, not large, but very
lovely . . . a perfect jewel of a cenote.’’ It had been converted into a swimming
pool, with electric lights and stairs leading down. The little cenote had been the
favorite swimming hole of his boyhood. It was in Motul, where he was born and
where his mother lived. He would take me there to meet her . . . not because she
was his mother, but because she was ‘‘a truly remarkable woman.’’
Imperceptibly, the dazzling white of adobe walls softened to palest gray. But
peregrina 115

highlights still straying in the distance were caught by the slow-wheeling arms of
the windmills and waved aloft like flamboyants.15 The scroll of that ‘‘larger Maya
destiny’’ unfolded; Antonio and I followed as Felipe traced for us the steps by
which a race after centuries of neglect—even deterioration—may again ascend
the heights. The spiritual authority for his task, he pointed out, was the life-giving
earth. Endlessly renewed and renewing, it had inspired his dream of renovación:
‘‘A just redistribution of the land is basic to any attempt to build solidly for the
future. It is the very foundation of our Socialist program.’’ He explained how the
Ligas were returning to the villages, the ejidos or group holdings, from which
they had been driven in the course of the centuries—‘‘For this our Revolution
was fought.’’ He described the process of restoring the ejidos, stating that ‘‘within
a year the Maya Indians, ninety-five percent of Yucatán’s population,’’ would, ac-
cording to his schedule, ‘‘repossess the land of which their fathers, one by one,
and their ancestors, as a people, have been despoiled.’’
But the land—Felipe was careful to make the distinction clear—was given to
groups, not to individuals. It could neither be bought nor sold. ‘‘It is held in com-
mon by little communities,’’ he emphasized, ‘‘for our Maya have always been a
communal people.’’ He said that already about half of the villages of the state,
some eighty or more, had received their lands, the allotment having been made
on the basis of fifty acres for the head of each family. On Thursday, he would in-
vite the members of our party to accompany him to the pueblo of Suma for the
distribution of ejidos. There, I would see for myself ‘‘the happiness of the Indi-
ans as they realized they were free men—free at last to build their own homes in
their own village, free to reap harvest of their planting.’’
I inquired about the condition of the hacendados after the appropriation of
their lands. He answered: ‘‘Please do not believe they are plunged into swift and
abject poverty. The hacendado is left a very large estate—some fifteen hundred
acres at least. Naturally, this looks small to him compared to the little empire
over which he once ruled. All of the Yucatán was formerly owned by a few multi-
millionaires. But time moves and evolution is at work. We no longer live in the
feudal age. It is as necessary for the hacendado as for the Indian to face squarely
the changed conditions of our epoch.’’
The hacendado, however, as Felipe informed me and as I already knew from
the Hart article and official sources in Mexico, was reimbursed for the lands taken
from him, in compliance with the federal agrarian laws. The value of the land
was fixed by his own declared tax valuation, to which the state added another
10 percent. Payment was made in land bonds for the amount involved, and the
hacendado could redeem them at the end of twenty years. This system, Felipe
observed, should give him a personal stake in the stability of the government,
and he expressed the wish, in fact, that the hacendado might eventually see the
116 Alma M. Reed

advantages of closer cooperation with the Socialist order. A certain cooperation

already existed, he said. It had saved the sisal industry from the financial disaster
that had overwhelmed the Cuban sugar planters when the inflated and artificial
prices obtained during the war dropped back to normal. He outlined briefly the
functions of the state-controlled Comisión Exportadora,16 through which sisal
became a public utility. The highest prices were thus obtained, and prosperity,
he said, was returning to Yucatán despite the generally unfavorable market con-
ditions throughout the world, which ‘‘could hardly be held against the Partido
Socialista of the Southeast.’’ For the present, he would continue to encourage, in
every way, the development of henequen ‘‘since it was the state’s most important
financial resource.’’
‘‘But I do not wish to create a false impression,’’ Felipe added with an amused
smile, ‘‘not even if I were to receive full absolution and special benediction from
Wall Street and many columns of eulogy in your capitalist newspapers. We are
looking forward to the day when henequen will be of less importance. Our aim
is a new agriculture, with a diversity of crops. We already raise, as you can see,
our own corn, our own fruits and vegetables. We are experimenting with other
export products such as tobacco and cotton, with good results. Eventually, each
pueblo must be dependent upon its own food supply grown on its own lands.’’
I was now in a mood to compliment myself, satisfied that my intuition in sup-
porting Mr. Hart’s judgment had been sound from the beginning. I recalled the
postscript written to his article as he sailed away from Yucatán—after weeks of
careful investigation of general conditions there. When I realized that he had
been in close daily association not only with Felipe and the Socialists but with
Mérida’s ‘‘aristocracy’’ as well, the words of his ‘‘afterthought’’ reached my mind
and heart with new impact. ‘‘Felipe Carrillo,’’ he wrote, ‘‘—and I care nothing
for the opinion of his avowed enemies when I say this—is, I believe, animated by
sincere and honest ideals: he can look one in the eye fearless and unashamed and
true; and a big thing, he can be relied upon to keep his word and to extend, if he
has promised them, guarantees to any and all.’’ I had not met Mr. Hart during my
stay in Mexico City, but I decided then and there to write him a fan letter, telling
him that already the predictions he had made less than a year ago were well on
their way to fulfillment. I felt, too, that I must congratulate him on his astute and
courageous journalism—a commodity that was at the time in extremely scarce
supply in every part of the Americas.
Mr. Hart’s appraisal of the Socialist educational program indicated that Felipe
had faithfully kept his promises about bringing the school to the child in Yuca-
tán. The writer had stated that the scope and quality of the Partido’s work in this
field was an incredible achievement in so short a time. When I cautiously in-
quired about developments since Mr. Hart’s visit, Felipe unhesitatingly outlined
the past performance and the immediate plans of his administration.
peregrina 117

There were, he explained, the usual schools for children from seven to fifteen
years, which were now available to every child in the remotest pueblo and ha-
cienda. Night schools for adults had been organized all over the state by the Liga
Central and the village Ligas—each a combination of labor union, educational
center, and a farmers’ cooperative. Monday evening sessions—called Lunes cul-
turales, or cultural Mondays—were held in the main and local Ligas. The weekly
programs were devoted to lectures on current and historic topics—art, scien-
tific discoveries, and hygiene, illustrated with motion pictures. Music, poetry,
dramatic sketches. and dancing were, of course, included. At the conclusion of
each session, there was a brief talk on the evils of intemperance because, as Felipe
assured me, ‘‘alcohol has been harmful to the Maya; encouraged under the ha-
cienda system, it has been one of the factors in his racial retrogression.’’ The
temperance campaign, he said, was under a sincere and able director, Maestro 17
Eligio Erosa—whom he would have me meet. In Mérida, there had recently been
established a modern agricultural college, a new industrial school and one for
specializing in the mechanical arts. He spoke proudly of the University of the
Southeast, founded within the year by arrangement with the national govern-
ment. Its curriculum adopted a rationalistic viewpoint and, in addition to the
usual professional departments, had made available courses in evolution, astron-
omy, the modern sciences and Socialist Economy. He hoped its students would
go forth as leaders in the work of defanatización,18 for only with the ‘‘elimina-
tion of the fear complexes of the Maya can we build a happy and clear-minded
citizenry in Yucatán.’’
Encouraged by his willingness to discuss his program, at least in outline, even
before our formal interview, I told Felipe that prison welfare was one of my par-
ticular interests and that I had been working both personally and with orga-
nizations on this question for the past two years. I was anxious, I said, to go
very thoroughly into his reforms, which, he should know, if not already advised
on the matter, were attracting considerable attention in the United States, espe-
cially, as I had learned just before my departure, with important prison workers
in New York.
‘‘That, Alma, you will have to see, not hear,’’ he insisted. ‘‘It is difficult to con-
vey atmosphere with words. One must feel the atmosphere of the Juárez Peniten-
tiary to understand the innovations there.’’
But some things he would tell me now. He had done away with locked cells;
the prisoners had been given access to the yards and open gardens at all times.
Stripes and mail censorship had been abolished. Prisoners were permitted daily
visitors and, once a week, allowed to receive wife or sweetheart in complete pri-
vacy. Primary school education was compulsory; a model trade school had been
established in the prison, and the inmates were being taught lucrative trades.
They sold the articles they made, keeping the larger share of the proceeds for
118 Alma M. Reed

themselves. The balance was turned over to the prison welfare fund partly ad-
ministered by the prisoners themselves. ‘‘The penitentiary as an institution will
entirely disappear,’’ he declared, ‘‘when we uproot the social evils that create law-
breaking, crime. Meanwhile, we do our best to help the prisoners face responsi-
bility and become better citizens instead of making more hardened criminals to
send back to the world.’’
It all seemed so civilized . . . so moral! I kept naively wondering why his coura-
geous effort to right ancient wrongs had caused such national and international
consternation. The entire program obviously adhered to the sound democratic
principles of the Mexican Constitution. Much of the so-called radical legislation
was already operating in enlightened Scandinavian countries and in Holland. His
own original humanitarian contributions would soon be copied in other places.
After all the newspaper scandal about the ‘‘Maya Bolshevists’’ and the ‘‘Mexi-
can Russia,’’ I had frankly expected to find some rather bizarre—however ideal-
istic—approach to political, economic, and social organization, instead of this
straight, clean cleavage between conditions no longer tolerable and those which
must inevitably supplant them, not only in his own state but everywhere else in
the world. I had no knowledge of Karl Marx other than the current journalistic
perversions of his philosophy and naturally did not think well of him. The word
‘‘Communist’’ held for me vaguely sinister implications, and I rejected its em-
phasis on the mechanistic and regimentation of life. But, like many other young
university women of the postwar period, I read with stirring acceptance Bernard
Shaw, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Havelock Ellis, Olive Schreiner,
our own Emerson, Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. Influenced by my father, I was
an ardent ‘‘Single Taxer,’’ and Henry George’s Progress and Poverty was regarded
as a family bible in our home. One could hardly be a devotee of such teachers
without admiring the structure and objectives of Felipe’s program and arriving
at similar conclusions.
I had been waiting for Felipe to explain the social program by which he was
being mainly judged outside Yucatán. My desire for firsthand information was
impelled less by the Collier’s commission to gather feature story material than
by my own earnest search for new psychological directions. For a long time, I
had been preoccupied with conflicts resulting from changed beliefs and the grad-
ual awakening to an ‘‘emancipated’’ outlook. Yet despite growing mental con-
victions, I was still what might be called ‘‘biologically Catholic.’’ Nor had I yet
freed myself from certain subconscious vestiges of an early convent training. I
wanted to rid myself of them but not at the sacrifice of my emotional and spiri-
tual fiber. For this attitude I had found comforting support in my initial classi-
cal studies. Ever since second-year high school, the Greeks and their language
had claimed my ardent admiration, due largely to the stimulating instruction of
peregrina 119

Dr. John Nourse. Through the myths and tragedies, I also learned to appreciate
that the Greek thinkers attributed greater validity to the ‘‘divine’’ imagination
than did the Pragmatists of my current reading. After weeks of wrestling with
Spencer and Darwin, I accepted Evolution. I continued to believe, however, that
there must be an archetypal pattern towards which evolution moves.
Vaguely, too, I clung to the idea that survival, as demonstrated in the inde-
structibility of the cell, might apply in some form beyond our brief earthly ex-
perience. I hesitated to part with my essentially religious if wholly unorthodox
views. I was hoping rather to identify them with some humanistic philosophy
endorsed by reason and the highest concept of universal ethics. Like thoughtful
young people everywhere in all epochs, I was inwardly groping for reconciliation
between the ever-present physical facts of decay and death with that mysterious
world of feeling and intuition, of longing for immorality and even premonition
of development in an unborn future.
Following the example of Omar Kayyam’s seeker after Wisdom, I had opti-
mistically frequented the sanctums of local seers and sages—the Omnipotent
Ooms of the Mazdaznan Society, the Hindu Swamis, the Rosicrucian Mystics and
the Sunday Night Fellowship Centers. But while each group contributed some-
thing to my sense of the oneness of the human family—generously holding out
hope of eternal peace even to the unbaptized—not one of them supplied the ini-
tiating spark or defined the course of effective ‘‘direct action’’ that would right
the world’s ancient wrongs.
But now, in Felipe’s company, all the promptings that had incited and sus-
tained my honest if ‘‘roundabout’’ search for reality, suddenly fused into exhila-
rating certainty. He was so sure of himself, of his values, of the importance and
dignity and the lasting significance of his work and methods. His superb confi-
dence had the effect of a magnetic force that picked up the stray fillings of my
doubt and timidity to fashion the fragments into positive organic cohesiveness.
Almost instantly, I saw in him my own completed spiritual ‘‘self-portrait’’—an
image of the soul I ultimately hoped to resemble when, as ‘‘the end and aim
of life,’’ I had achieved, in the words of the sensitive American novelist Caro-
line Munger, ‘‘improvement of the silent character.’’ In any event, that day Felipe
represented for me, on the secure plane of attainment, a synthesis of all the noble
causes that had enlisted my own adherence and feeble personal efforts—prison
reform, sane marriage and divorce laws, suffrage, economic justice, art encour-
agement, birth control, rationalistic education.
As I suspected, the daring sociological program, especially the aspects that
had to do with the stimulation of new collective patterns and responses, de-
manded, as he confided, ‘‘his most serious thought.’’ He gave, he said, these
questions intense and constant study and was rewarded ‘‘with tremendous sat-
120 Alma M. Reed

isfaction.’’ The program had been conceived not only with the aim of creating a
changed viewpoint and a different mood, but to implant entirely new concepts
of virtuous behavior among his people. Its success, he said, would depend largely
upon the collaboration of the Yucatecan woman: ‘‘It is very necessary that women
no longer be regarded, nor regard themselves, as slaves (esclavas). They are now
compañeras, with all the rights and all the obligations of citizenship. With our
coeducational system they may now enter the various professional fields, and
here in Mérida, women are holding public office.’’ In discussing the Ligas Femi-
nistas, in which his sister Elvia was very active, he said that such organizations
would train women of special aptitude to fill elective posts in city and state gov-
ernment. With the cooperation of the Feminist Ligas, clinics for both prenatal
and postnatal care had already been established.
His first interest in this line of work, he revealed, stemmed from his admi-
ration for what was then being done in Sweden. He was in close touch with the
Swedish scientists, and the program in Yucatán was under their direction. Re-
cently, two birth control clinics had been organized in the state—‘‘the first in
the Americas conducted with government sponsorship.’’ His clinics had been ap-
proved, he said, by the American Birth Control League, two of whose members,
Mrs. Anne Kennedy and Mrs. George H. Rublee, had been invited to Yucatán and
had been asked to make final suggestions. He expressed regret that they ‘‘sailed
back to New York only yesterday.’’ It was a pity that I had not met them, for both
were ‘‘magnificent women and very simpáticas.’’ Felipe disclosed that already
Margaret Sanger’s Family Limitation had been translated and was being distrib-
uted to married couples. ‘‘A child is too precious a thing,’’ he observed, ‘‘to trust
its coming into the world to blind and ignorant chance. Parents are the ones who
must decide when they should have children and how many they should have.’’
As gently as I could, I reminded him that his divorce law was a target for
denunciation in the North American press and pulpit. Felipe answered that he
thought the commotion was wholly unjustified. ‘‘If the principle of divorce is
accepted—and it seems to be accepted throughout most of the world today—
what valid objection can there be to keeping divorce simple and inexpensive?’’ he
asked. I replied that personally, I saw no objection, once the problem of children
was dealt with in a human way. I assured him, too, that while a strong opposition
to easy divorce existed in the United States, there was, at the same time, a grow-
ing acceptance of it. Some of our foremost thinkers were going even further than
his official attitude and were concurring with Bernard Shaw, who had said: ‘‘We
shall have civilization only when divorce is as easy and as cheap as marriage!’’
The news pleased him and he remarked: ‘‘Ah, Shaw is a great Englishman!’’ And
when I corrected him, saying, ‘‘Shaw is a great Irishman,’’ he exclaimed enthu-
siastically, ‘‘Better still! The Irishmen I met in your country—in New Orleans—
were my favorite Americans!’’
peregrina 121

Felipe spoke feelingly and at length on marriage and divorce: ‘‘It is indeed
hard to understand how anyone of even average intelligence and ordinary self-
respect can continue to live with another who does not wish it. Such an arrange-
ment is contrary to both common sense and common decency. But when two
people have mutually decided that they no longer wish to remain married, that
state’s interference in their efforts to lead separate lives is both cruel and insolent.
Mistakes are recognized and remedied in every human relation. Why exempt
marriage? To fail to recognize the error of mismating is as heartless as and surely
more devastating in its effect upon society than ignoring the physical agony of a
person who has been injured in some automobile accident on the grounds that he
had been struck through his own carelessness.’’ He explained that the new Yuca-
tán marriage law ‘‘emphasized love in the union of two people’’ and discounted
the idea of possession with which marriage ‘‘most unfortunately’’ had become
involved. ‘‘Certainly, children have rights,’’ he said, ‘‘and their first right is to a
home with an atmosphere of affection and love. If a child for any reason finds
no pattern of love in its own home but only cold indifference or hatred, and the
parents are unable to provide a substitute home, then it is the duty of the state
to surround that child with the nearest equivalent to the tender care furnished
by a happy and well-regulated family life.’’
Felipe confessed that at the moment this problem, the children of estranged
parents, was his ‘‘gravest concern.’’ He revealed that he was in the process of
establishing a haven for orphans and the children of disrupted marriages—one
entirely free of regimentation and the usual institutional errors. He was work-
ing on the details with experienced modern educators, but he would appreciate
having my ideas on the subject . . . Would I talk with him soon about the Casa del
Niño—the House of Childhood? I assured him that I would give most serious
thought to his appealing plan and discuss it with him whenever he desired.
Felipe’s project was close to my sympathies, for time and time again, in the
course of my social service journalism I had encountered the pathetic figure of
the child victim of the broken home. My native city of San Francisco held at that
period a United States record for its proportionately high divorce rate. Not long
before, my own brief marriage to a kindly inventive genius, more than twice my
age, had been dissolved in an unpublicized divorce and by mutual consent. The
experience left me saddened but not disillusioned nor embittered. I had suffered
no psychic trauma nor severe emotional wrench, and there were no children in-
volved. Believing that the perfect union of man and woman represented life’s
greatest success, I welcomed freedom, confident that love such as I had known
only vicariously, through the example of lifelong, unswerving devotion set by
my own parents and through the great loves of romantic literature, would one
day come to me. I had perfect faith that I was yet destined to know the normal
happiness that my youthful, idealistic experience of marriage had missed.
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 6. Ultima Thule

K
‘‘ anasín!’’ The ever-exuberant Antonio announced our arrival as the white
road ended and we swung into the peaceful little plaza of the model
Socialist village. It was arranged like a modern park and planted with
orange and lemon and tamarindo trees. At the center, from a double concrete
platform, arose to the height of twenty feet or more a glistening white monument
to the Maya race. Enclosing the plaza were low stuccoed buildings and a modest
church with a rounded façade and open bell niches. The buildings were painted
a vivid shade of coral red, and in sharp contrast, pale ivory outlined the outer
edge of the doors and windows. Masses of verdant foliage, waxen-leafed mag-
nolia and luxuriant guanábana formed the background. The combined effect of
coral, ivory and bright green was very gay and striking.
We left the car and briskly encircled the plaza, ‘‘for exercise,’’ while the loud
honking of Antonio’s Claxton brought villagers from every direction. Felipe
greeted them and inquired about their affairs. They trailed behind us in little
groups, while we examined the monument from different angles. All had the
same worshipful look I had seen in the eyes of Indians at the Liga Central. Ap-
parently, they regarded him as some kind of Maya deity. The monument, Felipe
said, was the work of two young Yucatecan sculptors, Leopoldo and Alfonso To-
massi. I found it convincing in design and symbolism, but regardless of its in-
trinsic merit as an art creation, I could see that it was ideologically functional.
For I watched the people of Kanasín—Indian and Mestizo alike—as they gazed
proudly and reverently upon their most cherished public possession. The square
central shaft—a series of horizontal planes, suggesting the levels of a pyramid—
was capped by a decorative frieze adapted from Maya motifs. The shaft was sur-
mounted by the figure of an enslaved Maya Indian in the attitude of one about to
rise. His facial expression was sad, but not without a faint gleam of hope. With
rare sensitivity, the young sculptors had conveyed the mood of the ‘‘Sad Race,’’
the ‘‘Raza Triste,’’ awakening from the sleep of centuries and going forth fearlessly
toward the dawn to claim its long-denied heritage of liberty and human rights.
124 Alma M. Reed

The four sides of the monument were adorned at the base with the design of a
triangular shield, set in red marble to represent the Socialist emblem. Each shield
bore the name of a Maya leader who, at some epoch, heroically, but in vain, had
striven for the liberation of his people. One of the shields carried the name of
Cecilio Chi of Tepich, who fell in the Maya uprising against the whites in 1847;
another, that of Jacinto Pat, who was sacrificed in the same hopeless struggle.
‘‘The stones come from the quarries of Sotuta,’’ Felipe said, as we examined
details of the work. ‘‘My father was born in Sotuta. He was a man of strong and
unusual character. His family had lived there for many generations. Sotuta is the
city of Nachi Cocom, the last Maya king to stand against Spanish invaders.’’ One
of the archaeologists had told me that Felipe claimed direct lineal descent from
Nachi Cocom, but neither one of us mentioned that fact then. I would ask him
about it some other time.
Antonio had gone off in quest of limonada. Felipe warned me that this was a
‘‘temperance’’ village and that no other cold drinks were to be had, not even by
‘‘representatives of the press.’’ The workers of Kanasín, he explained, had decided
that there ‘‘shall be no cantinas and no churches in their pueblo. The church you
see across the plaza has been converted into a public library and cultural center.’’
We sat on a tamarind-shaded bench, awaiting the limonada and admiring the
stone symbol of the ‘‘Raza Triste.’’
‘‘They call the Maya the ‘sad race,’ but do you think our Indians look any
more depressed than Indians in other places?’’ Felipe asked. I answered that all
Indians look a bit sad to me, but from what I had already observed of the Maya,
he seemed healthier and certainly cleaner than Indians in other parts of Mexico
or in my native California. ‘‘Yes,’’ he agreed, ‘‘the Maya have kept many of their
beautiful habits and customs through all their sufferings. Personal cleanliness is
almost a religious obsession with every Maya.’’
I begged him now to tell me something of the initial stages of his program of
racial resuscitation, how he had organized the movement and set it into motion,
if he were not too tired and if there were still time.
Opalescent streaks against a gray-blue sky were the sole remnants of the glory
of the sunset. I knew that we should now be on our way back to Mérida for the
crowded and important evening with its official banquete, the reception for the
archaeologists and last-minute preparations for the departure by midnight train
for Uxmal. Even Antonio was beginning to worry and had already reminded us,
‘‘Ya es tarde,’’ 1 when he returned in triumph with a whole half gallon of limo-
nada. But suddenly the word time took on a detached, almost irrelevant meaning
in this place and at this hour. My reflections had veered away from the clockwise
conventional demands and were heading direct and unhampered to the time-
less metaphysical. I was thinking, for no accountable reason, of the old Theoso-
peregrina 125

phist at home and his lesson on the cosmo-conception of eternal recurrence, the
theory that all lines, not merely in space but in time, finally close their circles.
He had suggested that we try to visualize history not as a succession of events
following a path of straight linear projection but rather as the course of a spi-
ral, which in its descending return brings that far-off tomorrow of man closer
to his remote antiquity than to the pulsating moment. Now, if ever, it seemed to
me, the idea invited application . . . I tried it . . . Questions shot up around me
like the sharp, spaded leaves of the sisal, bearing thorns! What Karmic law was
Felipe obeying in his mighty effort to revive a dead civilization? From what ob-
scure cycles had the impulse reached him to infuse the still-beautiful body with
new life—a life of unimagined perfection? By what forces was he impelled in his
consuming desire to restore ‘‘an organic power to become’’ to a culture which
Spengler declared had not died ‘‘naturally’’ in some process of inevitable West-
ern decline, but had met a ‘‘violent death . . . murdered in the full glory of its
unfolding, destroyed like a sunflower, whose head is struck off by some ruthless
hand in passing?’’ 2 My speculative musings dissolved of their own futility. But
the hypothetical questions had evoked a strangely disturbing spell that then, or
even later, I was unable to shake off. For always, Felipe seemed to be fatefully
involved with their unanswerable answers!
So, in the orange-perfumed twilight, I listened to his epic dream. Remem-
brance and hope, ancient roots and new florescence, mingled their potent magic
in the warm tranquil air. All the petty concerns that lay beneath the myopic frame
of the self-seeking present—the vulgar clamor for profit and privilege—were
swallowed in the immense silence. Out of the stillness came the Great Past and
the Great Future like honored guests, to sit with us for a little while in the Plaza
of Kanasín and to give solemn ear or, at times, lend their mute eloquence to the
discussion . . . Felipe believed that if the Maya were ever to regain their vital func-
tioning, it would be necessary first to erase ‘‘the many writings’’ four centuries
had imposed upon the faded document of their racial heritage. He must work, he
said, as on a palimpsest, lifting layer upon layer of unrelated impressions from the
age-worn parchment until at last he reached the still-legible traces of the origi-
nal hieroglyphs. . . . As with a palimpsest, he must search for the initial layer, the
innermost core of essential Maya character, to which alone the creative impulse
of the race would again respond. To the basic task of finding it, he disclosed, he
was bringing scientific aid. He named archeological research and excavation of
the ancient cities; the study of the Mayan language and the ancient inscriptions;
development of surviving arts and crafts; revival of folk music and the dance, of
the traditional festivals and other cultural expressions that had lived on, despite
every effort to obliterate them.
It was primarily to give the Maya access to his ancestral cities, he admitted,
126 Alma M. Reed

that he was building roads to Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. Eventually, he would con-
nect all the principal archaeological zones by a system of highways. ‘‘You may
be sure,’’ he added, ‘‘that we want the tourist in Yucatán. We are only too eager
to have the world know about the splendid past of the Maya. But what is more
important for us is that the Maya himself become aware of that splendid past—
that he become proudly aware of it. His pride in race, his pride in its achieve-
ments, must be turned to account . . . With that, we shall light the spark of a
new volition, create a desire to live, a passion to possess as a spiritual treasure
all that was his in the past and that can be his in the future.’’ He told me about
the new archaeological museum under the direction of his good friend, the poet
Luis Rosado Vega, where the most important discoveries of sculpture and other
antiquities would be kept in Yucatán ‘‘so that the Maya would always have these
unrivalled works of his ancestors where he might see them.’’
‘‘It is necessary also,’’ he went on, ‘‘that the Maya become a happy being and
regain the capacity to feel both pride and joy after so long a period of humiliation
and sorrow.’’ He mentioned some methods being used to teach the Maya how
to enjoy life. Sports and games of all kinds were encouraged. Every little Liga in
the state had its own orchestra and its own baseball team. Baseball and boxing
had been made a part of school training. Frequent contests were held in tennis
and swimming and wrestling. There were colorful fiestas with prizes for dancing
and singing—‘‘not only their own sad songs but with lively, modern music.’’ The
Maya must learn to play; he has all but forgotten how . . . The expiring flame
must be fanned into fresh vigor, ‘‘before it is too late.’’
Felipe revealed, unconsciously, that once he had tried to find the clue he was
seeking by another, more personal method. In speaking of his travels ‘‘over the
length and breadth of the Mayab 3 on foot and on horseback, through the Yuca-
tán, into the wilds of Campeche, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, and the forest jungles
of Chiapas, ‘‘hasta Guatemala,’’ he casually mentioned that he had often stood
before the majestic monuments in the silent and deserted cities, ‘‘wondering and
wondering’’ how he might penetrate the age-old mystery and draw closer to the
‘‘soul of his blood brother, the Maya.’’
Through gleaming clouds of brilliant luciérnagas—my heart has no other
word for fireflies, unless it be the Mayan name cocay—we virtually flew in the
deepening dusk over the road to Mérida. My ‘‘invaluable’’ paper, that painfully
worked-out list of questions, now seemed as foolish as it was useless. I would
have quietly dropped it out of the speeding car to let it drift far out over the sisal,
if I were sure that it would not first be blown back into my face like a boomerang,
or pinned by the evening breeze to the windshield to cause me further embar-
rassment. In his ‘‘own way,’’ Felipe had told me all that I needed to know about
himself and his Socialist program. And in the deepest recesses of my conscious-
peregrina 127

ness, his total meaning as a man and as a symbol, and as an authoritative voice
for humanity, had, in that brief space of time, been fully comprehended.
We would have that formal interview as arranged. But certainly I had no in-
tention now of squandering any part of its priceless hour or two on henequén.
I would not fail the financial editor who had asked me as a favor to gather in-
formation for him. I would inquire conscientiously about the latest ‘‘lowdown’’
on recent sisal developments, official statements on the intricacies of Regula-
dora 4 moratoriums, local and federal tax deductions, collateral guarantees, and
the like. But for this and similar data, I would go to the English-speaking experts.
There were several of them in Mérida . . .
My now eagerly anticipated Friday morning interview would be devoted, I
promised myself, to conversation of a very different content. I must know more
about Motul, about his boyhood and young manhood there, his ‘‘truly remark-
able mother’’ and the father with the ‘‘strong and unusual character.’’ I would
ask him about his devoted brothers who were ‘‘soldiers in his cause’’ and his
sister Elvia, the feminist leader . . . I would question him about those years of
‘‘bitter struggle and countless sacrifices,’’ when he carried in his heart the words
‘‘Land and Liberty’’—words that had guided his purpose and ‘‘gave him no peace
until they became realities.’’ I would entreat him to reveal what song the an-
cient temples sang to him—as once the statue of Memnon might have sung to
the wayfarer in the Theban dawn—when, at early morning or at sunset, he had
stood before them ‘‘wondering’’ in the silent and deserted cities of the Mayab . . .
Was it a mystic chant . . . the severed head of the Great Lord Itzamná—father of
the Holy Itzáes—singing of a day of Maya legend and of living Maya faith when
‘‘in a single day, if that day should come, will be shattered the silence of seven
hundred years?’’
‘‘You are married, Almita?’’ he asked simply.
‘‘No,’’ I answered. ‘‘No longer . . . A few months ago I divorced my husband.’’
‘‘That is too bad! . . . Is there a child?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘What a great pity! . . . But you are young. You will marry again!’’
‘‘Someday . . . perhaps!’’
I felt that his own status might be delicate ground. I did not expect him to refer
to it. At least a dozen gossips aboard the Mexico and since my arrival had vol-
unteered the news that he was living apart from his wife. It was obviously a very
popular topic of conversation in Mérida. But he gave me the information him-
self. Without comment, he told me that he was married but had been separated
for three years from Señora Carrillo, who was living in Cuba. There were four
children. His eldest daughter, Dora, was married and living in Mérida. He had a
‘‘fine young son,’’ who had a Mayan name, Zichilich . . . and a daughter who was
128 Alma M. Reed

just seventeen, ‘‘tall and lovely, a blonde, with eyes like my own, of jade’’ . . . She,
too, had a Mayan name . . . It was Gelitzli . . . They were both away at school, in
my country . . . He missed them . . . There was another little girl . . . the youngest
child . . . She was with her mother . . .
Abruptly, with the exultant tone of one who has made a happy discovery, he
said: ‘‘Your Mayan name is very beautiful! It is Pixan, for ‘Alma’ in Mayan means
‘soul’ . . . ‘life.’ I shall call you Pixan, sometimes. But I like the name ‘Alma,’ just
as it is. It suits you!’’ He told me his own Mayan name . . . H’pil. He used it a
great deal, he said, for it was what the Inditos in the distant villages always called
him. He wrote it out for me with his fountain pen on a page of my notebook, in
red ink. With a wistful smile he explained why he had written it: ‘‘When you are
back in your huge New York and I, unhappy Maya, write to you in my infinite
aloneness, you will know that the letter is from me, Felipe, even though I should
happen to sign it this way.’’
I would recognize his letters, I replied, even though they were to reach me
unsigned. I had an infallible way of telling that they were his.
‘‘How could you tell?’’
‘‘Simple! By no remote chance would any of my other men friends even think
of using red ink when they wrote to me . . . green or violet, brown, blue and even
yellow, perhaps, but never red!’’
‘‘I shall not be able to deceive you then. I see it is useless to try!’’ He was laugh-
ing gaily. ‘‘Our Socialist tinterías 5 in Yucatán sell ink of only one color . . . a very
bright red!’’
The luciérnagas fell around us—enveloping the car, whirling in showers of
infinitesimal stars. I had never before seen anything like it, and in my rapture I
kept exclaiming, ‘‘¡Maravilloso!’’
‘‘Yes,’’ he agreed. ‘‘Luciérnagas are always beautiful, and extraordinary ani-
malitos, too. They are not phosphorescent, you know. That glow emanates from
their own luminous cells. Their light comes from their own heat, their own in-
tensity. They are a lesson to our puppet políticos . . . I know a Maya legend about
them. It was told to me by Rosado Vega, the same dear friend who is director
of our museum. For years, he has been collecting legends among the Indians in
the pueblos. Would you like to hear the story of cocay, for this is the name of the
luciérnaga in Mayan?’’
When I assured him that I would love to hear it, he began the story in a droll
tempo and with a trace of whimsical humor in his voice as though he were imitat-
ing someone telling a fairy tale to a young child: ‘‘Well then, here is the legend of
the cocay . . . Once there was a very humane god who used to cure all the pobres—
the sick, blind, and lame—who came from far and near. He made his remarkable
cures with a little amulet of green stone. I am sure, niña, it was like this one.’’ He
peregrina 129

showed me a tiny ancient Maya idol of nephrite attached to his watch chain. He
prized it, he said, above all his earthly possessions, since it had been with him
through all the luchas 6 of the Revolution and had become his lucky piece. He
continued:

Well, one day the god lost his miraculous green stone and he was desperate.
He looked high and low, but it was nowhere to be found. Then he called on
the animals to help him find it. The jaguar, the hare, the black zopilote,7 and
the deer, all answered his call. The deer found the amulet, but being a crafty
animal—although he is such a prominent native of the Yucatán, I hate to
tell you this—swallowed it, thinking it would give him the god’s power of
healing. But a hunter killed the deer and found the stone when he opened
its entrails. The other animals kept searching in the woods, the marshes, and
among the rocky places. At last, the cocay, then a very insignificant-looking
insect, decided to join in the search. But how? He thought and thought,
and so much thinking sharpened his wits. But he continued to concentrate
until his mind finally became so clear that he felt a spark coming from his
own being . . .
‘‘Now,’’ said the cocay, ‘‘I shall find the amulet . . . for there is no darkness
that I, myself, shall not be able to illumine.’’
And he did find the amulet and brought it back to the god, who was very
happy indeed and offered to reward the tiny creature. But the cocay did not
wish any reward. It was enough for him to know that the god continued to
cure the pobres. Besides, he was too humble an insect, he thought, for so
great an honor from a god.
‘‘You are a very small animal, it is true,’’ the god answered, ‘‘and the light
that you shed is but a faint one by reason of your size. But size does not
matter. The important thing is that beings produce of themselves the light
that guides them through life.’’
But the god rewarded the cocay by decreeing that the animalito should
forever after emanate the glow that was born of himself, and the light that
had served others so well would now serve his own needs. And as the grate-
ful and happy cocay flew away in the dusk, throwing his light wherever he
passed, the voice of the god followed him, saying: ‘‘It is better to be small
and shine with your own light!’’

When I told him that I loved every word of his story, he said he was deeply
pleased, for it happened to be one of his favorites. I would hear many other Maya
legends. We would meet Don Luis tonight at the reception and would arrange
with him for an entire evening devoted to ‘‘puras leyendas y poesías mayas.’’ 8 The
130 Alma M. Reed

legends, he explained, taught him much about the Maya, because they indicated
a deep philosophy of life, a rare purity of soul united with a subtle and profound
intelligence. They all betrayed, too, high moral and ethical concepts and were
based on a true sense of justice . . . I noticed that an unruly forelock of his thick
brown hair fell in a rebellious curl over his broad forehead. It was this, I suddenly
realized, that had given him that cheerful look even when he had been relating
very sad truths . . . I noticed, too, that his hands were strong and executive—
though not large—and that there was a sensitive tension in his fingers, slightly
squared at the tips. His two hands were clasped firmly over one of mine while he
bid me ‘‘hasta pronto’’ inside the stately gate of the Cantón mansion . . . telling me
that he would send Antonio and an escort—Manuel, perhaps—to accompany
me to the Opera House, where he would join me in the foyer, at nine.
I hurried through the patio and up to my room. I wanted to remain there,
undisturbed, to dream waking dreams. I longed to live over in visual memory
each moment of those three amazing hours . . . to retrace every foot of the white
road to Kanasín that led through the realm of the wondrous to the morning of
the world! But I must run! It was after eight o’clock. Only half an hour remained
in which to dress for the evening. There was no time now for transcribing my
notes, no time to amplify them with impressions that were crowding upon me,
rushing down the newly opened vistas of thought and emotion. I felt that I must
preserve his every word—not only what he said but how he had said it! I had
grave misgivings now about the story for Collier’s. I was no longer an impartial
judge of Felipe or his program, and I knew it. I wanted only to dash off pages
on the Corona—but poems, not appraisals. I resented that everything must wait
until tonight, on the train, or tomorrow, at Uxmal. Yet I did write nine words in
my private diary. To the entry made that morning at sea, off Progreso, under the
date of February 14, 1923—St. Valentine’s Day—I added the line: ‘‘He is a miracle
of Goodness and of Beauty!’’
I used the Spanish word milagro. ‘‘Miracle’’ seemed too weak a word.
 7. Uxmal: ‘‘The Thrice Rebuilt’’

A
t the stroke of nine, the porter of the Felipe G. Cantón residence ceremoni-
ously announced that Don Manuel Cirerol Sansores was waiting below
at my disposition on the order of the Señor Gobernador. Still tingling
under the blissfully disturbing impact of the twilight ride to Kanasín, I hurried
down to the patio to meet the English-speaking secretary who had been assigned
to escort me to the Mérida Opera House.
Felipe, in a crisp white guayabera dinner jacket and even more impressively
handsome beneath the brilliant chandeliers than he had seemed in the earlier
fading sunset, met us in the foyer. He greeted me with a single word, ‘‘Almita!’’ I
instantly sensed, as he took my hand, an agitation that broke through his disci-
plined poise. His eyes conveyed his own awareness of an elemental bond already
existing between us, though welded in the silence, as he led me to the table re-
served for the honored guests—Carnegie members, state officials, and heads of
the local archaeological society—and seated me at his right. On his left was Miss
Frances Morley, the attractive blonde sister and able assistant of Dr. Sylvanus G.
Morley, expedition director.
My reactions to that emotion-charged Yucatecan evening or, at least, the im-
personal observations I could, as a journalist, share with my readers, were re-
ported in the New York Times Sunday Magazine of March 18, 1923. The longer
than full-page feature story was illustrated with a three-column photograph in
which I appeared standing against a darkened entrance of the ruined ‘‘Nunnery’’
in the ancient Maya city of Uxmal. Under my byline I not only recorded immedi-
ate impressions of the international meeting—one of the most far-reaching in
its effects throughout the annals of American archaeology—but analyzed back-
ground considerations that had induced the United States scientists to visit Yuca-
tán. As a synthesis of our knowledge of the Maya civilization and the different
theories concerning its origin and development advanced by the leading con-
temporary authorities in their own words, the article held, at the period, a certain
historic as well as a timely news interest.
It read as follows:
132 Alma M. Reed

Reed at Uxmal, in a photograph originally published by the New York

Times, March 18, 1923. On the back, she has written the following note:
‘‘Detail of the ‘Temple of the Nuns,’ Uxmal—showing artistic use of
serpent motif, the basis of the Mayan decorative scheme.’’

Less than a month ago a group of eminent American archaeologists sat at a

banquet table in the foyer of the Opera House at Mérida—the colorful and
altogether charming capital of the Mexican State of Yucatán.
With the last course of the sumptuous tropical feast—a veritable deluge
of sweet-flavored oranges, pineapples, bananas, and luscious zapote—
the host arose to greet formally his distinguished guests and to offer his
good wishes toward the object of their long journey. He was Felipe Carrillo
Puerto, Yucatán’s Socialist Governor, who claimed direct descent from
peregrina 133

Nachi Cocom, the last of the Maya kings and the valorous defender of his
fatherland against the conquistador Montejo.
As poetically fitted the occasion—a ‘‘finale,’’ it seemed, to the plaintive
yet stirring strains of the ‘‘Jarana’’ played by the native orchestra—the Gov-
ernor spoke in the language of his ancient race. It was the Mayan tongue,
used today by more than one-half a million people, and, with the excep-
tion of the Guaraní in Paraguay, the only Indian language in the New World
to dominate that of the conqueror. Most of the local guests understood it
perfectly, and a few of the archaeologists.
With simple sincerity the Governor hailed this first expedition of Ameri-
can scientists and tourists as an epoch-making event in the history of his
state. He expressed high appreciation of those great organizations repre-
sented at the official function—the Carnegie Institution, the Museum of the
American Indian (Heye Foundation) and the Peabody Museum of Harvard
University.
Then with a feeling that pierced the barrier of a strange idiom, he de-
scribed a ruined Maya temple such as crowns the majestic pyramids of
Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. ‘‘High up there in their sculptured halls,’’ he said,
‘‘they are waiting—the ghosts of the Maya are waiting for you. They have
been silent through the centuries. You will be the first to hear their story.
Hear it and tell it to the world.’’
The descendant of Nachi Cocom, the big, handsome Mestizo whom the
reactionary planters of sisal hemp execrate as ‘‘the red dragon with the jade
eyes,’’ and whom 300,000 workers of Southeastern Mexico have deified as
their deliverer, protector, and infallible guide—touched with precision the
hope of the scientific men from the United States. The Maya story is the
end and aim of their endeavor. It is the ultimate goal of their present sur-
vey of those marvelous monuments that mark a wide, unbroken path from
Mayapán, near the northernmost cusp of the Yucatán Peninsula, into the
adjoining state of Campeche, some 100 miles southwest.
American archaeology in Yucatán insists that science alone will be able
to communicate with the Maya ghosts. Its voice will be the sole medium for
bearing across the chasm of the ages those significant questions of ‘‘How?’’
and ‘‘When?’’ and ‘‘Why?’’ and for carrying back to the world an answer
that will illumine, perhaps, those shadowy beginnings of the human family.
But if science would learn the story of the Maya, warns Dr. John C. Mer-
riam, President of the Carnegie Institution and a leader of the expedition, it
must approach the sculptured halls with a wand instead of a pickaxe.
‘‘The Maya will remain inarticulate forever,’’ he explains, ‘‘unless the ut-
most care be exercised. Ignorant excavations and neglect to properly classify
134 Alma M. Reed

the excavated materials will only destroy the record for all time. Better by
far to leave the cities beneath the soil for another hundred years and to sow
maize over them than to expose them to the vandalism of careless handling.
If the Maya is to tell his own story through his wonderful structures, his
massive mounds, and his countless thousands of carved stones, it is impera-
tive that the archaeologist know exactly where he is at each stage, and that
he identify and classify the object wherever found. The story is there—the
engineering, the philosophy, the literature of the Maya. But to use the pick
and shovel without intelligence will shatter it beyond reconstruction. The
Carnegie Institution realizes the full responsibility of giving the world the
Maya story and of giving immortality to the Maya. Individuals die, but the
work they accomplish is the most important fact of their lives. If what they
have left behind them is destroyed, the loss is greater than the mere wiping
out of a race.’’
This reverential attitude, with its slow, painstaking methods, will guide
the American scientific bodies now surveying Yucatán’s vast archaeological
territory should they decide to undertake excavations.
The Carnegie Institution has a very definite plan. For nine years Carne-
gie experts, led by Dr. Sylvanus Griswold Morley, have been delving into
the Maya field. They have gone through Guatemala, British Honduras, and
the Yucatán Peninsula, studying the architecture, the sculpture, and the
hieroglyphs, and in many instances dating monuments and the migrations
of peoples. Their explorations have revealed a sequence of cultures, which
coincide more or less accurately with these dates. In some sections they
have found a single stage of culture. In others, two. In still others, several,
in which one or more of the stages was missing.
Their next logical move is to ascertain where all of these stages appear
in their sequence, and to work intensively here over a long period of years.
So the Carnegie men, after looking about, are now focusing on Yucatán, to
determine exactly where this course may be carried out most satisfactorily.
They will be influenced, naturally, in their selection by the character of the
place and by the working conditions there.
‘‘Obviously,’’ observes Dr. Merriam, ‘‘it will be necessary to have the full-
est cooperation of the federal and state governments after we have presented
to them the plan of the work we wish to do.’’
But although this plan involves the relation of the people of the United
States to the people of Mexico, Dr. Merriam and General William Bar-
clay Parsons, Carnegie Trustee, who is also a member of the party, fear no
difficulties. Both express their confidence in the active support of Gover-
nor Carrillo and Dr. Manuel F. Gamio, Director of Anthropology for the
peregrina 135

Mexican Government. And both agree that the ruined cities of Uxmal and
Chichén Itzá should offer unrivalled opportunity for tracing back, step by
step, or rather stone by stone, to the dawn of Maya civilization.
Science concedes that, judged as a whole, this civilization was the most
remarkable expression of the Native American mind. Herbert J. Spin-
den, noted archaeologist, representing Harvard University on the Yucatán
survey, asserts that the Maya ‘‘produced one of the four really great and
coherent expressions of beauty so far given to the world, and that their in-
fluence in America was historically as important as was that of the Greeks
in Europe.’’ He maintains, further, that in perspective applied to the human
figure the Maya excelled the Egyptians and the Assyrians.
Yet today absolutely nothing is known of the origin of the Maya people.
Their record is lost in remotest antiquity. Even the lamp of tradition has
withheld its vague, fitful glare from their beginnings. After centuries of
study and exploration, conjecture and theorizing, not an authentic word
has been written into the first chapter of Maya history. The earliest estab-
lished date in the Maya hieroglyphic writing is 100 b.c., but even at this
period, points out its discoverer, Dr. Morley, ‘‘the inscriptions literally burst
fully formed, the flower of long-continued astronomical observations in a
graphic system of exceeding intricacy.’’
It is true that the Maya date for the creation of the world is now accepted
by the archaeologists as 3300 b.c. The discovery was made about thirty years
ago by G. T. Goodman, a Pacific Coast editor, who also enjoys the distinc-
tion of having ‘‘discovered’’ Mark Twain. Goodman had never seen a Maya
ruin, but correctly based his calculations upon the drawings of glyphs and
inscriptions appearing in A. P. Maudslay’s Biologia Centrali-Americana.1
This date, however, in no way indicates the antiquity of the Maya race. It
was arbitrarily fixed by the priests when they decided to adopt a starting
point and to put a definite limit upon time. Consequently, Maya history
was molded to fit within that limit, although the only happenings that can
be deciphered with certainty are the conjunctions of the planets and other
astronomical phenomena.
A fortunate inconsistency in an auto da fé is responsible for even this
meager information of the ancient Maya times and for the chronology of the
principal events from the colonization of the Yucatán Peninsula to the days
of the Spanish Conquest. Bishop de Landa, one of the friars who accom-
panied Montejo, confesses in his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (Account
of the Things of Yucatán) to finding a great number of books written by the
Maya priests on paper made from the roots and bark of certain trees and
rendered indestructible by a lustrous white varnish. ‘‘I burned them all,’’ he
136 Alma M. Reed

boasted, ‘‘because there was nothing in them that had not some superstition
and falsehood of the devil.’’
But before destroying them, he gained a certain knowledge of the Maya
writing, and although he left no translation, he made a copy of the alpha-
betical signs and of the hieroglyphs symbolizing the days and the months.
The zealous monk also proudly boasted that he had burned all the books,
‘‘at which the natives were marvelously sorry and distressed,’’ yet four man-
aged to escape the flames, to be preserved to this day in European libraries,
and his alphabet now serves as a key to their translation.
Through these native chronicles, known as the ‘‘books of Chilam Balam,’’
and through the inscriptions on the monuments, archaeology has been able
to follow the building and description of some of the Maya cities during the
first fifteen centuries of the Christian era. It has been ascertained that Maya
history may be divided into two general epochs, the Old and New Empire,
each containing several distinct periods. The Old Empire, beginning only
the Maya ghosts know when, lasted until a.d. 600. It embraced what are
now the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, Petén and Izábal in Guate-
mala, and the adjoining western part of Honduras. The New Empire grew
out of the Old in the fifth century, and flourished on the Yucatán Penin-
sula—although gradually declining—until the dominion of Spain in 1541.
But while we know that the Maya migrated to Yucatán between the fifth
and seventh centuries, it is likely that the sequence of cultures at Uxmal and
Chichén Itzá—responding to the wand of science—will reveal the migration
only as a return to sites abandoned generations before.
For many of the noble structures of these two cities and of others scat-
tered throughout the peninsula defy the dating process. Speculation on their
antiquity has completely disregarded the biblical guide as to the age of man.
The scientists of the present expedition incline toward the most generally
accepted theory that the Maya, coming originally from Northeastern Asia,
settled in Yucatán during the Neolithic period. In discussing the source of
this baffling fragment of the human race, Prof. Marshall H. Saville, interna-
tionally recognized Maya authority, who accompanied the expedition for
the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, claims that his re-
cent investigations only confirm his belief that the Maya civilization was not
inherited, but that it independently developed the features of North African
and Asiatic civilizations from a state of Neolithic culture. His verification
some weeks ago of phallic worship among the Maya from temples explored
at Uxmal and at Chichén Itzá is, according to Professor Saville, a significant
point in establishing the theory that the same ideas will take root and grow
in the same soil of the human mind without outside influence.
peregrina 137

Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon, the eccentric French savant, who devoted

thirty years of his life to the study of the Maya ruins, advanced the theory
back in the 1870’s that the Yucatán Peninsula is itself the cradle of human
civilization.2 He asserted that his knowledge of hieroglyphs (a knowledge
that is doubted by some authorities) convinced him that the white-robed
priests of Uxmal had carried their religion into Egypt, and that the Yucatán
coast was merely the edge of that vast lost continent now submerged thou-
sands of feet below the stormy Atlantic. Le Plongeon was of the opinion that
the Egyptians received the rudiments of their culture from the Maya about
one hundred and fifty centuries ago.
Many representations of human hands, actually found by him on temple
walls, spelt to Le Plongeon the origin of Freemasonry in Yucatán thousands
of years before King Solomon. He was also the discoverer of the famous
statue of Chac-Mool,3 the masterpiece of Mayan art. Chac-Mool, he as-
serted, was the Mayan for Abel, and it was the Uxmal priests who taught
the people of Chemi about the creation of the world, the story of Adam and
Eve, and of Cain and Abel.
Strange and fantastic seem these theories, but since no man speaks with
authority on the origin of the Maya, who can positively refute them? Mod-
ern archaeology stands as helpless before the riddle as did Hernández de
Córdoba in 1517, when he discovered the Yucatán Peninsula and wondered
at the magnificent edifices outlining its coast. And until the wand of science
breaks the long silence of the Maya ghosts, one guess, perhaps, is as good as
another.

In the well-appointed dining car of the official train, the expeditionaries

enjoyed their first ‘‘typical’’ Yucatecan breakfast when, shortly after dawn, we
arrived at the Pisté railroad station. Avocado, or alligator pear, served in the re-
gional style known as guacamole, was the feature of the feast. But as at the ban-
quete of the previous night, a profusion of other tropical fruits—mamey, mango,
piña—reminded the visitors of their debt to the ancient Maya agriculturists. At
Pisté, a flock of little Fordingas—Mexican for ‘‘Fords’’—were waiting to convey
us to the nearby archaeological zone. The party comprised about fifty persons,
including some ten members of the pioneer group of organized tourists—calling
themselves Yucatalogists—to visit what was already being claimed by the travel
agencies as ‘‘the Egypt of America.’’
Our arrival at the ancient city was greeted by substantially the same prospect
that John Lloyd Stephens, exploring Uxmal in 1841, describes as his ‘‘first im-
pressions’’ in his book Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and the
Yucatán.
138 Alma M. Reed

‘‘Emerging suddenly from the woods, to my astonishment,’’ wrote the ex-

plorer, ‘‘we came at once upon a large open field strewed with mounds of ruins
and vast buildings on terraces, and pyramidal structures grand and in good pres-
ervation, richly ornamented, without a bush to obstruct the view, and in pictur-
esque effect almost equal to the ruins of Thebes.’’
Felipe, ever the courteous yet undemonstrative host, explained as he escorted
us to the Fordingas, that our immediate objective was the great Castillo del Adi-
vino, the Pyramid of the Magician, also known as the House of the Dwarf—he
would tell us why later—which now loomed imposingly in sight. He was pleased,
he observed, with a provocative grin, to see that we were all sturdy specimens,
since we would have to climb 118 steps at a 65-degree angle, to reach the sanctu-
ary that crowned the towering pyramid. But, reassuringly, he quickly added that
it was not quite as bad as it sounded, since there were five different ledges where
we could rest and catch our breath. Better still, there was a strong iron chain to
cling to all the way up to the top. The levels, he said, were of different styles and
belonged to distinct periods of construction.
In one of the earliest outside reactions to El Castillo del Adivino, Stephens
wrote that he stood in its main entrance as the sun went down, ‘‘throwing from
the buildings a prodigious breadth of shadow, darkening the terraces on which
they stood, and presenting a scene strange enough for a work of enchantment.’’
I was seeing the gigantic monument for the first time at sunrise, but my own
vivid and enduring impressions check with his conclusion: ‘‘The whole forms an
extraordinary mass of richness and complexity, both grand and curious.’’
Some of the scholars who had visited Uxmal on former occasions contributed
facts or theories that helped us visualize the vast ceremonial center, as it must
have looked in ancient times. Dr. Spinden told us that during its peak, the city
probably had more than a million inhabitants. The buildings, too, he said, were
originally painted—red, blue, green, yellow, white, and black—in striking color
combinations. Dr. Saville noted that the Rain God, Yum Chac, whose mask ap-
peared in an elaborately carved frieze above the five separate entrances of the
lower west temple of the House of the Dwarf, was very similar to the Mexican
Tlaloc.4 According to Maya belief, all of Yucatán, he pointed out, was wholly de-
pendent upon the bounty of this deity because in the entire peninsula there were
no visible streams. The great subterranean rivers ran to the sea ninety feet below
the ground level and in certain localities broke through to the surface, creating
deep wells, or cenotes.
Whenever aspects of the old civilization were discussed, Felipe was a most
attentive listener. But whether silent or expressively articulate, his commanding
athletic figure, heightened by his distinctive wide-brimmed black felt ‘‘Gover-
nor’s Stetson,’’ was always the central presence. The humblest Indian and the
peregrina 139

most eminent savant seemed to be equally cognizant of his compelling personal

magnetism. For me, at least, the mere fact of his nearness filled every void with
ecstasy. I responded to hitherto undreamed-of sensate awareness at the touch of
his hand as he helped me up pyramid steps or gently guided my way through
the narrow passages of mystery-enshrouded masonry. But emanating far out be-
yond the area of mutual human recognition, his influence dominated my entire
consciousness. It seemed to me that even those far-flung, impalpable fragments
of archetypal self—dimly discerned hopes and aims for ultimate realization of
truth and perfection—must somewhere be sharing my mortal happiness. I kept
marveling that so many clear windows could have been opened to his charac-
ter and temperament on such brief acquaintance. Suddenly, I understood the
reason. For aside from the inexplicable laws of spiritual chemistry and their mys-
terious powers of attraction, Felipe, I believed, represented in his single person
a grand-scale synthesis of my own youthful aspirations towards a better world,
even the very movements that had claimed my devoted if feeble crusading efforts.
In his solid accomplishment and well-defined goals, I perceived the finished de-
sign of what I hoped was my own potential, the kind of individual contribution
I dreamed of eventually making to life’s collection plate. Constantly evident, in
his spontaneous words and in his kindly, paternal gestures, was a complete dedi-
cation to his Inditos, a sincere preoccupation with the lowly, ‘‘inarticulate ones,’’
everywhere. This universal outlook ran parallel to, not in conflict with, his pro-
found and proven love of country. It was his intense pride in the splendid monu-
ments bequeathed by his gifted ancestors to our sense of beauty that sustained
his faith in the great future role of Mexico’s autochthonous peoples. His pride
and his faith were reflected in his confident smile whenever the scientists or the
tourists expressed their admiration of Uxmal’s grandeur. His eagerness to have
the visitors fully appreciate some architectural effect or sculptural detail he had
discovered during years of familiarity with the site, frequently suggested the at-
titude of an adoring parent displaying the charms of a first offspring. He might
even have been mistaken for an artist expounding the intricacies of his craft or
the subtleties of conception that could otherwise pass unnoticed by the average
spectator.
As we rested at the principal levels in our strenuous ascent of the huge ‘‘House
of the Dwarf,’’ the archaeologists obligingly outlined some of the events in Ux-
mal’s history. At least, they pieced together for us as much of the dramatic story
as the record had preserved. While only a few scattered legends, they admitted,
shed light on the city’s beginnings and remote past, the chronicles of the Chilam
Balam de Chumayel—those four Maya books that escaped the flames of Bishop
de Landa’s auto da fé—did give a few meager details concerning later happen-
ings. As to the founding of Uxmal, de Landa states in his Relación de las cosas de
140 Alma M. Reed

Yucatán that, according to the tradition, ‘‘these people wandered for forty years
through the wilderness of Yucatán without finding any water except what came
from the rains, and at the end of that time they arrived at the edge of the moun-
tains that descend in front of the city of Mayapán, ten leagues away from it, and
they lingered there to till the earth like natives.’’
One of the chronicles of the Chilam Balam states that the year a.d. 1544 was
‘‘870 years after the destruction of Uxmal and the abandonment of the land.’’
From this same source it is learned that the city was occupied twice, once toward
the end of the seventh century and again three hundred years later. With Chichén
Itzá and Mayapán, Uxmal was one of the three constituent cities of the Mayapán
League, which flourished between a.d. 1007 and 1194.
Dr. Morley said that it seemed safe to conclude that during the last half of
the tenth century, several groups of closely related peoples, probably of Mexican
origin, though all spoke Mayan, entered the peninsula from the southwest and
proceeded to assume the political direction of northern Yucatán, establishing
Maya-Mexican dynasties at the capitals of the three city-states—the followers of
Kukulcán 5 at Chichén Itzá, the Cocom at Mayapán, and the Tutul Xiu at Uxmal.
He added that the Xius arriving in Uxmal—apparently from the Mexican pla-
teau—had brought with them distinctive cultural traits and religious concepts,
notably that of the cult of the Plumed Serpent.
It was Dr. Spinden who described the general prosperity that reigned during
the period when the League operated as a peaceful confederation. Both at Uxmal
and at Chichén Itzá, he said, the arts attained new importance. Uxmal became the
model city of the Maya Renaissance and the architecture of the period, produced
by what is known as the Puuc, or Low Hills Region, culture, achieved brilliant
expression in the Palace of the Governor, which we were scheduled to visit later
in the day.
Despite the semitropical heat and the unaccustomed effort in scaling rugged
mounds and steep pyramids, the morning hours followed one another like the
notes of some rapturous melody. But at noon I welcomed the chance to relax in
the shade of the corbel arch of La Casa de las Monjas, the ‘‘Nunnery,’’ where all
the members of the party assembled for a picnic lunch. Because of the profuse
latticework, the Spaniards, Felipe said, evidently believed the group of multi-
roomed structures surrounding a quadrangle, measuring over 259 × 250 feet, to
be a convent. He observed laughingly that such an institution would doubtless
be outlawed by Yucatán’s present Socialist Government on the grounds that the
Creator had made the female face to be seen and admired and not to be hid-
den behind concealing devices. However, he quite approved of the interpretation
given the Nunnery by the chronicler Cogolludo, who referred to it as the dwell-
ing of the Maya Vestal Virgins who kept the Sacred Fire, because keeping a fire
anywhere, he felt, was usually a worthy form of sacrifice.
peregrina 141

The Nunnery of Uxmal, in a photo recovered from Reed’s possessions inherited by Rosa Lie
Johansson in Mexico City.

On the inner walls of the arched corridor that functioned as our al fresco din-
ing hall, red hands had been painted. Different versions of their significance were
given by the archaeologists, but all admitted that the true meaning of the sym-
bol was unknown. Dr. Alfred Tozzer quoted the French abbot Brasseur de Bour-
bourg, who maintained that by impressing the red hand upon the walls of their
temples, the Maya believed they were invoking the spirit of Itsamatul, also known
as Kabul, signifying the ‘‘Celestial or Creative Hand.’’ 6 He said that other schol-
ars regarded it as the mystical sign of some ancient political society, as evidence
of murder in high places, or, as the mark of Kukulcán himself. ‘‘Murder!’’ . . .
The word caused me to shudder with the same strange revulsion I had experi-
enced the previous day when I looked down at the open-jawed sharks leaping
around the prow of the Mexico while we were anchored off the Progreso road-
stead. Whatever its meaning, the red hand struck as an ominous symbol—the
only sinister note I had encountered in the Uxmal ruins.
But the fleeting intrusion of the red hand failed to mar the festive mood of our
picnic luncheon, and no cocktails were needed to keep the spirits of the ‘‘Yuca-
talogists’’ and the scientists in a highly animated state. Delectable fruit cups—all
nonalcoholic in conformity with Felipe’s temperance campaign—accompanied
the typical platillos, or dishes: pollo pibil, enchiladas motul, and others that make
up the rich and varied Yucatecan cuisine. In their spotless white aprons, pat-
142 Alma M. Reed

terned someone mentioned on archaeological lines, the cheerful, broad-faced,

bare-legged boys who served us, might have stepped down from a temple façade,
so closely did their profiles resemble those on the sculptured walls.
The widely traveled, bilingual John and Vera Barry, who had been such inter-
esting deck companions aboard the Mexico, again delighted everyone with their
witty accounts of adventures on other continents. Felipe liked their happy ca-
maraderie and their obvious pleasure in one another’s company. From that day,
he always spoke of them as ‘‘los simpáticos esposos Barry.’’ 7 It was Mrs. Barry—
the vivacious, blue-eyed, auburn-haired daughter of a Scottish baron—who re-
minded Felipe that he had promised to tell us why the Castillo del Adivino was
known as the House of the Dwarf.
He replied that he would gladly keep his promise but, with her permission,
some other day. He preferred not to dampen with a grim tale of black magic one
of the most joyous occasions he had known in a long, long time. ‘‘Besides,’’ he
explained, to the amusement of the archaeologists who knew the popular legend,
‘‘it is rather hard on a Maya Governor, one of my predecessors, who ignomin-
iously emerged with a badly cudgeled head and, worst of all, at the hands of a
dwarf. Let us end our picnic on a more pleasant note—with music.’’ He had come
prepared, he announced, and his favorite troubadours, Alfonso and his mucha-
chos, were ready with their guitars, to play and sing for us a few of the songs that
Yucatán cherished most.
In cadences that throbbed with passionate longing, their plaintive voices,
blending in flawless harmony, drifted out over the vast stretch of ruin. Felipe
had suggested that we end our picnic with gaiety, but sadness was the under-
current of most of the songs—‘‘El rosal enfermo,’’ ‘‘Flores de Mayo,’’ ‘‘Un rayito
del sol,’’ ‘‘Las golondrinas,’’ and others. Yet so completely did both words and
music satisfy the heart, one could have gone on listening to them endlessly with
undiminished enchantment. Curiously, these guitar-strummed melodies tran-
scended the nostalgia of their personal themes to embrace the mystery of an
ancient race, a vanished civilization. And despite their sensuous lyricism, they
seemed poignantly attuned to the tragic mood of the dead city, abandoned in its
full flowering. I could not help but relate their minor-keyed strains to Uxmal’s
desecrated altars, its dishonored deities, toppled in the dust. Nor to the unutter-
able sorrow of a richly endowed people, forced to endure centuries of oppression
and humiliation.
On leaving the arched corridor of the Nunnery—in reality, the main entrance
to the great central court—we followed a road that led past a unit of four build-
ings surrounding the Quadrangle of the Doves. Stephens believed that the title
was derived from the high ornamented wall that ran along the top in such a shape
that from a distance it looked more like a row of dovecots than anything else.
peregrina 143

Nearby was the House of the Turtles, where we stopped for a few moments on
our way to the Governor’s Palace. This name the archaeologists attributed to the
carved turtles on the lintel of the cornice. They classified the façade of one of the
compartments as Chenes in style, representing an earlier period than the other
buildings of the site, which belonged to the Puuc culture.8 In balanced proportion
and austere elegance, the structure recalled the classic Greeks.
Standing before the Palace of the Governor, we were now all quite willing
to concede that its fame as ancient America’s noblest building had been justly
bestowed. But while the simple yet impressive architecture—crowning a triple
terrace a little short of 600 × 500 feet at the base—was of striking esthetic ap-
peal, the effect of timeless universality produced on the spectator was even more
challenging. One could readily accept the tradition that this and other princi-
pal structures of Uxmal’s ceremonial center had been ‘‘cosmically’’ planned—
their foundations laid with the relative positions of the known planets in mind.
Viewed from a distance, silhouetted against the southern sky, the monument de-
fied dating. Ignorant of its geographical locale or historic background, no one
except the experts, perhaps, could have guessed its American autochthonous ori-
gin. John Barry was of the opinion that, for a few thousand dollars, the entire
building might again be made ready for occupancy and pass for modern stream-
lined construction. The imaginative Vera Barry expanded her husband’s idea by
suggesting that Felipe establish the Governor’s Palace as a summer state capi-
tol, especially since Uxmal between April and September was much cooler than
Mérida.
‘‘I’m afraid this is not a project for immediate realization,’’ Felipe replied, ‘‘but
it may well fit in with our general long-range program of Maya rehabilitation.
Meanwhile, even in Mérida, we are always spiritually close to the builders of Ux-
mal in our effort and aims for the welfare of their descendants.’’
Ascending the broad stairway on the west and then a smaller one, we reached
the level of the platform on which the enormous structure, occupying 320,000
cubic feet of space, rested atop a natural elevation. Felipe, who must have visited
the Palace on innumerable occasions, and apparently knew every fact and fable
concerning it that research, up to the time, had disclosed, led us through the
double corridor with its two central halls and four lateral chambers, composing
the large central unit. With picturesque analogies based on the deification of
natural forces, he explained the significance of the motifs adorning the long,
broad, well-preserved frieze of the east façade, stone carvings of the Rain God,
repeated and combined in original and harmonious forms. Some twenty thou-
sand mosaic elements, he said, had been used in the design—alternating Greek
frets and latticework panels—while 200,000 cubic feet of solid masonry had gone
into the structure itself.
144 Alma M. Reed

With eager enthusiasm he developed the Maya theme so intimately involved

with his life’s pattern—his most compassionate impulses and most decisive re-
medial action. And as he spoke, Vera Barry’s proposal to convert the Palace of
the Governor into Yucatán’s summertime state capitol seemed less fantastic and
not altogether illogical. For by every inherent right, it occurred to me, this was
his building. With lines of unpretentious dignity like those of his own confident,
clean-cut personality, above all, through connotations of belonging to the ages
and to all mankind, the architectonic values of Uxmal’s ancient Palace of the Gov-
ernor tellingly interpreted the twentieth-century Socialist leader Felipe Carrillo
Puerto.
Dr. Morley noted that Stephens had found all the wood lintels at the Palace
in place over the entrances.9 The wood, which was very hard and rang under
the blow of a machete, had come, he said, from distant forests, possibly three
hundred miles away. He related that the pioneer American explorer found one
wooded beam of chicozapote 10 in the southernmost outside room of the build-
ing. When he left Yucatán, he took it with him to the United States and shortly
afterwards it was destroyed by a fire in New York City. The Carnegie director held
this to be an irreparable loss, since Stephens believed that this wooden beam was
the only carved one in the entire city of Uxmal and the ‘‘inscription could very
well have been the date of this edifice, the most beautiful in ancient America.’’
Intriguing moments in our examination of the Governor’s Palace were occu-
pied in searching for clues to the whereabouts of the ‘‘Lost Maya Library.’’ Felipe
related that according to Le Plongeon—for whom he held deep respect—the
Maya during the period of Bishop de Landa’s vandalism had hidden the bulk
of their sacred writings and that the great collection was still concealed in the
temples of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. As a result of this claim, supported by years
of rumor and legend, three archaeological penetrations at different levels and
at various periods had been made in the terraces but without result. Another
penetration with improved scientific methods of detection was contemplated
in the near future under state auspices, he disclosed. There was a chance that
even though the Maya library failed to appear, other valuable information would
doubtless reward the effort.
Dr. Saville said that he had known Le Plongeon’s widow and had read several
of the French savant’s unpublished manuscripts, which she unfortunately had
burned in despair at the contemptuous rejection of her husband’s theories and
discoveries. Dr. Saville expressed little faith in Le Plongeon’s claim but explained
that if the Maya books still existed in Uxmal, they should be found in good con-
dition. Chroniclers of the period, he pointed out, recorded that the paper made
from the bark and roots of native trees was rendered practically indestructible
by a lustrous white varnish. The books were folded fanwise, and many of them
peregrina 145

measured a yard in length. The subject matter included treatises on history, reli-
gion, medicine, archaeology, astronomy, and the occult sciences, in the practices
of which Uxmal was a recognized center.
Various causes for Uxmal’s downfall and desertion were suggested by the ar-
chaeologists as we returned to the waiting Fordingas and headed for the Pisté
railroad station. But there was general agreement that the disintegration of the
tripartite League and the destruction of Mayapán in 1461 marked the beginning
of Uxmal’s end. As Dr. Merriam pointed out, it was the Uxmal chieftain Xipau
Xiu, who, with the aid of other Maya leaders, had brought about the League’s
rupture. In its wake, internal disorders had so weakened the political and social
structure that only a few final blows were needed to envelop the land in a long
night of decadence and desolation. Pestilence, hurricanes, the frightful toll of
war with the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, combined to decimate the large
population.
‘‘Would Uxmal, Phoenix-like, ever rise again from its ashes?’’ Vera Barry in-
quired of Felipe. ‘‘That’s quite possible,’’ he answered, ‘‘although, of course, any
revival of the old creative spirit would seek and find different manifestations.
Our present-day Maya, for instance, would not build pyramids for their ordi-
nary daily functioning any more than would the modern Egyptians. But we are
hopefully preparing for the new order, when Uxmal, ‘The Thrice Rebuilt,’ will
again rebuild and once again be the scene of a vigorous, dynamic life. It’s almost
time, you know, for the reawakening and the fulfillment of the Maya prophecy,
which says: ‘‘A day will dawn when in a single day will be broken the silence of
seven hundred years!’’
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 8. Land and Liberty

P
receded by a lively native orchestra and escorted from the railroad depot
by a reception committee of some fifty leading citizens, we walked four or
five abreast for a kilometer along an unpaved road to the village plaza of
Suma, five kilometers from Mérida. Passing under an improvised cardboard arch
adorned with painted Maya symbols and topped at the center with a big red tri-
angle that bore greetings to Governor Carrillo and the members of the Partido
Socialista, our little procession broke rank in front of the low wooden munici-
pal building. In tropical cotton camisa and calzones and respectfully holding his
coarse straw sombrero over his heart, the presidente municipal came forward to
meet Felipe and his guests.1
It was clear to all of us that we were attending an event of the greatest im-
portance, the most momentous, perhaps, as one of the Carnegie expeditionaries
observed, since 1847, when at this same spot the grandparents of Suma’s towns-
folk gathered to play their part in the ‘‘War of the Castes,’’ the bloody uprising of
the Maya Indians against their Creole and Spanish masters.2 This was the Thurs-
day of which Felipe had spoken to me with such enthusiasm on our twilight ride
to Kanasín, a memorable day in the modern history of every Yucatecan pueblo,
the day of the ejidos.
Two hundred campesinos—Suma’s entire adult male population—most of
them attired like their Señor Presidente—massed around the table in the Plaza
where Felipe, between local and federal Agrarian Commission representatives,
was seated while he signed the document that restored to them communal pos-
session of the public lands taken from their ancestors before and during the Díaz
dictatorship.
On the sidelines stood an equal number of Maya women in the typical Mes-
tiza dress of the Yucatán—a white cotton huipil 3 gaily embroidered with floral
motifs at the neck and around the hem of the one-piece garment. Many held
infants wrapped or swung in dark rebozos of fringed blue or brown jersey cloth
while older children stood beside them or squatted at their feet.
148 Alma M. Reed

Still another phalanx of women carrying bienvenido banners arranged them-

selves in semi-military formation facing the official group. These newly enfran-
chised members of the Feminist League watched the proceedings with a certain
proud, proprietary air. As articulate and persistent agitators, they could claim
active participation in bringing about the necessary measures that hastened fed-
eral action.
A delegation of Feministas headed by Felipe’s vivacious younger sister, the
brown-eyed auburn-haired Elvia, had accompanied us from Mérida. Distinctly
Spanish in type, Elvia, I learned, was a most effective leader, who devoted full
time to touring southeastern Mexico, organizing Maya women into Ligas and
preparing them for civic responsibilities. Also in the Mérida Feminista group was
profesora Rosa Torre G., a schoolteacher who had recently been made a mem-
ber of the Ayuntamiento Council, the governing body of the Yucatán capital, the
first woman in the Mexican Republic to be elevated to such an office. In appear-
ance, Rosa presented a striking contrast to the tall, handsome Elvia Carrillo. The
little bronze-skinned regidora 4 was evidently the well beloved of Antonio, Felipe’s
amiable, broad-shouldered personal assistant and chauffeur. In any event, his
adoring glances seldom strayed from her classic Maya features. The union of two
such perfect Maya types could have gloriously perpetuated the antique race, as
Vera Barry remarked, the antique race whose silhouettes adorned the Yucatán’s
sculptured columns and temple walls.
The solemn ejidos act took place beneath a flat-topped wide-spreading flam-
boyant tree that afforded a natural canopy in the heat of the midday sun. And
symbolically, as well as functionally, its huge, scarlet blossoms enacted a role in
the ceremonies, flaunting the vivid Revolutionary color of the state’s Socialist
regime, sponsors of the reclamation of purloined civic rights.
On either side of the official table, chairs had been placed for the visitors,
among them directors and principal stockholders in enormous U.S. corpora-
tions, large-scale employers of Latin-American labor. All were occupants of re-
served seats at a significant performance—a preview of the drama of a chang-
ing world. For here, in this ancient, isolated land we were witnessing the sudden
emergence into a new human and economic status of a people that for genera-
tions had existed—as millions on all of Earth’s continents were still existing—
for the exclusive benefit and profit of ‘‘big business.’’ Here we were, all ‘‘close-
up’’ spectators at the denouement of a torturous and drawn-out play of unequal
forces in which humble, dispossessed men and women are finally seen in the act
of acquiring a voice in the conduct of their affairs, coming again into the owner-
ship of lands that their ancestors had tilled in remote millennia.
After the signing of the ejidos documents, the verification of the transfer deeds
by the Agrarian Commission member, and the acceptance of the grant on be-
peregrina 149

half of the community by the local authorities, Felipe addressed the gathering in
the Mayan tongue. And now, as at the reception to the Carnegie expeditionar-
ies on the night of our arrival, he spoke with a depth of feeling that transcended
language barriers. Again he succeeded in communicating with the intuitions,
at least, of his foreign listeners. The Mayan-Spanish-English-speaking Manuel
Cirerol made a running translation for me of Felipe’s words, and as I had guessed
from their mild yet decisive tone and their rhythmic quality of ‘‘joyous song,’’
they carried encouragement and hope, with no trace of rancor. One of the ar-
chaeologists seated near me likened the talk to a rationalist-inspired Sermon on
the Mount. He was deeply impressed, he said, by Felipe’s wise counsel and the
tolerant attitude conveyed in simple, clear, universal imagery as well as with the
intimate ‘‘big brother’’ appeal that colored his voice and manner.
In essence Felipe lauded the great Social Revolution that had shaped new des-
tinies for millions of Mexicans and for other millions still unborn. He explained
that liberation had come about only through the love of a few men for man in
the mass, through the sacrifice of their own lives that their fellow men might be
freed from enslavement by despots. ‘‘We cannot all be equally heroic,’’ he said,
‘‘but each can contribute something towards the transformation into a better,
happier place, his pueblo, his patria, and consequently, the world of today and
tomorrow.’’ ‘‘Each one of us,’’ he said, ‘‘can and should show gratitude for the gift
of consciousness—that most precious of Nature’s endowments, one that enables
us to plan and fashion our environment along the pattern of our most beauti-
ful dreams and highest ideals, if not for ourselves, then as a heritage for those
who will follow us on the good Earth.’’ He begged his Inditos to use their hard-
won rights and new political power in a ‘‘generous’’ spirit without dwelling on
past sufferings and injustices, but thinking only of their goal—an era of glorious
opportunity. There is a fine example, he pointed out, to be seen in Nature itself
as it revives with each morning’s sunrise, forgetting the nocturnal darkness or
yesterday’s storms.
In a brief discussion of some of the immediate practical angles of the land
distribution program, Felipe reminded the campesinos that two of their young
men were already receiving instruction in modern farm methods at the recently
organized Agricultural School in Mérida and would return to Suma as experts
and teachers. In a short time, he said, tractors and other machinery essential for
increased production would be made available to them through funds supplied
by ejidal financing agencies.
But it was on the inevitable note of compassion that he concluded the informal
talk to his Inditos. His thoughts were incorporated in his address to the workers
of Mérida a few weeks later at the 1923 May Day observance, a newspaper account
of which I received in New York.
150 Alma M. Reed

‘‘Use your freedom,’’ he urged on both occasions his audience of former ha-
cienda slaves, ‘‘to become better and freer citizens, never basely to revenge your-
selves on some individual who is himself a victim of a wretched old order that is
gone forever. Forget the past, except as a lesson for your future guidance. Hate
corruption, hate vice, hate cruelty, hate the institutions that breed them, but not
the individuals caught up in their meshes. Destroy the worn-out forms, expose
the fallacy of ancient doctrines which have been used to enslave men, and a better
day will dawn for all.’’
As I listened with rapt attention to his every syllable, and even more intently
regarded his every move with the eyes of my heart, I could have found no words
to interpret my own thoughts or express my emotional reactions in terms more
accurate than those penned at the same period by Dr. Ernest Gruening, who
knew Felipe well:

Felipe Carrillo would have dominated his surroundings anywhere. His was a
leadership almost unknown in this day and belonging rather to a legendary
age. Straight, handsome, with keen yet kindly gray eyes; clean-cut features,
and sparkling smile that could capture a child’s faith or rivet the hearts
of a vast multitude, taller by a head than most of his countrymen, he was
truly a god among them. In any civilized society, a high-spirited, brave,
and gallant gentleman. Never was the heritage of nobility that he believed
to be his more fervently held as a high obligation, more worthily executed
as a sacred trust. Yet he was a democrat to the core, a leader, a teacher, a
big brother rather than a ruler. He lived simply and gave no thought to
pomp, to personal power or its requisites. A great vision, a shrewd realism,
intuitive sympathy, a loving sentimentality, militant ideals, and extraordi-
nary physical energy combined with a rarely winning personality—these
were the qualities which enabled him, virtually single-handed, to achieve a
revolution.

The propitious moment with its captive audience was not lost for the cause
of temperance, then a subject of a vigorous statewide campaign inaugurated by
Felipe immediately after his election as Governor. The ardent and able crusader
Professor Eligio Erosa, a fluent Maya orator and former schoolmaster, deftly
connected sobriety with the ‘‘new deal’’ that the ejidos program would launch
in Suma.
His interpretive gestures left no doubt that he was describing the helpless con-
dition to which drunkenness reduced its victims, citing facts and figures that con-
vincingly demonstrated the baneful effects of excessive drinking. Professor Erosa
suggested that those who found it difficult to give up their harmful habits would
find strength in unity, and he urged that they hold regular weekly meetings at
peregrina 151

their Liga to exchange effective methods of combating the vice, thus anticipating
the system of Alcoholics Anonymous.
As I looked out over the bronzed faces turned toward their benefactor with
expressions in which gratitude and a certain religious veneration were mingled,
I remembered how enthusiastically on the road to Kanasín Felipe had described
to me the joyous reaction in every Maya pueblo to the ejido programs. He had
assured me that, at Suma on Thursday, I would see for myself the intense hap-
piness of the Inditos when they realized they were in possession of the lands of
which their fathers had been robbed. Certainly he had not overstated their elated
awareness of a changed status, revealed in their broad smiles, in the light that
gleamed in their tranquil, patient eyes.
But the very patience of these humble Maya folk, their evident childlike faith
that the road of sorrow was about to make a fortunate turning, only stirred me
to greater indignation when I recalled their tragic past. Suddenly, all that I had
read in John Kenneth Turner’s Barbarous Mexico came back to me in a flood
of new resentment. Through his documented ‘‘eyewitness’’ account of the in-
credible misery that enveloped the daily lives of these same campesinos and gen-
erations of their forebears, the humiliation, suffering, and cruel exploitation to
which they had been subjected, over a long and only recently terminated period,
assumed for me on the scene of the brutalities an even more outrageous aspect.
My indignation would have been even greater had I realized that some of the
hacendados who were among the worst offenders in their slaveholding days, but
now members in good standing of the Cámara Agrícola de Yucatán,5 attended
the receptions and accompanied the archaeological tours arranged for the Car-
negie expeditionaries. Since reading Barbarous Mexico several months earlier, I
had forgotten the names of the plantation owners interviewed by the astute jour-
nalist on his visit to Yucatán in 1908, posing as a millionaire American interested
in purchasing a large henequén hacienda. It was difficult for me to believe, for
instance, when later I became aware of the fact, that the soft-spoken, cultivated
don Felipe G. Cantón, president of the Yucatán Archaeological Society, in whose
marble mansion in Mérida I was housed, was the same hacendado who had inno-
cently made clear his philosophy of slave beating when queried by Mr. Turner on
the subject: ‘‘Oh yes, it is necessary to whip them, yes, very necessary,’’ Sr. Can-
tón had answered, with the same beguiling and perpetual smile I had observed
in my own brief acquaintance with him. ‘‘There is no other way to make them
do what you wish. What other means is there of enforcing the discipline of the
farm? If we did not whip them, they would do nothing.’’
Names may have escaped me, but I would never forget Mr. Turner’s pen pic-
ture of the first beating of a slave he witnessed on a henequén plantation—a
formal beating before the assembled ranch toilers early in the morning just after
the daily roll call. Here is his description:
152 Alma M. Reed

The slave was taken on the back of a huge Chinaman and given fifteen
lashes across the bare back with a heavy, wet rope, lashes so lustily delivered
that the blood ran down the victim’s body. This method of beating is an
ancient one in the Yucatán and is the customary one on all plantations for
boys and all except the heaviest men. Women are required to kneel to be
beaten, as are sometimes men of great weight. Men and women are beaten
in the fields as well as at the morning roll call. Each foreman, or capataz,
carries a heavy cane with which he punches and prods and whacks the slaves
at will. I do not remember visiting a single field in which I did not see some
of this punching and prodding and whacking going on.

Mr. Turner states that while he saw no punishments worse than beating in
Yucatán, he had heard of them. He was told of men being strung up by their fin-
gers or toes to be beaten, of their being thrust into black dungeon-like holes, of
water being dropped on the head until the victim collapsed, of the extremity of
female punishment being found in some outrage to the sense of modesty in the
woman. He had heard also of planters who ‘‘took special delight in personally
superintending the beating of their chattels.’’ The journalist learned from a lead-
ing professional man of Mérida that the favorite pastime of one of the richest
planters in the Yucatán was to sit on his horse and watch the ‘‘cleaning up,’’ as
they called it, of his slaves. He would strike a match to light his cigar. At the first
puff of smoke, the first stroke of the wet rope would fall on the bare back of the
victim. He would smoke on leisurely, contentedly, as the blows fell, one after an-
other. When the entertainment finally palled on him, he would throw away his
cigar and the man with the rope would stop, for the end of the cigar was the end
of the beating.
Mr. Turner explained that he did not receive the word ‘‘slavery’’ from the
people of Yucatán, though they were themselves the holders of the slaves. ‘‘The
proof of a fact,’’ he pointed out, ‘‘is to be found not in the name, but in the con-
ditions thereof.’’ He defined slavery as ‘‘the ownership of the body of a man, an
ownership so absolute that the body can be transferred to another, an ownership
that gives to the owner a right to take the product of that body, to starve it, to
chastise it at will, to kill it with impunity. Such is slavery in the extreme sense.
Such is slavery as I found it in Yucatán.’’
Mr. Turner asked, as did many others following his exposé: How was slavery
possible in Yucatán when Article 1, Section 1, of the 1857 Mexican Constitution
specifically states that in the Republic ‘‘all are born free’’ and that ‘‘slaves who set
foot upon the national territory recover by that act alone their liberty and re-
ceive the right to the protection of Mexican law’’? 6 This guaranteed freedom was
reinforced by a later Constitutional Amendment, which provided that the state
peregrina 153

‘‘shall not permit any contract, covenant or agreement to be carried out having
for its object the abridgement, loss or irrevocable sacrifice of the liberty of a man,
whether by reason of labor, education or religious vows. Nor shall any contract
be tolerated in which a man agrees to his proscription or exile.’’
The answer, as Mr. Turner indicated, is to be found in the fact that the hacen-
dados managed to circumvent the law of the nation by calling their slave system
‘‘service for debt.’’ But the contrary was proven, he shows, by the habit of trans-
ferring slaves from one master to another, not on any basis of debt but on the
basis of the market price of a man. Whenever, in his guise of prospective inves-
tor, he discussed the purchase of a hacienda, cash payment for the slaves was
demanded exactly the same as for the land, the machinery and the cattle. The
prevailing price fixed by the planters was 400 Mexican dollars apiece. Mr. Turner
was told that before the panic of 1907, the price ‘‘had been much higher, at least
1,000 dollars.’’
The enslavement of the Maya described by Mr. Turner extended as well to
some five thousand Yaquis who had ruthlessly been torn from their tribal lands
and fertile milpas in distant Sonora and transported to the torrid henequén plan-
tations of Yucatán, condemned to misery for the rest of their days. In most cases,
however, the forced labor and its attendant horrors were of short duration, since
two-thirds of the unfortunate victims of the Díaz ‘‘prosperity’’ system died of
starvation, abuse, and sheer terror in the first year of their ‘‘relocation.’’
The Yaqui deportations were carried out under three Sonora Governors—
Ramón Corral, who also served as Díaz’s Vice President, Rafael Izábal, and Luis
Torres—who rotated in office for more than a generation. Exercising absolute
power, they were answerable only to the dictator himself. The Yaquis—believed
to be an offshoot of the Aztecs—were goaded into war by the foulest means. The
men at the head of the government wanted the lands, which the Yaquis had held
under a patent signed by the King of Spain 150 years prior to their deportations.
Up until the Díaz regime, the Yaqui claim to tribal lands was recognized by every
ruler and chief executive of Mexico. The sequence of sanguinary events as re-
ported by Mr. Turner begins with the harassment of the peaceful agriculturists
by the Governors who sent bogus surveyors through the Yaqui Valley to stake off
the land and inform the people that the government had decided to give it to for-
eigners. The officials confiscated $80,000 7 in a bank account belonging to Chief
Cajeme. In their chagrin at not finding him when they came to arrest him, they
set fire to his house and those of his neighbors and assaulted the women of the
village, including Cajeme’s wife. During the quarter of a century that followed,
an army numbering from two thousand to six thousand men remained in Yaqui
territory. Thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of Yaquis were killed in
battle, and many hundreds were executed after having been imprisoned. A few
154 Alma M. Reed

years later Cajeme was captured and publicly executed in the presence of a large
body of his people who had been taken prisoner with him.
Among the worst atrocities was the mass hanging of men, women, and chil-
dren on May 17, 1892, by General Otero in the town of Navojoa. With so many
hangings, it is reliably claimed, the town’s supply of rope became exhausted, re-
quiring that each rope be used several times.
Many of the Yaquis had taken refuge on Tiburón Island. In reprisal Governor
Izábal had ordered the Seri Indians to bring him the right hand of every Yaqui,
with the alternative of the extermination of the Seris themselves. A Kodak photo-
graph showing the Governor laughing at the bunch of hands dangling on a cane,
which had been brought to him, was published by the Mexico City newspaper
El Imparcial in proof of the official’s brutality.
The four or five thousand Yaquis who refused to surrender their lands fled to
the isolated strongholds of the Bacatete Mountains but were still hunted by an
army of several thousand soldiers. They were classed as ‘‘renegades’’ because they
refused to surrender without guarantees that they would be neither executed nor
deported.
In an interview obtained by Mr. Turner from Colonel Francisco B. Cruz of
the Mexican Army when they occupied the same stateroom on a trip between
Progreso and Veracruz, the financial details of the flourishing business in human
merchandise were clearly stated. The Colonel, who was in charge of the deporta-
tions to Yucatán, confessed to Turner that he had delivered 15,700 Yaquis during
the previous three and one half years and would have delivered many more, ex-
cept that the government never allowed him enough expense money to feed them
properly and that 10 to 20 percent died on the journey.
For his services he received $10.00 for each Yaqui delivered, the remainder
of the $65.00 going to the Secretary of War,8 while ‘‘the land, the buildings, the
cattle, everything left behind when the Yaquis were carried away by the soldiers,
went to the Governor of Sonora.’’
Colonel Cruz complained bitterly about the high suicide rate among the
Yaquis, stating that they ‘‘wanted to cheat him out of his commission money.’’ He
related that in February 1908, between the mouth of the Yaqui River and the port
of Guaymas, scores threw their children into the sea and jumped in after them,
first from the starboard and then from the port side of the gunboat El Demócrata.
He said boats were lowered, but it was of no use because ‘‘they all went down
before we could get to them.’’
During my first visit to Mexico I had gathered other details concerning the
Yaqui deportations from my friend Ingeniero Juan de Dios Bojórquez, a mem-
ber of the Mexican Senate well known as a writer under the pen name of Djed
Bórquez, and who had been Carranza’s Minister of Gobernación.9 As a young
peregrina 155

engineering student from Sonora at the National University of Mexico, he used

to visit the exiled Yaqui gangs as they arrived in the capital for an overnight stay
at the army barracks before shipment by cattle car to Veracruz, where they were
herded into the holds of boats bound for Progreso, Yucatán. He had known the
Yaquis from childhood, spoke their language, and greatly admired their strong
characters. In the concentration camps known as bull pens, they would confide
in him, telling him of their misery and their anguish at being separated en route
from their families. Ingeniero Bojórquez had visited, he said, about five thou-
sand Yaquis, who had poured into Mexico City during this period at the rate of
five hundred a month.
Supplementing Mr. Turner’s on-the-spot reports and the personal reminis-
cences of Senator Bojórquez regarding the Yaqui deportations are those of Cap-
tain Blackadder of the Ward Line. I interviewed the doughty old red-haired
Scotch mariner aboard his vessel, ‘‘The Yucatán,’’ on July 6, 1923, on my second
voyage from New York to Mexico. Among his impressions of the barbaric traffic
in which he unwillingly became involved, he related the following:

Just after the Spanish War seventeen years ago, I carried some five thousand
Yaquis—men, women, and children—from Veracruz to Progreso, under
guard of five hundred Díaz soldiers. Between Veracruz and Havana we
carried cattle on the same deck, but the human cattle—for there seemed to
be little difference in the way they were treated and herded together—were
dropped off at Progreso. They put these poor creatures onboard at Veracruz
just as they caught them, separating families—mothers from children and
husbands from wives. Upper ’tween decks was roped off, and three times
a day the stewards went below with buckets of food, which the Yaquis ate
from their tin cups and plates. They all seemed very passive—never a word
of complaint out of one of them, and they seemed mildly grateful whenever
they were fed . . . I was impressed especially by the sad, brooding look of
one couple. The man was a handsome fellow. He must have been nearly
seven feet tall, and the woman was splendid. She looked like a Syrian, dark
and straight-featured and almost as tall as the man, with great gold rings in
her ears. They had a little child of seven, and the three were always together
and apart from the rest. The transportation of the Yaquis took over a year,
the largest shipment numbering thirteen hundred.

The cruel deportations were terminated with Carranza’s decree abolishing

peonage in December 1914. Later, when the First Constitutional Chief appointed
Ingeniero Bojórquez to his cabinet, he ordered him to accompany the 20th So-
nora Division to Yucatán to rescue from the haciendas two thousand enslaved
156 Alma M. Reed

Yaquis and bring them back to Sonora, a task that was accomplished. Inge-
niero Bojórquez found, however, that many of the exiles had escaped from their
bondage. They had won their freedom by desperately plunging through tropical
jungles and scaling mountain ranges and by actually walking around the en-
tire southern and western coasts of Mexico—a distance of four thousand kilo-
meters—before reaching Sonora and their native pueblos in the Yaqui Valley.
The rousing trumpet notes of ‘‘Diana,’’ the military salute with which Mexico
musically applauds the arrival and acknowledges the departure of a distinguished
personage or announces some important event, cut short my melancholy reflec-
tions on slavery and marked the end of negocios 10 and the beginning of fiesta time.
On the broad verandah of the municipal building long tables had been set
for a banquete that included the choicest dishes of Yucatecan fare—much of it
brought from Mérida. In addition to the many delectable tropical fruits already
sampled, we were now introduced to the guanábana, resembling in shape and
color a huge, ungainly potato, but of the most delicious taste, and used as a fla-
vor for the sorbete, or sherbet. Mr. Barry, ever on the alert for ways and means
of exploiting Yucatecan products on the American market, suggested in his en-
thusiasm that the syrup of this delicious fruit should be bottled and distributed
in the United States, where it would most certainly create a sensation with the
vast ice cream–consuming public. Felipe beamed his agreement and added that
the luscious guanábana was only one of the numerous contributions of use and
beauty that the Maya had made and could still make to our modern way of life.
‘‘We must not forget,’’ he said, addressing the visitors, ‘‘that a large part of
the colossal agricultural wealth of the United States—the greatest in human his-
tory—is rooted in discoveries made and processes invented by the Maya race.
Our good friend here, Dr. Spinden, who has known us for a long while, will
bear me out with his formidable list of fruits, vegetables, and other commodi-
ties that we now regard as prime necessities—many of them today forming the
major crops of your own rich country. These are all the result of patient experi-
mentation and devoted labor over unknown centuries by the ancestors of our
Inditos.’’ Dr. Spinden corroborated Felipe’s figures and stated in a brief talk that
the food products provided by Maya ingenuity and industry were, in fact, so nu-
merous and so essential to contemporary diet that one wonders what Europe ate
before the Conquest. He said that more than seven thousand species of the flora
of Yucatán are listed in the Field Museum of Chicago.
Twenty young women in gaily embroidered trajes de Mestiza and wearing
bright colored hair ribbons, pendant earrings, long gold chains with large filigree
crucifixes attached—the typical fiesta costume—now formed in line opposite an
equal number of young men attired in native garb, camisas and calzones of white
cotton and sombreros de paja. With the first strains of the lively music played on
peregrina 157

ukulele-like instruments, brass horns, drums, and gourds of Cuban origin, the
men claimed their partners. Facing one another, the couples zestfully plunged
into Yucatán’s most popular folk dance, known as the jarana.
With unsmiling faces, their bodies straight and hands behind their backs, the
men dug the heels of their huaraches into the wooden floor, with special gusto in
the zapateado, it seemed, in honor of the happy occasion. The girls, lifting their
heavy lace-edged skirts a discreet few inches, kept up a steady, rapid shuffling.
At intervals, they passed their partners with arms gracefully curving upward and
snapping their fingers in the manner of Spain. An accelerated tempo in the music
announced the ‘‘Torito,’’ and the couples began playing a bullfight game, the girls
waving their red and yellow silk scarves to imitate the torero teasing a brave bull.
The men charged head-on but always managed to pass safely under the simulated
cape, without missing a single zapateado step.
Several times during the dance, the music suddenly stopped and someone
shouted, ‘‘Bomba!’’ This was the signal for the man to pay a compliment, always
ending in a quip that caused general laughter. Two or three of the bombas dealt
humorously with the ejidos and the Partido Socialista, but one in the traditional
romantic vein declared: ‘‘I’m fascinated by your heavenly eyes! The beauty of
your face has won my heart—and if you are not already married, this cock would
sing a different tune!’’
Felipe had seated me on his right at the banquet table and during the jarana
described, with his characteristic enthusiasm and flair for vivid word pictures, the
meaning and origin of the different steps and the regional forms of folk dancing
in other parts of Yucatán.
When I told him that I found the fiesta costume of the señoritas most attrac-
tive, he said: ‘‘I hope, Almita, that you will give me the enormous pleasure and
do me the great honor of seeing you dressed like one of our pueblo Mestizas be-
fore you leave us.’’ Since this was his wish, I assured him, I could certainly try to
arrange it.
‘‘Please give no thought to the arrangements,’’ he answered. ‘‘You forget that I
am the ‘arranger’ here, and despite what some of the enemigos may tell you, I am
quite efficient when it comes to details. I’ll attend to everything at once—early
tomorrow morning. Your stay among us is so short, and there are many things
that I want you to see and understand before you return to your frozen North, so
that you will never forget us and will want to come back to your tropical tierra
someday.’’
Felipe had proposed that instead of going directly back to Mérida, we return
by a ‘‘roundabout’’ switch-track route permitting us to enjoy what was bound
to be ‘‘a glorious sunset,’’ and to pass through a region that we might otherwise
miss seeing.
158 Alma M. Reed

So, sipping iced limonada in the comfortable observation car on the trip back
to Mérida, the expeditionaries engaged in a general discussion of the historical
background of the moving ceremony we had just witnessed at Suma. The well-
informed representative of the Agrarian Commission explained that the word
ejido was derived from the Latin exitus, signifying ‘‘exit,’’ and originally desig-
nated lands of villages in Spain newly created by Royal Decree. Through the
Fuero Real, or recapitulation of the Spanish laws of the epoch, the designation
had applied as early as 1255. These lands embraced by the ejidos could not be ap-
propriated to personal use and could not serve for building purposes. Their main
function was to provide a common area for the threshing of wheat and other
community agricultural tasks. The area was also a corridor through which cattle
were driven to summer pasture. In some cases, the ejidos were held in reserve
as extra ground for the growth of the village to permit its expansion. The ejidos
of New Spain adjusted to their Old World antecedents. But across the historical
evolution of agrarian reform in Mexico, the word ejido has changed not only its
ideological significance but its social and economic content as well.
Several others who took part in the improvised roundtable agreed that the
Spaniards displaced the natives in the ownership of Mexico’s land with the pres-
sure and speed with which they extended the Conquest. The patrimony of the
Conquistadores, they pointed out, was constantly enlarged by lands taken from
the nobles, the cults of the Indian gods, and the holding of the capullis, or clans,
without compensation and with no redress on the part of those stripped of their
possessions. Right up until the War of Independence, the Spanish Crown en-
gaged in tireless efforts to stop these abuses through laws in favor of the Indians,
but with little if any real result.
The first major step after the Conquest in the redistribution of the lands came
about through an ordinance of May 26, 1567, on the pretext that in order to
achieve the delayed evangelization of the aborigines, it was a necessary to con-
centrate them in villages. Accordingly, the Marqués de Falces, Viceroy of New
Spain, assigned areas for these so-called places of ‘‘reduction,’’ or reservations, an
arrangement that was known as fundo real. Continuing with this policy, Felipe II
ordered, in 1573, that the villages, or rather the sections set aside for administra-
tive purposes, should contain water, entrances and exits, and adequate tillable
land. There was also a provision for a piece of common land, a league in length,
where the Indians could keep their cattle, ‘‘without mingling with others of the
Spaniards.’’
The discussion disclosed how even these meager rights—in comparison to
pre-Conquest holdings—were taken away from the Indians during the Colonial
era and most sweepingly in the Díaz epoch. Around 1905, Díaz ordered a resur-
vey of 125 million acres (50 million hectares), parceling out the project among
peregrina 159

twenty-nine companies, not on the usual basis of one-third as payment for the
work, but a much larger part, and permitting the companies to buy up the bal-
ance at virtually their own prices. An era of speculative land grabbing followed.
The Díaz políticos were quick to take advantage of this chance for fabulous gains.
In any event, less than eight million pesos entered Mexico’s treasury for the sur-
render to private ownership of one-fifth of the national domain. The discrepan-
cies found in old titles and the vagueness of boundary lines supplied the pretext
for the voiding of claims. In the confusion, it was the great estate owners, the lati-
fundistas,11 who benefited, and the villages, especially the Indian communities,
who were the chief victims.
One of the Yucatecans of our party recalled the notorious legal case of the
Indians of the pueblos of Xbohom, Sosichen, and Xpambiha, which was reported
in 1909 in the Revista de Yucatán.12 The lands of these pueblos were declared
baldíos 13 by the court and awarded to Don Olegario Molina, the Díaz Minis-
ter of Agriculture who was already Yucatán’s largest landowner. All of the in-
habitants who over the years had labored to dig wells, plant gardens, and build
houses were dispossessed, losing all their spring planting and their means of sus-
tenance for the coming year. The Revista article discreetly commented that the
campesinos had gained nothing from their court action except the right to dis-
mantle their houses and transport them elsewhere within a certain short time
limit.
A serious examination of the land problems of the Indians was also simulta-
neous with the beginning of the 1910 Revolution, when Francisco I. Madero in his
‘‘Plan of San Luis Potosí’’ formally proclaimed among his principles the return
of lands taken from the pueblos. Four years earlier, in June 1906, the patriots in
exile, headed by Ricardo Flores Magón, who formulated the Program of the Par-
tido Liberal 14 in St. Louis, Missouri, had included the land question among the
provisions of the epochal document. Madero stated the urgent need for restor-
ing possession and ownership of their lands to numerous Indian communities
in these terms:

In taking unique advantage of the Law for Common Lands, numerous small
owners, in their majority, Indians, have been deprived of their lands, either
through a decision of the Developments Department or verdicts of the tri-
bunals of the Republic. Since there is complete justification in a restitution
of lands to their former possessors who were despoiled in this arbitrary
manner, such dispositions and verdicts are held to be subject to revision,
and those who acquired these properties in such an immoral way, or their
heirs, will be required to return them to their original owners, to whom
they will pay indemnity for damages suffered.
160 Alma M. Reed

But as Felipe himself, now entering spiritedly into the discussion, stated, the
first specific method for agrarian reform found expression in Emiliano Zapata’s
‘‘Plan de Ayala’’ of November 28, 1911, calling for a distribution among the land-
less of a third part of the nation’s great estates. He recalled that the first official
division of lands during the Revolution took place in Morelos on April 30, 1912,
under Zapata’s authorization, more than a year before Constitucionalista General
Lucio Blanco cut up large estates for the benefit of the poor.15
Dr. Morley asked Felipe about his own association with Zapata in the early
days of the Revolution. He replied that he had been with the agrarian leader for
several years, working mostly in Cuautla and in other towns of Morelos. But
realizing that the land distribution program was in the most capable hands in
Zapata’s territory, he decided to return to his native Yucatán in the hope that
he might work there with General Salvador Alvarado in the enforcement of the
Agrarian Law of January 6, 1915, promulgated in Veracruz by Venustiano Car-
ranza, then the First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army and head of the Execu-
tive Branch of the Mexican Republic.
This law, it was pointed out, was basic to the Mexican Agrarian Law as it then
stood, and in synthesis it made these essential provisions: It declared null and
void the alienation of communal lands of the Indians, and all obligations, sales,
concessions, and evasions realized in disobedience to the laws of June 26, 1856.
Authorizing the creation of a national Agrarian Commission in each state and
territory and the particular executive committees they would require, it also em-
powered the military chiefs, previously authorized, to give or restore ejidos in an
interim capacity to the soliciting villages. Felipe added that the Law of January 6,
1915, had been elevated on February 5, 1917, through Article 27, to the category of
Constitutional law, in order to expedite the political constitution of the Republic.
Later, when I asked Felipe to tell me something more about his Zapatista days,
he spoke freely and volunteered interesting details. He related how with the first
Revolutionary expression of agrarian reform—sounded on November 28, 1911,
in Zapata’s ‘‘Plan de Ayala,’’ as a call for immediate expropriation and distribu-
tion of a third part of the great estates among the landless—he went to Morelos
to join the movement that so closely coincided with his own ideas of social jus-
tice . . . By that time, he explained, a whole year had elapsed since Madero in
the agrarian plank of the ‘‘Plan de San Luis Potosí’’ had pledged to return to
the Indians their illegally confiscated communal holdings. It was Zapata’s slogan,
‘‘Tierra y Libertad,’’ accompanied by ‘‘direct action’’ to guarantee its translation
into reality, that had won his allegiance. In 1912, he added, he joined the Zapa-
tista ranks serving as proveedor (purveyor), buying the foods and other supplies
for the Liberating Army of the South. With the Zapatista delegation, headed by
Antonio Soto y Gama, he arrived at the Hotel Morelos on October 24, 1914, two
peregrina 161

weeks after the opening of the historic sessions. Jesús Silva Herzog, who, as a
young journalist for the newspaper Redención of San Luis Potosí, reported that
the Zapatistas gave the convention its ideological content. Felipe himself recalled
the heated arguments and the convincing discussions of Zapata’s Revolution-
ary principles of agrarian reform. Through the persuasive oratory of Díaz Soto
y Gama, who appeared on the rostrum in a charro outfit, with a drill guayabera
and an enormous brimmed straw sombrero, the Zapatista delegation was able to
swing the convention members from a virtual worship of Venustiano Carranza
to naming General Eulalio Gutiérrez, instead, as Provisional President.
Records on file in the archives of the Ejército Libertador del Sur (the Liberat-
ing Army of the South) confirm, with several documents I was later to discover,
Felipe’s recollections of his Zapatista activities. Among them is a letter written by
Felipe in March 1913 to General Emiliano Zapata then in Cuernavaca, in which
he manifests his sympathy with the movement to deliver lands to the campesi-
nos and his complete agreement with the postulates of the ‘‘Plan de Ayala.’’ This
document was found in the archives collected in Cuautla by General García in
August 1913.
The Liberator Army archives also contain a report on Felipe’s interview with
Zapata at Milpa Alta of the Federal District in July 1914. During their long con-
versation, Zapata impressed upon Felipe the urgent necessity of struggling for
agrarian ideals in Yucatán, a struggle which Felipe solemnly promised the Cau-
dillo he would carry on to the end.
A third document written in Mexico under a November 1914 date records
Felipe’s appointment by Zapata as Colonel of Cavalry. Another, bearing a Decem-
ber date of the same year, gives an account of Felipe’s interview with Zapata in
the General Barracks of Tlaltizapán, Morelos.
Felipe did not mention that he was present in Mexico City when Zapata, Fran-
cisco Villa, and General Gutiérrez, as a short-lived triumvirate, watched from
the central balcony of the National Palace what Sr. Silva Herzog describes as ‘‘the
resplendent march of the Division of the North,’’ but Licenciado Arturo Sales
Díaz states that he was there at the time. In any case, it was at this period in the
capital that Felipe met Sales Díaz, then third judge of the Federal District. Sent
to prison for his Carranza affiliations by the government emanating from the
Aguascalientes Convention, he gratefully recalls that Felipe personally under-
took to secure his liberty and protected him until the Villistas and Zapatistas
left the city, a step taken because General Obregón, obeying orders of the First
Constitutional Chief, was advancing from Puebla.
Felipe was still in New Orleans, where he was staying with his brother Benja-
mín when the reactionary hacendados sponsored the so-called Separatista move-
ment,16 supplying money and arms to the adventurer Abel Ortiz Argumedo to
162 Alma M. Reed

head a revolt of secession from Mexico, launched in February 1915. Carranza sent
a government force to crush the uprising. In a sanguinary battle at Blanca Flor,
many inexperienced young men and boys were killed. The victory won at so great
a cost in terms of Yucatecan youth was achieved by General Salvador Alvarado,
who arrived in Yucatán on assignment from Carranza to put down the rebellion.
In recognition, Alvarado was appointed Operations Chief and State Provisional
Governor. Meanwhile, Ortiz Argumedo had absconded with the funds provided
by the Separatista hacendados.
In connection with the carrying out of the agrarian reform movement in Yuca-
tán, Felipe wrote from New Orleans to his brother Acrelio on July 8, 1915. The
letter, in answer to one dated June 24 of the same year, which he had received
from his brother praising the administration of the new Governor and military
Commander, Salvador Alvarado, is as follows:

I am happy, dear brother, that you are convinced of the ‘‘justice’’ that is
being bestowed by Sr. General Alvarado, of whom, as I see by the Yucatán
press, they are making a saint or a little less. I cannot give credit to such
bombast because I know from experience that the function of the press in
these times when the public liberties are being contested is to muzzle the
principal valve of humanity and to suppress it even to the right to think.
But you seem highly satisfied there and, I repeat, I am pleased. I firmly
believe that you really are satisfied, since you know how to think and to
equate matters so as to give them their just value. With respect to the most
honorable enemies of Delio (Moreno Cantón) what they do does not sur-
prise me, because I am convinced that if he were governor, they would
also play the toady to him, since this individual does not possess a shred of
dignity nor of shame.
Very well then, do you know the meaning of justice?
I suppose now they will begin to treat Indians as equals—will return to
them that of which they have miserably robbed them, as had been done in
the states that Zapata dominates—Morelos, Guerrero, and Mexico, that the
ejidos will be given back to the pueblos. . . . I suppose also, dear brother,
that the plantings have been left in benefit of the ayuntamientos 17 and that
by this time they will be receiving compensation for their labor with the
henequén, which they must transport to those who scrape it—certainly not
the hacendados, but the real agriculturists, those who plow the earth, sow
it, and burn the stubble—the very ones, in short, to whom lands have been
distributed in the states I mention.
Also, dear brother, they must have already established the Rationalist
Schools to teach the children and the youth the truth about the things they
peregrina 163

should know so that they might not be exploited nor exploit others. Also,
they must no longer have priests of those religions that, in large measure,
have contributed to the enslavement of humanity. And finally, because of
what you say, Yucatán must now be enjoying a period of real happiness.
And if all that you say is actually the case there, then, with all my soul, I
congratulate you and my countrymen. In this event, I shall soon begin to
seek the means to return to my native land, because if that which I have
pursued for so many years is now being realized, I, too, have the right to
enjoy it, since I believe I have suffered more than many others in that state.
But unfortunately, realism makes me see that they are not as happy there
as one might suppose. There are men who toady and who will always toady
while they have authorities to flatter in order that they might exploit their
fellow men. By this, I do not mean to say that nothing has been done there.
I am informed that Gen. Alvarado has done what he has been able to do
in the midst of the horrible corruption in which society lives. In any event,
I firmly believe that conditions are better now than in the days of Ávila y
Santos.

Soon thereafter, Felipe did find the means to return to Yucatán. He was met
at Progreso by Acrelio, who recalls that his brother entrusted him with a small
metal box containing one of General Zapata’s documents. ‘‘Felipe asked me,’’ he
said, ‘‘to guard it carefully, suggesting that it be hidden in the storage room of our
father’s wholesale establishment. Destiny decreed that the place made of huano
palms should burn down and the secret of the box was, of course, lost.’’
The gold and purple glory of the sunset measured up to Felipe’s predictions,
and when we motored through the ‘‘White City’’ en route to our respective domi-
ciles, the walls of marble palaces along the Paseo Montejo were still aglow with
rose-tinged light.
That evening another banquete, followed by an illustrated lecture on Chichén
Itzá, in preparation for our weekend visit to the most famous of America’s pre-
Hispanic capitals—the site of Carnegie’s future research—enchantingly occu-
pied us until long after the Cathedral bells struck twelve.
Then, in fitful dreams, I nebulously floated through the night visions of a radi-
ant Maya fiesta dress. But for longer hours, as I lay awake in the darkness, the
secret intoxication of a newly awakened love was diffused through every fiber
of my physical being, charging with ineffable magic each thought and intuitive
impulse. Together, mind and heart vibrated with the rapturous discovery that
heaven is earthbound, that no promised bliss of any afterlife could surpass the
mortal heritage of supreme joy, mine, at this hour, in the here and now.
Early the next morning the simpática modista, Sra. Marcelina Pérez, called on
164 Alma M. Reed

me at the Cantón residence, announcing that she had come at the request of the
Señor Gobernador to take my measurements for a traje de Mestiza, if I found it
convenient. She explained that Don Felipe’s order called for a beautiful costume
of the finest white silk, trimmed with precious old petit point embroidered on
ivory satin. She would do her utmost, she said, to make something ‘‘especially
lovely,’’ and she hoped I would be pleased with the result.
 9. Motul

A
djusting, it seemed, to some happily preordained plan, the ‘‘formal’’ Fri-
day interview took place in Felipe’s native Motul instead of at the Liga
Central as scheduled. Calling for me in time to keep my 9:30 appoint-
ment, Antonio handed me a note from his idolized jefe, in which a change in our
program was suggested. The message reminded me that it was a ‘‘free day’’ for
the American guests, permitting them to inspect the schools, churches, markets,
and the city’s historic buildings. Consequently, he, too, had declared a ‘‘free day,’’
and it would please him ‘‘immeasurably’’ if I would accompany him to Motul to
visit his mother, who had already expressed a desire to know me. If I found this
plan ‘‘agreeable,’’ he would personally guarantee that I would not miss any of the
local points of interest on the day’s itinerary of my fellow expeditionaries.
The railroad trip, Felipe explained, would require about three hours—‘‘long
enough for several interviews.’’ We could dine with his mother—at the same old
family home where he spent his boyhood—do a little sightseeing, and return to
Mérida in time for the late banquet arranged for the archaeologists and tourists
in the foyer of the Teatro Peón Contreras.1 He added that Profesora Rosa Torre,
the dedicated little regidora whom I had met at Suma, would join us. Both she and
his sister Elvia, who was already in Motul, were slated to speak at an important
regional session of the Feminist Leagues there.
I eagerly accepted so promising an invitation. Antonio drove me to the rail-
road station to see me aboard the special train and went back to the Liga for
Felipe and Maestra Rosa. Again I experienced the ecstatic mood of the night’s
wakeful hours, as Felipe greeted me in a shaft of brilliant sunlight. His tall figure
clothed in white linen, his radiant smile, the gleam that flashed from the depths
of his ‘‘eyes of jade,’’ combined to give credence to a belief current among his
Inditos—as I later learned—that he wore a halo. As for myself—despite the ar-
chaeological anachronism—I could think of no better metaphor to describe his
‘‘resplendent’’ quality than a gentle, kindly Maya version of the Aztec solar deity
Tonatiuh, who discharged the functions of the Celestial Señor and whose daily
166 Alma M. Reed

spectacle in the heavens was so vitally associated—in the religion of Anáhuac—

with all terrestrial existence.2
With his invariable down-to-the-good-earth approach to all problems, Felipe
did not leave me long adrift in the ethereal blue. ‘‘Well, here I am, Almita,’’ he
announced. ‘‘Behold your willing victim! Now you may carry out your threat to
ask me many ‘many personal questions,’ and I’ll do my utmost to give honest
answers regardless of the great embarrassment this may cause me.’’
Antonio, who had placed the big red Packard in the freight car ahead for use
in Motul, retired with Profesora Rosa to the opposite corner of the observation
lounge, where they doubtless exchanged the loving sentiments they held for one
another and discussed secret plans for their coming marriage. Felipe cheerfully
responded to my journalistic prodding and recalled some incidents of his early
home life that served as prelude to my meeting with his mother, Doña Adela
Puerto de Carrillo. In our very first conversation during the Kanasín ride, he
had described her as a ‘‘truly remarkable woman.’’ And now, filial devotion was
mingled in his voice with national pride when he spoke of her valor, her profound
love of country, the wise counseling she gave to each of the surviving fourteen
of her seventeen children. What commanded his deepest admiration, he said,
was the fact that besides the enormous responsibility of bearing and rearing a
family—exceptionally large even for Yucatán—she always managed to find time
for impersonal matters beyond the domestic circle, lending thought and effort
to the general betterment, keenly alive not only to the interests of her own com-
munity but to world problems as well. Those closest to her, he said, regarded
her as a ‘‘modern-day Roman matron,’’ because of her many noble qualities and
civic virtues.
Felipe cited several instances that demonstrated his mother’s intense feeling
for the common welfare and for the liberty-inspired causes of the Indian people,
even though, as he remarked with an amused smile at the rather incongruous
idea, she was said to be a descendant of the Conquistador Juan Díaz de Solís.
He related that once in the period when, with the help of his brothers, he was
organizing Ligas de Resistencia in Yucatán and throughout southeastern Mexico,
Doña Adela came in the middle of the night to the rooms of her eight sons,
all sleeping in dormitory-like quarters that opened upon the big patio of the
Carrillo home. Arousing them by flashing her lantern over each of their beds, she
said in stern tones: ‘‘What, how can it be that I find ye here sleeping peacefully
surrounded by all the creature comforts while your blood brothers, the Maya
Quiché, are fighting and dying in a just revolution in Guatemala? Have done with
your organizing of sinvergüenzas—shameless ones—into Ligas until the suffer-
ings and sacrifices of those other Maya end in victory . . . ¡Váyanse! . . . Go, all of
ye, to Guatemala and join the Revolutionaries in their struggle!’’ Felipe recalled,
peregrina 167

too, how on other occasions, Doña Adela, making her nocturnal rounds of the
extensive premises with her inseparable lantern, discovered bombs that had been
placed in front of the house by the enemigos. More than once she had lifted the
crude but deadly devices with her bare hands and carried them out of harm’s
way to the center of the Plaza of Motul.
As I had requested, Felipe began ‘‘from the beginning’’ with his story. He ex-
plained that, in the 1880’s, Motul offered scant facilities for education above the
primary grades. Yet the teachers were so thorough and conscientious that in the
few years under their influence, the normally serious child developed a desire
and laid the sound foundations for more advanced personal studies. ‘‘Basic to
all progress of the individual and the state,’’ he observed, ‘‘is the sacred role of
the maestro.’’ In his own case, he added, he would always cherish grateful memo-
ries of Prof. José Isabel Manzanilla Medina, the director of the first school he
attended, once maintained by the Ayuntamiento of Motul. Later, he was enrolled
in another public school, located near the Municipal Palace and directed by Prof.
José Rivero. Due to the city’s financial deficit and its inability to meet teachers’
salaries, the school closed. With his brother Gualberto, he entered the private
Catholic School of San Juan Nepomuceno, supported by the parents of the pupils
and directed by another conscientious though less stimulating master, Juan de
Ancona, who later became a priest. With the replenishment of the Motul trea-
sury, the lay schools were reopened, and Felipe and Gualberto returned to the
animating guidance of Prof. Manzanilla Medina. Later, when San Juan Nepomu-
ceno was rebuilt, the three Carrillo brothers, including Eraclio, at that time the
youngest, went back to the Catholic institution.
During these school years Felipe, unlike his brothers, rarely assisted in the
carpentry and cabinetmaking shop of his father, Don Justiniano Carrillo. He pre-
ferred, instead, to work outdoors, and each afternoon when classes were over,
he would ride horseback to a small piece of land, about three miles from Motul,
which Don Justiniano had recently purchased. Here, he attended to the upkeep
and improvement of the place, chopped wood, and watered the ten or twelve
head of cattle. In connection with Felipe’s care of the cattle, Elvia later recalled
an occasion at the finca when the generous-hearted Felipe gave away, without
permission, a valuable milk cow. Don Justiniano was furious and whipped the
unauthorized donor of the family patrimony—one of the very few instances, she
would remember, that her normally tolerant father had raised his hand in anger
to any of his sons. Felipe took his punishment stoically but with curious prophecy
in his words, cried out: ‘‘No me mates, papacito, porque yo voy a inmortalizar tu
nombre—Don’t kill me, Papa, because I am going to immortalize your name.’’
At the period, Felipe related, vanes on windmills were unknown in Yucatán
and the water had to be hand-drawn in a bucket from a depth of twelve meters.
168 Alma M. Reed

These and other chores on his father’s finca and the neighboring henequen plan-
tations brought him in daily contact with the Indians. Communicating with them
in Mayan, which he spoke ever since he could remember, he learned their inti-
mate problems. And even as a child, he could not help but see that the system
under which they existed always favored the side of the rich and that the jefes
políticos were the caciques, or chiefs whom the government had placed at the
service of the great landowners.
The Motul of Felipe’s youth, as later described by his brother Acrelio, was
a prosperous city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, connected by a forty-four-
kilometer highway with Mérida. Another fine road running north led to the Port
of Telchac, where hundreds of families flocked each summer to enjoy its clean,
cool beaches. The sumptuous mansions in the residence section indicated the
affluence of the hacendados who, at the turn of the century, began to realize enor-
mous incomes from the cultivation and exploitation of henequen. Their osten-
tatious drawing rooms displayed German pianos and elaborate Austrian vitrines
filled with precious bibelots. French period furniture and brocaded silk hang-
ings adorned their boudoirs, while domestic services were performed by pretty,
attractively costumed young girls. This luxurious way of life was supported by
a thriving commerce since, in addition to its agricultural wealth, Motul was the
purchasing center for merchants of towns in the surrounding area. Frequent band
concerts were held in the central plaza ‘‘J. M. Campos,’’ always fragrant with tu-
lipanes, roses, or orange trees. In the splendid Circo Teatro Motuleño were held
the first bullfights with high-quality toros from Piedras Negras and Tepeyahualco.
Flamboyant posters imported from Spain announced the corridas, which intro-
duced famous toreros, both national and Spanish. Dramatic operatic and musi-
cal comedy companies featuring renowned artists appeared in the magnificent
Teatro Motul, and the Cine Olympic and the Cine Ideal continuously showed the
latest in motion pictures. There were visits also from the celebrated circuses, such
as the Chiacini and the Circus Ricardo Bell. And invariably, as Acrelio records,
the July fiestas and the Carnival ‘‘made history.’’
Motul’s cenote, which Felipe, with tender recollection, had mentioned on our
ride to Kanasín, was known as La Sambola. One of the delights of his boyhood, he
told me on another occasion, was provided by its limpid and transparent waters
flowing in perpetual coolness beneath a solid piece of curving stone that formed
a protecting natural archway.
Listening to Felipe’s objective account of how, following his brief schooling,
he gained economic independence in his adolescent years, one might detect little
connection between the prosaic tasks that occupied him and the meaning his
life was destined to hold for the Maya race, the Mexican nation and tomorrow’s
world. But as the story unfolded, the monotonous routine limited to the physical
peregrina 169

exertion of lifting and hauling freight or driving mule teams with heavy loads to
distant haciendas over jungle trails assumed a closer relation to his future apos-
tolic role. No occupation of these youthful years, however humble, I gradually
realized, was wasted. Like every square inch of canvas in the masterpiece of some
immortal painter, every day of the wearisome period could be assigned its in-
dispensable functioning in the total picture of his fully realized maturity. Each
experience emerged finally as necessary and even inevitable for his complete,
intimate knowledge, at the grassroots level, of the social and economic prob-
lems he would be called upon to solve. Moreover, then, as later, the two motifs
were identical. Unchangeably, these remained a relentless personal struggle and
a courageous, consistent effort for the relief of the oppressed and helpless.
The homely details of his simple, yet always moving narrative disclosed that
upon leaving school, Felipe went to work on the railroad, owned by General
Francisco G. Cantón and managed by the latter’s son, Licenciado F. Cantón Ro-
sado. Through efficiency and attention to duty, he became, in 1891, conductor of
the passenger train that ran between Mérida and the Hacienda Cahuaca, a center
for the laborers who had come there to open up the way for the building of the
Valladolid road. Throughout most of the several years that he worked as con-
ductor, he also held the position of baggage master, responsible for seeing that
all baggage got off at the proper stations.
Only his unusual stamina and endurance enabled him to fill simultaneously
the grueling demands of the two jobs. He would leave Cahuaca at seven o’clock
in the evening for Motul by a three-wheeled handcar and be back at Cahuaca at
four in the morning, leaving again for Mérida after a two-hours’ rest.
Out of the money saved from the railroading jobs, he launched a trucking
business of his own in Valladolid. With three carretas 3 and their correspond-
ing mule teams, he transported sisal hemp and corn to Motul, driving one of
the carretas himself. He and his two Maya Indian associates made commercial
trips to the east and northeast regions of the state, supplying the merchants of
Valladolid, Tizimín, and Espita with salt and other provisions. An important fea-
ture of this enterprise was the delivery of equipment to isolated haciendas, often
through tropical forests, and the transporting of henequen back from the plan-
tation warehouses to points of shipment.
It is unlikely that Felipe ever heard of the eighteenth-century United States
frontiersman, Johnny Appleseed, who preached from the Old Testament proph-
ets and Swedenborg, planting seeds as he journeyed back and forth across Ohio,
and leaving fruit-bearing trees as living memorials of his passage through the
wilderness. There was, indeed, wide divergence between the messages of these
two New World humanists—one religiously, the other rationalistically inspired.
Yet, in the ardent desire of each to improve the condition of his fellow man, they
170 Alma M. Reed

served a common cause. Both made their constant breadwinning wanderings the
means of reaching the people, of communicating with them, instructing them—
generous-hearted, public-spirited ministrations that have passed into American
continental legend. In method, at least, one impression of Felipe at this period
brings him close to the Bible-quoting, seed-throwing crusader among Ohio’s
backwoodsmen. As Mario Negrón Pérez, his friend and Motul townsman, was
later to report: ‘‘It was not rare to see Felipe standing at the crossroads or in
the plaza of some Yucatecan town, while the mules of his carreta rested, using
the time to translate into Mayan the articles of the Mexican Constitution for the
benefit of the Indians who crowded around him, teaching them to know their
rights guaranteed by the Magna Charter, but trampled upon by their arrogant
masters.’’
On February 2, 1898, while still in his twenty-third year, Felipe married Isabel
Palma of Motul, daughter of a conservative hacendado. All members of the
Carrillo Puerto family—as Elvia later informed me—refused to attend the wed-
ding. Their absence was a protest against the cruelties of the bride’s brother, Pedro
Palma, to which they attributed the death, four years earlier, of his wife, the sensi-
tive and talented Enriqueta, eldest of the Carrillo daughters. Elvia, who was then
not quite ten years old, remembers how Felipe rushed home in his distress and
carried her off in his arms in order to have at least one of his sisters or brothers
present at the ceremony.
Before his marriage, Felipe had increased his trucking facilities to five carretas,
but new family responsibilities required a larger income and he gave up the trans-
portation business to go to Tampico, Tuxpan, and Tabasco, where he purchased
mules for resale in Yucatán. This venture did not succeed, and returning to Mo-
tul, he resumed the mule team transportation. He carried on this tiresome labor
until he met with a serious accident when setting out on a routine trip. Upon re-
covery, he engaged in a local delivery service, carting merchandise and building
material from the railroad depot to stores and construction firms. It was in the
course of this enterprise that he put his ideas about ‘‘eliminating the boss from
the job’’ into practice by establishing his first systematic cooperative. Each Satur-
day night in a corner of the Parque José Marín Campos, accounts were settled
with his workers and compañeros on a profit-sharing basis.
While Felipe reminisced and I diligently took down his every word in short-
hand notes, Rosa and Antonio, who were within hearing distance, laughingly
cautioned him against ‘‘understatement,’’ with the same freedom that they might
have shown toward members of their own families. ‘‘Don’t be too modest, por
favor,’’ Rosa said. ‘‘Remember that this is a fine chance to let the world know
about our Partido and its peerless chief, because Almita is going to write all that
you are saying to her in her newspapers.’’
peregrina 171

And now I asked Felipe to tell me the things I most wanted to hear—about
those events or incidents that had shaped his intellectual and spiritual develop-
ment. I wanted to know how and why and when he had become ‘‘socially con-
scious,’’ what had caused his awakening to the need of a different economic and
social system, what had sparked his present outlook on man’s relation to his fel-
low man and changed his views on orthodox religion.
‘‘These are big questions, Almita,’’ he commented in reply, ‘‘at least for a single
sitting. Still, I might summarize the answers to them simply by saying that my
‘awakening,’ as you call it, came in two dramatic experiences, one in my seven-
teenth year and the other in my early twenties. While, as I’ve mentioned, my
formal schooling was limited, I had inherited from my parents a love of books
and music. We had a family orchestra, you know—in which I played the flute
and the saxophone—and from childhood, I was an avid reader. I don’t remem-
ber the time that I would not travel far to find a good book and spend my last
peso to acquire it.’’
He told me how his chief source of stimulating literature in that period was his
friend, the Cura 4 of Valladolid, who possessed not only an excellent library but a
wide knowledge of classical music. With picturesque detail, he related that when-
ever he passed through that fine old city near Yucatán’s eastern boundary, he
never failed to visit the Rectoría.5 Like the great Miguel Hidalgo, father of Mexi-
can Independence; the San Juanista patriot-priest Velázquez of Mérida, dissemi-
nator of Libertarian doctrines; the famous scientist Padre Alzate, contemporary
and eulogist of Benjamin Franklin—all of whose libraries bulged with the works
of the French rationalists—the Cura of Valladolid, Felipe explained, had stocked
his bookshelves with volumes compiled by the Encyclopedists, radical disciples
of Diderot and D’Alembert, who submitted all issues to the analytical glare of the
lamp of reason. Although Felipe did not imply it, the Cura must have been clearly
aware of his young visitor’s superior mind and generous heart when he invited
him to browse at pleasure among his books. On one of these happy occasions,
to which Felipe assured me he looked forward ‘‘with tremendous anticipation,’’
he discovered Le contrat social, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Fascinated, fired by
a new passion as the significant message of the philosopher gradually emerged
from the French text, above all, thrilled that the validity of his own intuitions
about democracy and government with the consent of the governed had been
supported by so discerning a thinker, Felipe read on and on through the night,
oblivious to everything but the rewarding if slow task of extracting, one by one,
the spiritual building blocks for his new universe from the foreign language of
the printed pages. Finally, at dawn, he asked permission of his understanding
host to remain there ‘‘for a few days’’ while he studied every enlightening word
of Rousseau’s epochal revolutionary document.
172 Alma M. Reed

‘‘I did not leave the Rectoría until two weeks later,’’ Felipe admitted. ‘‘And
during all that time I was out of the Cura’s library barely long enough to eat and
to bathe. That experience determined my future conclusions about humanity’s
most vital problems and, to a large extent, my personal efforts to alleviate some
of the worst conditions. At least, it definitely spurred my ambition to remedy the
terrible injustices I saw everywhere around me in Yucatán.’’
The second event in his youth that was to have, he observed, lifetime repercus-
sions in his purpose and action, occurred one Sunday morning on a vast hene-
quen plantation near Chemax, where he stopped to deliver supplies. In front of
the administration building, he noted that guards with canes were herding the
enslaved male workers who had just emerged from religious services in the ha-
cienda chapel into two facing rows, a few feet apart. He thought the men were
waiting there for some kind of an inspection, until he was told that a woman who
had been late for roll call the previous day without sufficient excuse was about to
be punished. Then he heard a female voice, sobbing and shrieking in agonized
terror, while a young Maya woman, completely nude, was being dragged into
public view at the head of the double line, a point from which she was forced o
walk forward between walls formed by men of her own race, as well as Yaquis,
Chinese and Koreans. When she sank to the ground in an effort to hide her
shame, she was rudely handled by the guards, who shoved her back into a straight
path down the long, narrow vía dolorosa.
Felipe did not drive his mule team to Motul that day. He remained to plead
with the hacienda workers, evading the suspicions of the guards by talking to
individuals or small groups, arousing them through his impassioned words to a
full awareness of the outrage they had just witnessed against their own mothers,
wives, and daughters, a revolting offense against all the people of the Mayab. In
their ancestral tongue he called upon them to organize secretly, so as to be strong
and united for that inevitable moment when they could strike for liberation. At
these surreptitious Chemax meetings was born the dream of the Liga de Resis-
tencia—the League of Resistance—realized in and gradually expanding into a
powerful Yucatecan federation that was later to penetrate and embrace the six
states of southeastern Mexico, claiming the allegiance and defining the faith and
hope of exploited millions.
Edesio, one of Felipe’s seven younger brothers, met us at the railroad sta-
tion and escorted us to the Carrillo home, where he lived with his mother and
maintained the adjoining wholesale mercantile establishment left by his father.
Closely resembling Felipe but with blue-gray eyes instead of ‘‘ojos de jade,’’ 6
the handsome Edesio, with his finely chiseled features, fair complexion and ath-
letic build, would have commanded attention anywhere as a superb specimen of
young manhood. I had the impression that he might have creditably substituted
peregrina 173

for Pantarkos, favorite model of the great Phidias, when he carved out of white
Pentellic rock his immortal Ephebe—the ideal of Greek youth. Felipe’s junior by
fifteen years, Edesio’s own public career was already well launched. He not only
headed the Liga de Resistencia of Motul but had just been elected alcalde, or
municipal president.
From the moment that Doña Adela greeted us in her high-ceilinged, old-
fashioned sala,7 I realized that Felipe had described her with complete accuracy
as ‘‘a truly remarkable woman.’’ Weighing, apparently, no more than one hun-
dred pounds, and with her soft wavy hair still a glossy black, Doña Adela, de-
spite her seventy-two years, was as agile and as sure of her movements as she was
intellectually alert. An innately dignified bearing and a simple, long navy blue
taffeta gown with its antique lace fischu added illusionary impressiveness to her
slight, erect, compact figure. But it was the keen, appraising expression in her
dark eyes, flashing through bifocal glasses both worldly and spiritual awareness,
that suggested a highly charged current of personal dynamics flowing beneath
the containment of poised authority and mellow wisdom. At first sight, I knew
that I would love and admire her.
Felipe embraced her warmly and lifted her off the ground as if she were a small
child. Closing his eyes, he kissed her forehead as he said to me: ‘‘Almita, I want
you to know my marvelous madrecita and know her very well, because she is
entirely worthy to be the mother of Felipe Carrillo.’’
Doña Adela was ready with an answer in the same bantering mood when,
lowered from her midair position, she asked us with a feigned expression of dis-
belief: ‘‘Did you all hear what este gran egoista—this great egotist—was saying?
One might imagine that our Socialist Governor believes himself worthy to be the
son of his parents.’’
Elvia left her Feminist League conference long enough to welcome us. Rosa
and Felipe accompanied her back to the session, all agreeing to return in an hour
or so with two or three friends for one of Doña Adela’s famous home-cooked
Motul-style comidas.8
When we were alone, I said to her: ‘‘Señora madre de Felipe,9 your son is very
good to the Indians, but he is a bit stubborn with me. He does not tell me all
that I need to know about those days when he was a little boy and a young man
here in Motul. But he assures me that you have a wonderful memory and that
you will tell me everything. I want to know these details, not out of curiosity, but
because I am writing an article about him and his work for one of our national
magazines and for various newspapers in the United States.’’
She graciously consented to tell me ‘‘all that she could remember,’’ and I
begged her to ‘‘begin with the ancestors.’’
‘‘For that, niña,’’ she replied, ‘‘we must go to the Registro Civil 10 in Mérida, but
174 Alma M. Reed

I can tell you about some of them. My great-grandmother, on my mother’s side,

was Doña Santos Díaz de Solís of Peto. Her father was born in Spain. Her daugh-
ter, my grandmother, was Doña Juana Solís, also of Peto. She married Manuel
Puerto of Motul. Ah, she was very fearless, very energetic, and very rich. She
owned a silk establishment on the plaza of Motul and, besides, many buildings
in the city. My grandfather was a trader and traveled a great deal. They had three
sons and one daughter, my mother. When he did not return from his trips within
a reasonable time, my grandmother went in search of him. Sometimes her trip
would last two or three months, and at that period, one confessed before em-
barking at Sisal for Havana.’’
Doña Adela said that her mother, Josefa Puerto, married Domingo Mendi-
buru, a trigueño 11 of Motul. She regretted to tell me that he deserted his wife and
their four children, all girls, and ran off to Belize, where he married Lucinda Kelly
of England. Fourteen years later he returned and informed the young Adela that
he was her father. ‘‘Tal vez—perhaps’’ was her laconic reply. In speaking of her
girlhood, Doña Adela continued with the family story:

I was not yet fifteen when I married Justiniano Carrillo. He was thirty-three
years old, a military man. His hair was a chestnut shade, and he wore a mus-
tache. His complexion was fair and high colored. His eyes were light hazel
and sparkling. His features were very delicate, like my daughter Ernilda’s.
His father, Felipe Santiago Carrillo, was born in Sotuta and was the owner
of a very large merchandise store and a distillery there. He was a very hand-
some man, fair with blue eyes. Don Justiniano’s mother, Josefa Pasos, was
born in Tixkokob. When he was fifteen, my husband came to live in Motul
with his cousin Condia. For thirteen consecutive years he was a member of
the columna volante, the flying column. Upon the arrival of Maximilian and
Carlotta at Campeche in May 1864, Justiniano, then eighteen years of age,
was one of the four young soldiers selected for strength and good appear-
ance to carry the Empress from the prow of the little tender to the shore,
carefully lifting her above the waves and placing her on dry land. ‘‘Bueno,
muchachos . . . Valientes, mis soldados,’’ 12 she said, in appreciation of their
gallant assistance, later rewarding each one with a new uniform and a pair
of shoes.

Doña Adela continued:

Don Justiniano’s father, for whom Felipe was named, was a poet. And Don
Justiniano himself frequently wrote verses. When he would go to gamble,
perhaps with five pesos, he would say to me: ‘‘I shall gamble this much for
peregrina 175

a diversion.’’ He did all things with calmness and moderation. He would

win much more than he lost, but he would stop when he had won. When he
returned from a game, he would write in his notebook, ‘‘Impressions of a
Gambler,’’ in verse. Felipe’s uncle, also Felipe Carrillo, was another member
of the family who wrote poetry.

I asked Doña Adela if she could locate any of Don Justiniano’s verses. There
were many in his notebooks, now stored away, she replied, but she thought she
could remember one and would recite if for me. It was written while Don Jus-
tiniano was alcalde—mayor—of Motul and when Felipe was serving for a few
months at the Registro Civil. Part of his duties there, she explained, was to burn
the bones of the poor who had been disentombed and whose remains were not
reclaimed by friends or relatives. One day, Don Justiniano came to see how Felipe
was meeting his new responsibilities at the cemetery, and with his cane he turned
over the skull of an infant girl, from whose earth-filled eye socket grew a tiny
flower. He brought the little skull home, cleaned it and had it put back in the
Registro Civil as a scale weight, and then wrote these lines:

¡Bella flor, qué funesta es tu suerte,

que al primer paso que diste
tropezaste con la muerte!
Llevarte es cosa triste,
y dejarte en donde naciste
es dejarte con la muerte.

Beautiful flower, how said is your destiny!

At the beginning of life
you stepped into death.
It’s of no use to take you,
but if I leave you here,
I will leave you with death.

Doña Adela resumed her recollections:

Now and then, Don Justiniano would order beer. When they were all seated
at the table, he would have some poured in each glass. Jokingly, and always
with entire freedom, the boys would ask: ‘‘What goes, Papa?—¿Qué pasa,
papá?’’
‘‘Well, I wanted some beer, and I thought perhaps that you would all like
to have some, too,’’ he would answer.
176 Alma M. Reed

Occasionally, he would do the same with a bottle of very sweet wine—

vino de San Juan. But moderation ruled all his acts, and his sons were
models of temperance. As boys, none of them ever went near a saloon. They
grew up in a simple home, one without luxury, but there was always plenty
and no one ever lacked the things that made for health and average com-
fort. At all times there were at least twenty persons in our house—fourteen
in the family, three nurses, a cook, and a laundress. The bread alone for the
evening meal was eighteen pesos daily, and who knows how much more
for breakfast. When the baker would come in the morning and place the
bread on the table, each child would select pan dulce, teleras, or bolillos 13
according to his taste. ‘‘Mamacita, give me mine, now,’’ they would ask,
but I would make them wait until the breakfast hour. If Don Justiniano was
near, he would gently scold me, saying: ‘Let them have some now. For this
we are working, you and I—to give the poor little fellows what they need
and want.’’ Breakfast was at ten o’clock, dinner at four o’clock, and choco-
late was served at six o’clock, and before bedtime, rice and milk, chiote con
miel,14 in place of sweets. They broke so many dishes that I had to keep buy-
ing new sets constantly. Finally, in desperation, I bought a whole tubful of
jícaras, and afterwards they ate from puras jícaras—their little white gourds.
It was Enriqueta, the oldest of the daughters, who taught them table
manners and politeness. She studied to be a teacher at the Colegio Francés
in Mérida, but Don Justiniano did not want her to be a maestra and she
became proficient in bookkeeping.

Doña Adela explained that the education Don Justiniano gave his sons was
so special that it was completely out of its epoch, for, in that period in Yucatán,
education was based on Catholicism, or had a Catholic influence. She described
her husband as a ‘‘free thinker, a man dedicated to his work, his family, moder-
ately cultured, and very deeply concerned about the protection of the poor and
the laboring class.’’ He was highly esteemed, she said, in the city of Motul and
in his native Sotuta, ‘‘the city of the great Maya king, Nachi Cocom, to whose
family he belonged, fifth in order of direct lineage.’’
Indicative of his fine sense of justice and his sympathy for the exploited, Doña
Adela cited Don Justiniano’s attitude upon becoming the owner of a small piece
of land. A friend had invited him to visit the site, and he was so pleased with it
that he decided to purchase it, having in mind that it would be a good place to
cultivate later with the help of Felipe and Gualberto. During transactions in set-
ting boundaries to the property, Don Justiniano, whose liberal views were well
known to all, gave the laborers three times more than the price paid in the re-
gion for this class of work. The neighbors visited him in a group protesting his
peregrina 177

action, requesting him not to pay so high a wage to the Indians, arguing that
they must not become accustomed to receiving amounts larger than the stan-
dard. Don Justiniano answered his friends, stating that the wage seemed to him
very reasonable and that it should not, therefore, prejudice their interests.
Doña Adela felt that Don Justiniano’s independence of mind as well as his tact-
fulness were most clearly shown in his frequently expressed opinions in regard
to the training of his daughters. When they reached the age of fifteen, they were
permitted by custom to attend social affairs, to visit friends, or take part in di-
versions such as fiestas and balls, or religious ceremonies in the public churches.
Whenever they were invited to the popular dances, he permitted them to ac-
cept with pleasure, since he himself was very fond of this type of recreation. But
he had an entirely different attitude toward religious functions. He would plead
some excuse to prevent their attendance, saying, for instance, to those extending
the invitation that his daughters would not understand the priest since he spoke
in Latin and the girls had not studied Latin. To other persons he would answer
that he would gladly consent to let his daughters attend a church affair, if they
could assure him that there would be a good orchestra. The music, he said, would
distract them from an otherwise boring and tiring experience, through their not
understanding the maneuvers of the priests. In this way, Doña Adela explained,
Don Justiniano managed that his children held no particular grudge against the
church nor harbored any love of religion. They were merely indifferent to it.
Doña Adela’s account of the family discipline revealed an advanced system
for any time or place. As each one of the Carrillo sons reached the age of fif-
teen, he was regarded as a man. They had no occasion to ask permission of their
parents to go out in the evenings and amuse themselves with their friends. Don
Justiniano fixed no hours for their return, but it was certain that at ten thirty or
eleven o’clock at night all the boys were at home. In his hardware establishment,
Don Justiniano never locked up his merchandise or his cash drawer, which were
within reach of all of his sons. In the morning after breakfast, each one of them
would go to the money boxes and take out a rational amount to spend for fruit
and other sweets. No budget was established in the house because of the wide
liberty permitted the children. But Doña Adela said that she and Don Justiniano
preferred it this way, ‘‘which gave us all the sense of working together, parents
and children, for our common welfare and happiness.’’
This liberty allowed Felipe to realize his altruistic nature at an early age. Con-
stantly worrying about Motul’s poor children, especially the fatherless boys, with
whom he always made friends, from Don Justiniano’s store he would supply
them with the pencils and the copybooks they could not buy. His innate gener-
osity, as Doña Adela—and later several neighbors who had grown up with him
in Motul—related to me, was demonstrated in many ways. They remembered
178 Alma M. Reed

how Felipe used to divide his candies with these poor children and lend them his
toys. In playing games, he displayed a sense of fairness and calmly accepted just
decisions whether he won or lost.
When Doña Adela’s narrative turned to Felipe’s adolescence, she described
him as a ‘‘very restless youth.’’ She recalled that he did not like the idea of staying
in the store, but wanted to move about and see the country. He felt sorry that he
disappointed his father and used to say to her: ‘‘Pobre de mi papá.’’ 15
Always very manly for his years, Felipe was a tall, handsome lad. As Doña
Adela related:

When only eleven years old, he insisted upon having long trousers. We had
our photographs taken that day, his eleventh birthday, in celebration. He
would come home with his little jacket filled with wood, asking me to buy
it from some Indian. I used to think of him as a predestinado—one born to
help the helpless. As he grew to manhood, his mind seemed to be occupied
almost entirely with the sufferings and problems of the Maya. Don Jus-
tiniano would often warn him: ‘‘No es bueno ser redentor—It is not good to
be a redeemer.’’ But Felipe would answer: ‘‘I am not working to have them
pay me, but for the liberty of these Indians . . . If I come out crucified, I
shall not turn back—Aunque salga crucificado, yo no retrocedo.’’ . . . But Don
Justiniano would always insist, ‘‘The Indians will never thank you for this
favor.’’ ‘‘Sin embargo—nevertheless,’’ Felipe would reply, ‘‘I must go on.’’

On one occasion during his sixteenth year, Felipe, as I later learned, had to
acknowledge the validity of his father’s warning on the thanklessness of the ‘‘re-
deemer’s role.’’ The episode, related by Edmundo Bolio Ontiveros in De la cuna
al paredón,16 involved a pretty young contortionist, the daughter of Pancho Qui-
jano, owner of a traveling circus of the same name. During the prolonged stay
of the troupe in Motul, Felipe became enamored of the girl, advertised on the
billboards as La Niña Elvira. But the romantic youth was horrified at the thought
that daily she was compelled to give dangerous and painful exhibitions before a
bored public looking for new excitement. Pancho Quijano, always seeking fresh
talent and observing the sympathy that existed between his daughter and the
athletic youth, encouraged Felipe to learn the ‘‘tricks of the trade,’’ personally
training him in gymnastic acts on the bar and other spectacular acrobatic feats.
The agile and dynamic Felipe proved so apt a pupil that he was invited to ac-
company the circus as a professional performer to Tixcocob, which he did, with-
out consulting his parents. In consternation, Doña Adela and Don Justiniano,
armed with an order from the Chief of Police of Motul for the return of the run-
away minor to legal custody, drove to Tixcocob. When they entered the town,
about twelve kilometers distant from Motul, they were speechless with amaze-
peregrina 179

ment when they saw walls and buildings placarded with large posters announcing
the debut of a sensational new trapeze artist, the young Felipe Carrillo Puerto
of Motul. On presentation of the order from the Motul authorities to those of
Tixcocob, Felipe was promptly delivered to his parents. He was truly remorseful,
he said, for having caused them so much worry and trouble, but as he explained
to them and, afterwards, to his companions, his impulsive act was caused not
by the deep affection he felt for ‘‘La Niña Elvira,’’ but by his fears for her safety
and even for her life when executing her contortions in the circus arena. He had
hoped that his devotion, which she seemed to return, might win her away from
her ‘‘abhorrent sufferings’’ and, in this way, ‘‘redeem’’ the lovely and unhappy
creature from a life of hardship and constant peril.
Doña Adela, looking back over the long period of her life with Don Justiniano,
described it as a happy and spiritually rewarding one, despite the inevitable sor-
rows and loss of three of their young children. ‘‘The most treasured memories
of our true companionship,’’ she said, ‘‘are of those hours when we used to sit
in our rocking chairs through the warm evenings, here in our patio. He would
read to me while I knitted or sewed little garments for the babies that were on
the way. He had a fine voice and enjoyed reading aloud from his favorite books.’’
A tender wistfulness replaced the sharp, penetrating expression in her ap-
praising eyes as Doña Adela spoke of her husband’s final days:

He was thirty-two when he left the military service and went into the hard-
ware business, here in this building. He kept it with strict attention to every
detail—giving much public service besides—until the time of his death
eight years ago. When the end came on February 26, 1915, at the age of
seventy-eight, after several years of suffering from heart trouble, he was
surrounded by all of his children. He died in the arms of Ernilda and the
wife of Eraclio. From this very house, our eight sons bore his casket to the
cemetery; four of them would carry the body of their beloved father for a
while, then would step back, and the four others would take their places.
A Motuleño remarked to a visitor as the cortege passed by: ‘‘Dichoso él—
happy man—those are his eight sons!’’

The entire city of Motul and many persons in every walk of life from nearby
and distant pueblos attended his funeral. He was a friend to hundreds, and his
passing was deeply felt in the whole region.
Turning now, at my urging, to Felipe’s young manhood, Doña Adela recalled
the following episode that caused great commotion in Motul but illumined at
the same time her son’s almost naive sincerity of spirit, ever in quest of truth:
One day, a few months after his marriage, when he was not yet twenty-two years
old, Felipe mysteriously disappeared. Isabel sent over to the family home to
180 Alma M. Reed

find out if he was there. Doña Adela assured her that she had not seen him,
but that his twenty mules had been left in the patio. Don Justiniano was very
grave, even angry, because several serious complications had arisen. The boys
who drove the carretas went borrachos. Two of them were in jail, and he had sent
the police to rescue one of them. The inspector inquired of him: ‘‘Where are your
compañeros?’’
‘‘They are drunk.’’
‘‘Where is your jefe? ’’
‘‘¿Quién sabe?’’ 17
Doña Adela had her suspicions, but she bade the servants search the well in
case Felipe had fallen in. Meanwhile Don Justiniano and the brothers had to
keep drawing up the water by hand pump to supply the mules. And at eleven
o’clock at night, so as not further to arouse Don Justiniano’s ire, Doña Adela
would quietly slip out to the corral to feed the hungry animals, carrying ten sacks
of maíz 18 on either shoulder and a stick in her hand to scare them. ‘‘Morillo,’’
‘‘Pajarito,’’ ‘‘Canela,’’ ‘‘Castaña,’’ she would call as she placed their feeding bags
over their noses. After five days Felipe presented himself at midnight: ‘‘Buenas
noches, mamacita.’’
‘‘Gran sinvergüenza—big shameless one—where were you?’’
‘‘Ah, qué lástima—what a pity—mamacita. I never left Motul. I was with my
great friend, Father Martín Calderón. He was showing me all of his wonderful
books. He took them all down from the shelves for me.’’
‘‘The muchachos are in the jail, drunk.’’
‘‘Please don’t worry, mamacita.’’
‘‘But I must pacify your father. I’ll tell him that you went to a finca to look at
some mules.’’
‘‘All right, mamacita, but later I must tell him that I went to look at some
books. I spent a long while looking for the poem that papacito recites:

Cualquiera hija o criatura de cura o fraile

que con pastor se casare,
que tenga por cosa segura,
que a los cuatro meses pare.

Any servant maid of priest or friar

who would marry a shepherd
can be completely sure
of delivering four months later.

‘‘And for this you left me with twenty mules for five days?’’
‘‘But it was very important, mamacita. The Cura told me that the Catholic
peregrina 181

religion means nothing more than an effort to guard the public morals—to serve
as a rein for humanity. He proved it all to me with his books.’’

The program of the morning’s session of the regional Feminist Leagues—which

Elvia had founded in Motul in 1912, as the first suffrage and equal rights group
in the Republic—provided the main theme of table conversation during Doña
Adela’s delectable dinner. Both Elvia and Rosa and two of their Liga compañe-
ras were enthusiastic about the impromptu remarks Felipe had made at his un-
heralded appearance at the meeting, when he urged the Liga members to make
their life-conserving maternal viewpoint articulate on the question of aggres-
sive international war. He had proposed, they reported, a drastic pacifist plan
for bringing armed conflict to an end. ‘‘You women,’’ he had told them, ‘‘have it
within your power to change man’s thinking on this barbarous system, a survival
of the jungle. Within a few months, the insane bloodletting of centuries could
be stemmed through the simple expedient of a united ostracism of the military
uniform on the part of women. If you really desire a world in which your sons
may live their lives without constant fear of being maimed or slaughtered by the
sons of other mothers, whom they have never harmed, then you must be coura-
geous enough to reject rather than flatter, as you now do, the men of the military
caste who wear it as a symbol of the heroic.’’
Before we arose from the table, I announced that Doña Adela had given me
many interesting facts about the family and especially about Felipe’s boyhood.
Elvia asked if her mother had told me about his protection of the birds. I re-
plied that with so much to tell in so short a time, some incidents were necessarily
omitted, but that I was eager to hear it.
Smilingly, Felipe requested Elvia to defer the ‘‘cuento de los pajaritos’’ 19 and
other legends of the ‘‘boy marvel of Motul’’ until we were back on the train with
three hours at our disposal. Meanwhile, he asked her permission to relate to me
instead an incident in the life of their father—one that was his own constant
source of admiration and pride.
In recognition, Felipe related, of Don Justiniano’s years of distinguished mili-
tary service and later civic leadership, President Díaz had him appointed jefe
político—an enviable post that carried practically unlimited power and emolu-
ments as ‘‘boss’’ of the governors of the six southeastern states. Don Justiniano
accepted, but at the end of eight months, he addressed a letter to the dictator in
which, after expressing profound gratitude for the honor, he declared: ‘‘Since I
find, Sir, that my chief duty is to return escaped Maya slaves to their owners, I
must, most respectfully, submit my resignation from the high office you have so
generously entrusted to me.’’
As we left the Carrillo home, where the very walls seemed to vibrate with noble
impulses and generous feelings—the spiritual residue of lives they had sheltered
182 Alma M. Reed

for more than half a century—Doña Adela promised Felipe that she would come
to Mérida in a few days to attend some of his festivities for the Carnegie guests.
And as she embraced me affectionately, she voiced the hope that I would find the
‘‘memories’’ she recalled helpful. Meanwhile, she assured me, she would put her
mind to the matter, and when we next met in Mérida, she would perhaps have
other recuerdos and cuentos 20 that, for the moment, had escaped her.
When we were again seated in the observation car for the train trip back to
Mérida, Elvia informed Felipe that he had better place cotton in his ears because
now she was going ‘‘to tell Almita some things about him that their mother might
have overlooked,’’ especially the tale of how in his childhood he used to rescue
the birds. She began to tell the story:

My brother commenced his lifelong labors for los caídos—the fallen—at the
age of eight. During the summer months in our torrid heat and long period
of drought, the birds all over Yucatán would die by the thousands. Felipe,
always the leader of his brothers and playmates, was deeply moved by the
sight each morning of scores of dead birds in the patio. He decided to try
to prevent it and organized his companions—boys of his own age—into a
juvenile ‘‘battalion of mercy.’’ As a first step, he set them all to work, gather-
ing twigs with which to build little cages. As the cages were completed,
they were placed in the patio with cups of water and bits of food inside.
The wickets were left open, and, in this way, as many as two thousand birds
found sanctuary each season in the spacious patio during the months of
parched earth and stifling, motionless air. As you know, all of Yucatán’s
rivers flow underground, and when there is no rain, the land becomes bone
dry. So, gasping for breath, the tiny creatures would enter the cages and re-
main there, supplied daily with water and food by Felipe and his helpers for
the duration of the summer. But with the first autumn breezes, heralding the
end of the terrible heat, Felipe would set the little prisoners at liberty with
the words: ‘‘Vayan mis hijos . . . tengo tantos hijos . . . ¡Vayan a su libertad!—
Go, my sons . . . I have so many sons . . . Go to your freedom!’’

Elvia concluded ‘‘the bird story’’ with the comment that Felipe at that time
reminded her of a ‘‘young Saint Francis or even a boy Don Quixote with many
Sancho Panzas at his side.’’
 10. Conflicts and Amenities

T
he formal banquet on February 15, 1923, in the Teatro Peón Contreras of
Mérida, ‘‘offered’’—as the engraved invitation announced—‘‘by the Con-
stitutional Governor of the State of Yucatán to the scientists of the Carne-
gie Institution and the North American tourists,’’ was perhaps the most positive
indication of improved relations between the United States and Mexico in more
than a decade.
During the long period of pre-atomic-age cold war separating the neighbor-
ing peoples that followed the overthrow of the Díaz regime in 1911, bitter enmity
was fanned by acts of treachery and violence on both sides of the border. Among
the grave offenses inciting the average Mexican to hatred of North Americans,
and many even to a desire for revenge, was the ignoble role played by U.S. Ambas-
sador Henry Lane Wilson during the Decena Trágica—the Ten Tragic Days—in
mid-February, 1913, culminating with the assassination of President Francisco I.
Madero and Vice President José María Pino Suárez at the hands of General Vic-
toriano Huerta, the U.S. Embassy–approved usurper of the supreme power.
From the Mexican side, two atrocities ordered by Pancho Villa and carried
out by his chiefs Rafael Castro and Pablo López aroused worldwide indignation.
Both of these wanton and ruthless acts were committed, however, without the
authorization or prior knowledge of any legally established or constitutional gov-
ernment. The first was the slaying on January 10, 1916, of eighteen foreigners,
including fifteen North American employees of a mining company, who, at Santa
Isabel Station, were shot after having been forcibly removed from a train en route
from Ciudad Juárez to Chihuahua. Only one of the group managed to escape to
tell the story of the massacre to a horrified public. The second was an attack on
March 9 of the same year on the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Three soldiers
were killed, seven of the military and five civilians were wounded, and various
commercial establishments were looted and burned before the marauders fled
back into Mexican territory.
In both countries other serious grievances widened the rift, some of them
184 Alma M. Reed

rooted, paradoxically, in good intentions. Woodrow Wilson’s attempts, for in-

stance, to destroy the power of the traitorous Huerta were obviously planned to
help the Mexican people. When the assassin of Madero and Pino Suárez refused
to resign after having been given ample opportunity to do so, on April 21, 1914,
President Wilson ordered the occupation of Veracruz by United States troops,
an act that involved the death of two gallant young defenders, cadets of the Naval
Academy. The occupation and blockade, designed solely to oust Huerta—and
with no motive of invasion or annexation—had been provoked by an attack on
American sailors at Tampico. But its net result was merely to provide the in-
transigent Carranza with inflammatory material for stoking the fires of Mexican
nationalism. Even his once-ardent supporter, Plutarco Elías Calles, pointed this
out when in disillusionment he resigned from the Carranza cabinet.
The Veracruz ‘‘invasion’’ picture has recently been given deeper perspective
by the American historian Charles Callan Tansill, who describes how the Ger-
man ship Ipiranga delivered arms and ammunitions purchased by Huerta for
use against Carranza himself.1 This shipment, together with another from Ger-
many, was landed at Coatzacoalcos shortly before the usurper fell. Despite the
fact that the German arms arrived too late to do Huerta much good, as Isidro
Fabela, Carranza’s Minister of Foreign Relations, points out in his memoirs, the
danger of a ‘‘takeover’’ by Germany or other European powers doing business
with Huerta was present and could not be discounted by President Wilson.2 Yet,
in justice to Carranza’s stand on principle, it must be said that although his cause
would have been greatly benefited by intervention, he insisted unswervingly, as
did his followers later, upon Mexico’s full rights as a sovereign nation, regardless
of internal weaknesses or peril.
In big-business circles however, an unremitting drive for intervention con-
tinued throughout the Carranza administration, adding fresh insult to already
injured Mexican pride. The agitation, led by groups demanding ‘‘protection of
American rights,’’ precipitated an investigation by a Congressional Committee,
headed by Senator Albert B. Fall, subsequently convicted of bribery in the Teapot
Dome scandal.3 The committee’s findings recommended that no Mexican gov-
ernment be recognized unless it exempted Americans from certain provisions of
the 1917 Constitution. On Mexico’s refusal to accede to these conditions, affecting
Constitutional Articles 3, 27, 33, and 127, the committee urged that ‘‘a police force
consisting of naval and military forces of the United States be sent to Mexico.’’
In the interim between the outbreak of the Revolution and its consolidation
under President Obregón, there had been sporadic efforts at international rap-
prochement, but these were mainly at the level of conflicting financial interests.
Meetings of hard-dealing bankers representing the two governments were called
by one group or the other for the purpose of gaining some national advantage,
peregrina 185

but showed little or no desire to further lasting across-the-border harmony. For

the most part, the Americans aimed to recover heavy losses suffered by business
between 1910 and 1920 and to fix indemnity for seized properties or the lives of
innocent victims sacrificed during the period of lawlessness.
The Mexicans, on the other hand, sought to borrow desperately needed funds
for rehabilitation and construction in many fields after the upheaval. This was a
difficult task; for while the Obregón Government was daily demonstrating its sta-
bility, die-hard elements on both sides of the Rio Grande were vigorously striving
to prevent any U.S. assistance or encouragement. Only the perseverance of the
able Mexican negotiators and the support of a few staunch American friends,
notably Mr. John Glenn, U.S. Consul in Tampico, finally induced the reluctant
investors to risk additional capital and make it possible for the infant Revolu-
tionary regime to survive at all. Fortunately, too, organized labor, inspired by its
effective leaders—Samuel Gompers, Andrew Furuseth, and William H. Johnston
of the Machinists Union—stood firmly by Mexican trade unionism. Continen-
tal solidarity and especially close ties with Mexico’s workers became a leading
issue at the Congress of the Pan-American Federation of Labor 4 held at Laredo
in November 1918.
From other sectors, a few American statesmen and authors came passion-
ately to Mexico’s defense. These well-informed, peace-loving groups attributed
the failure of the financial negotiations to the unjust demands made by Washing-
ton as the price of recognition. Despite mounting press criticism in the United
States of the harsh policy of Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes, the Harding
administration continued to require a treaty in advance of recognition. In public
addresses and in widely distributed books and articles, this little band of highly
articulate spokesmen reiterated the fact that for the two previous years Mexico
had enjoyed a Constitutional, pacific, and progressive government—clearly the
most stable since the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz. They maintained that the in-
flexible attitude of the United States towards the southern Republic was totally
unjustified by the current situation.
On July 19, 1922, the withholding of recognition was denounced on the floor
of Congress by Senator E. F. Ladd of North Dakota ‘‘as an unfortunate departure
from our former standards of honorable and just dealings with other nations,
both great and small.’’ He declared it to be injurious to the best commercial inter-
ests of the United States and Mexico, even though ‘‘it may be advantageous to
certain corporations and individuals in this country and elsewhere.’’
In his brilliant plea, bristling with challenging statistics, Senator Ladd argued
that the withholding of recognition made it impossible for the Mexican govern-
ment to borrow funds needed for the reestablishment of transportation, com-
merce, and agriculture, and that it ‘‘offered encouragement to certain sinister
186 Alma M. Reed

interests on the northern side of the border which have meddled unhappily in
Mexico’s internal affairs in the past and were showing an evident desire to do
so again.’’ The clear-sighted statesman pointed out that ‘‘last, but by no means
least, it postponed the industrial and agricultural development of Mexico, which
otherwise would speedily become one of the best customers of the United States
and restore a languishing foreign commerce by huge purchases, furnishing orders
to our idle factories and giving employment to our jobless workers.’’
Officials and financiers of both countries, however, were equally eager to ad-
just Mexico’s national debt. While the Obregón administration had honorably
assumed the old fiscal obligation—sometimes illegally incurred—it was endeav-
oring and eventually did succeed in achieving a considerable reduction of the
astronomical sum demanded by the international creditors to more realistic fig-
ures. For, as a result of the millions of dollars borrowed during the dictatorship
from foreign treasuries and private sources on promissory notes—in many cases
providing for the payment of amounts far greater than those actually advanced—
the national debt that burdened the sorely impoverished Mexican people was, at
the period, one of the largest quotas per capita in the entire world.
Preceding by ninety days the celebrated Bucareli Conference opening in Mex-
ico City on May 14, 1923, and with recognition of Mexico by the United States still
eight months off, Felipe’s banquet to the Carnegie expeditionaries reflected an
epoch of deepened understanding, respect and confidence—one of closer human
and social relations between the two countries. No antagonism or controversy
impinged upon the festive mood of this cordial ‘‘goodwill’’ event. The happy, offi-
cially sponsored gathering, unclouded by any suspicion or skepticism, ushered
in a new season that promised a changed and decidedly more agreeable political
climate.
Neither the Socialist State of Yucatán nor the distinguished Carnegie Institu-
tion had hidden axes to grind. Under the universal aegis of science, the affair had
been inspired by an earnest desire to collaborate in the impersonal task of pene-
trating the mystery of a remarkable autochthonous New World culture. Here,
Mexicans and North Americans were meeting in a fraternal spirit to map out
ways and means for retrieving knowledge of the common continental inheri-
tance. The things that had long separated them—memories of aggressive inva-
sions, nefarious land-grabbing, ideological feuds, treason and bloodshed—were
all blotted out, at least for this interlude, in the realization of their mutual stake
in a larger and unifying issue. It was an issue that equally concerned Governor
Felipe Carrillo Puerto, descendant of Nachi Cocom, Lord of Sotuta, last defender
of Maya sovereignty, and the scholars from the United States, dedicated seekers
after historic truth. There seemed to be full awareness that only through joint
action now would it be possible to salvage and preserve for the future the coher-
peregrina 187

ent evidence of Yucatán’s splendid ancient civilization, key to the great American
continental story—the precious endowment of both Republics.
These and similar elevated sentiments conveyed in toasts and responses—lim-
ited to nonalcoholic refrescos—passed during the convivial evening between the
Yucatecan elite and the North American scientists in Spanish, Mayan, and En-
glish. Dr. Spinden, who was fluent in all three languages, replying to the introduc-
tion by the local archaeological society’s president, assured the gathering that he
and his fellow investigators from the United States had come to Yucatán with the
hope of discharging a debt dating from the very inception of their national inde-
pendence. For five-eighths of his country’s vast agricultural wealth—the greatest
in all human history—could be directly traced, he pointed out, to the intuitive
knowledge and to the painstaking experimentation over millennia by the Maya
race in southeastern Mexico and Guatemala.
It was Maya initiative and patient toil, he explained, that had made possible
the present high living standards of the American people and established the
world supremacy of their economy. Maya-produced nutritive edibles unknown
to man’s diet before the discovery of the Americas included many of the major
crops not only of the United States but also of modern agriculture everywhere.
Indigenous Middle American farmers had more than doubled Europe’s food
supply. Maya ingenuity and systematic labor, he added, had contributed to con-
temporary fare numerous products today regarded as table essentials. Among
them he cited potatoes, corn, tomatoes, beans, avocado, pepper, squash, other
fibrous vegetables, the papaya, and a variety of spices and berries. The list, in
fact, was so lengthy, Dr. Spinden observed, that one really wondered what pre-
Columbian Europe ate.
I was seated on Felipe’s right at the long fruit- and flower-laden table. This was
the honored place I had occupied since our very first public appearance together,
and the arrangement was apparently accepted as protocol. When Felipe arose to
greet his guests, all eyes, as usual, were focused upon him, and I realized that
I was sharing his limelight. I was tranquilly conscious that the collective gaze
not only was embracing me but was taking detailed note of my personal appear-
ance. My French blue satin dinner gown, my simple, classic hairdo, and my every
movement were under close and, I sensed, approving scrutiny.
In his brief remarks, Felipe commented on Dr. Spinden’s broad knowledge
of Yucatán’s pre-Conquest production, laughingly declaring that he would place
the Peabody Museum savant in nomination for the post of Minister of Agricul-
ture as soon as the Maya Renaissance restored the race to its former prestige
and political power. Then, outlining the next day’s program, he announced that
the morning and afternoon hours would be devoted to general sightseeing in
Mérida—the Maya city of T’Ho 5—which, he said, was already a thousand years
188 Alma M. Reed

old when the Spaniards arrived in Yucatán. But he hoped that we would not all
be so completely fascinated by the various delights of La Ciudad Blanca that we
would forget to be at our respective domiciles before eleven o’clock, since we were
scheduled to board the train at midnight for Chichén Itzá. This, he explained,
would be the main event of our trip, the real start of the promising archaeologi-
cal adventure that had brought so many eminent scholars to the ‘‘Land of the
Pheasant and the Deer.’’ The railroad would take us as far as the little pueblo
of Dzitas, some 240 kilometers from Mérida. At that point, automobiles would
be waiting for us, and in caravan formation we would drive for another 56 kilo-
meters over the almost-completed new highway to the very base of El Castillo—
the great pyramid at the heart of the ritual center of the ancient capital of the
‘‘Holy and Learned Itzáes.’’ The members of our expedition would be the first
to use it, thus inaugurating what he hoped might prove to be a line of more-
direct communication between the past and present. But the Dzitas road, he ex-
plained, was only the initial step in a statewide network, soon to be realized and
eventually connecting all of Yucatán’s principal archaeological sites. The large-
scale program, however, had been designed for other purposes besides scientific
investigation and tourism. His own concern, he frankly admitted, was mainly
the Maya Indian. For, while facilitating the scholar in his discovery of temples
and palaces more important, perhaps, than those already in sight, the new roads
would still make the Maya himself the chief beneficiary. With access to all the
marvelous structures bequeathed him by his ancestors, it would be less difficult,
he was convinced, to awaken pride in racial capacity and stimulate ambition and
effort for personal achievement.
As Felipe had assured us at the banquet, there was indeed much for the Yuca-
talogists to see in Mérida—much which was poignantly related to the story of
Chichén Itzá. And the most dramatic link with the valor of the descendants of
the ‘‘Holy and Learned Men at the Mouth of the Great Well’’ was Mérida’s most
famous building, La Casa de los Montejo. At the invitation of its owner and occu-
pant, the aristocratic Señor Don Álvaro Regil, an heir of the Montejo family, I
toured the palatial dwelling with a group that included the esposos Barry and the
white-haired Mrs. William James, an active member of the local archaeological
society and for many years a prominent North American resident of Yucatán.
The elaborate structure, erected in 1549, is a monument both to Spanish Con-
quest and to the gallant autochthonous spirit. In 1543, when El Adelantado Mon-
tejo 6 finally succeeded in making Yucatán a vassal province of Spain, as his chief,
Hernán Cortés, had done a few years earlier at Tenochtitlán,7 he attempted to
establish the seat of his government at Chichén Itzá. But the Itzáes so bitterly
resisted the desecration of their sacred city that he was forced to evacuate and
retreat to T’Ho, then the capital of the province of Cehpech.
peregrina 189

Montejo’s defeat at Chichén Itzá, however, did not prevent him from gloat-
ing in pompous sculpture over his victories elsewhere in the peninsula. On the
profusely adorned walls of his palace, constructed of stones taken from the pre-
Columbian buildings and reworked by native artisans with the wooden mallets
and nephrite chisels used by the ancient temple builders, he portrayed his costly
triumph, achieved only after sixteen years of sanguinary struggle. On either side
of the wide balcony, placed high on the intricately carved, age-mellowed façade,
stands a heroic-sized figure of a bearded and helmeted Spanish soldier clad in full
armor and carrying a fifteenth-century halberd. The two stern-visaged warriors
are shown pitilessly trampling with mailed feet on the necks of conquered and
weeping natives. Between them, on an enormous shield, is emblazoned, in deep
relief, the heraldic insignia of Francisco Montejo, Captain General of Yucatán.
That night, according to schedule, the expeditionaries were rounded up from
hotels and private dwellings by the hospitality committee and driven to the train
for our midnight departure, Antonio calling for me at the Cantón residence as
usual. Felipe had courteously given Vera Barry and me his personal compart-
ment and had remained, as we later found out, in the observation car for most of
the night, discussing with Dr. Morley and Ingeniero José Reygadas Vértiz, rep-
resentative of the Mexican Department of Archaeology, details of state and fed-
eral collaboration in the exploration project. The brilliant, penetrating Yucatecan
sunlight made sleep impossible after dawn, and everyone appeared in the dining
car for a six o’clock breakfast. Unlike their Yucatecan hosts—who were notori-
ously early risers—most of the Americans seemed to be in a tropical daze until
after the flavorful Xalapa coffee, pan dulce, and delicious guacamole—creamed
avocado—had restored some of the animated optimism of the official banquet.
Gradually, stimulating conversation enlivened the atmosphere as, for the second
time in an exciting week, we sped past monotonous miles of planted sisal towards
Maya ruins. The visit to Chichén Itzá, we all understood, was in the nature of a
preliminary survey. There would be no definite decisions until after the recom-
mendations had been turned in to Washington, probably in late autumn. But at
this point no member of the party imagined any occurrence that could hinder
the realization of Carnegie’s proposed long-range project.
Over a broad, white undeviating clearance, channeled straight down the mid-
dle of a dark, compact expanse of brush, I rode beside the jubilant Felipe in
the rear seat of a Fordinga driven by the equally jubilant Antonio. With us was
Felipe’s favorite brother, the dark-eyed, brown-haired Benjamín, who, though
fourteen years his junior, seemed closer to him in tastes and in general out-
look than the older ones I had met. Benjamín was accompanied by his bride
of a few months, the vivacious English-speaking Pilar Díaz Bolio, daughter of
long-established and socially prominent residents of Mérida. Polished of man-
190 Alma M. Reed

The omnipresent ‘‘Fordinga,’’ a modified Ford Model T.

ner, with a certain streamlined ‘‘young man of the world’’ personality, Benjamín,
like his sister Elvia, suggested Spanish rather than Maya ancestry. The twelfth
son of the Carrillo family, he was the only one to embrace a military career. Upon
completing preparatory school, he pursued his studies at the Military College of
Chapultepec, finishing with the grade of Second Lieutenant. In February 1914,
following what he had referred to in a treasured letter his mother later read to
me, as his ‘‘baptism of fire’’ during campaigns in the Territory of Tepic,8 he was
raised to the rank of Captain in the 22nd Regiment for personal bravery. While
in the capital he was appointed administrator of the public abattoir at Tacubaya
and was elected representative to the National Chamber of Deputies. Upon re-
turning to Yucatán, he became a member of the local Congress, Secretary of the
Liga Central de Resistencia, and Chief of the State Agency of Purchases.
Occasionally, Felipe would leave the car to check on the progress of the cara-
van, comprising some twelve Fordingas in each of which rode two or three
Americans escorted by state or federal officials or members of the local archaeo-
logical society. In a few sections, the road ahead, he explained, would not be
entirely finished for another four or five months, but with careful driving it was
easily passable for lightweight automobiles. With vivid and amusing detail, he
recalled the old mode of travel to the Chichén Itzá ruins. He described how the
brave tourists, if alone, would stretch out full-length in a strange contraption that
outwardly resembled an old-fashioned delivery wagon hung on heavy leather
springs swung between a pair of big high wheels. The occupant was supposed to
find comfort on a mattress filled with tree cotton placed over a network of cords.
peregrina 191

When there were two or three passengers, they sat crosswise. The rickety vehicle
known as a volan coche was drawn, according to the load, by either three or five
mules. One of the animals was placed between the short twin bars, and the other
two or four, on either side or in front of him. All were attached to the volan by a
rope harness without the customary iron or strap that enabled the mules to back
up or hold back, and on downgrades they would have to keep ahead of the volan
or fall under the wheels. Sitting on the edge of the mattress at the front of the
vehicle, the driver swung his long whip, shook his rope reins, shouted the order
‘‘Váyanse,’’ and the mules started off at a gallop. If he were lucky and the volan
were not overturned and wrecked, for six painful hours the helpless traveler was
jolted over numerous rough spots and bounced upon his theoretically protec-
tive pad, trying, at the same time, to avoid being lashed from both sides of the
narrow trail by protruding branches.
‘‘But that’s all in the past now, like the hacienda floggings of our Inditos,’’
Felipe said with keen satisfaction. ‘‘By July, the last layer of macadam will be laid,
and the motoring time between Dzitas and Chichén Itzá will be cut to less than
half an hour. Yes, I have already set mid-July as our deadline. We are planning a
splendid festival—a reunion of thousands of Maya from all over the peninsula—
the first in centuries.
Then, taking my hand, he added with feigned solemnity: ‘‘And remember,

The caravan on the road to Chichén Itzá, 1923.

192 Alma M. Reed

Almita, no matter to what part of the globe your capitalist newspaper sends you,
the Socialist State of Yucatán will expect your honorable presence at this historic
event. In fact, here and now, in my official capacity, I command your attendance,
and Pilar, Benjamín, and Antonio are my witnesses.’’
Responsive to his humorous mood, all three signaled with raised hands their
approval of the executive order, and with the utmost sincerity, I assured them
that I would do my best to obey instructions. I was indeed hoping in the depths
of my heart that I might somehow arrange to return for the crowning moment
in Felipe’s lifelong effort to revive the spirit of the Mayab. Yet the usually reliable
inner voice kept reminding me that July was a long way off.
My diary entry written at midnight on February 16, 1923, recording with
youthful exuberance that first trip to Chichén Itzá, evokes an atmosphere of all-
pervading magic. The gaiety of our laughter, the felicitous expressions of mutual
admiration, voicing our happiness in one another’s company, seem now to re-
echo from sound waves endlessly vibrating through infinite space. The poetically
phrased diary notes that attempted to convey the day’s thoughts and impressions
summon out of the conserving ether wordless but equally imperishable impulses
and emotions. The adoration in Benjamín’s gaze as he constantly kept looking
back from the driver’s seat at his radiant Pilar, my own ecstatic delight in the
secret knowledge of Felipe’s impassioned need of me—these, and other events
that transpired in the silence, again leap flamelike into consciousness with all
their nascent intensity.
But the enchanted hour on the Dzitas road seemed to flash by with the speed of
light, leaving no hint in its dazzling passage of another hour already darkly form-
ing in the unseeable, onrushing future. Within our charmed circle, dual ringed
by magnetic attraction of mind and heart, there entered no premonition of the
anguish that would soon crush our mirth, of the abysmal despair destined, be-
fore another February claimed its place in the succession of months, to engulf
the lives and forever shatter the dreams of four people in love.
 11. City of the Learned Itzáes

F
or nearly a kilometer, the pyramid marking the terminal point of our jour-
ney was plainly visible. There was not a turn or a hillock along the flat lime-
stone surface of the land to obstruct our view of El Castillo’s 1 mighty bulk.
As we neared the grandiose structure, Felipe’s extraordinary eyes glowed with
the pride born of personal accomplishment. He had not only planned the road,
which he sentimentally called sacbeob—a raised stone highway that connected
the ancient Maya cities—but had assisted in its actual building. Both Maestra
Rosa and Manuel Cirerol had told me how, during the past months, their tire-
less leader would often slip quietly out of Mérida to be found hours later on the
job, with rolled-up shirtsleeves, working and perspiring in the intense heat. His
white linen jacket and his broad-brimmed ‘‘Governor’s Stetson’’ hat hung on
some nearby bush, he would be swinging away with a pickaxe, helping to break
rock or, with a shovel, clearing the jungle of deeply imbedded roots the tractors
had missed.
At sight of Felipe, the four Indian musicians of the native stringed orchestra
came forward in single file to greet him with a lively air, playing as they walked
what was probably a Maya equivalent of ‘‘Hail to the Chief.’’ Warmly saluting
them and his many Liga compañeros present, he asked me to remain beside him
with Pilar and Benjamín to await the arrival of the caravan. When the last car
had pulled up and the expedition members and the Yucatecan officials were as-
sembled at the spot of the brief, informal ceremony, the State Band that had
preceded us from Mérida struck up Mexico’s stirring National Anthem.
Looking around me I could read in the faces of my countrymen—undemon-
strative savants and eager, romantic tourists alike—that they, too, were gripped
by deep emotion and were thinking perhaps in Felipe’s humanistic rather than
in their own archaeological terms about the true significance of the occasion.
All stood, at least, in respectful silence, as though participating in some solemn
religious rite. And tears filled other eyes besides my own when Felipe cut the
white ribbon to signal what he ardently believed would initiate a new era for his
ancestral race.
El Castillo at Chichén Itzá, from a photo in Alma Reed’s collection.

Carrillo Puerto inaugurates part of his new highway from Mérida to Chichén Itzá, from a photo
the governor sent to Reed by post.
peregrina 195

(left) Scaling the heights of El Castillo.

(below) Alma and Felipe in the company of other

‘‘Yucatologists’’ beside the Pórtico de los Tigres at
Chichén Itzá.

From the lofty heights of the great ‘‘Castillo’’ behind us, many centuries were
looking down from celebrated monuments of antiquity upon men who had in-
voked the glorious past at other times and places. The more famous of these
predecessors, history records, came as conquerors to impose with armed might
their will upon vanquished peoples and subject them to the despotism of their re-
spective dynasties. How different, it occurred to me, was Felipe’s role, as he stood
that day in the shadow of Chichén Itzá’s majestic pyramid—an ambassador of
brotherhood. Dispensing hope and courage, he had come as another redeemer
196 Alma M. Reed

to the ancient shrine of the American Messiah, Kukulcán, with a pledge to heal
the wounds inflicted by men of the sword and the lash—to break the fetters of
ignorance and superstition that, despite political liberation, still held the Maya
in spiritual and economic bondage.
Felipe himself eloquently stated his purpose in the few simple words he ad-
dressed to the Maya Indians who surrounded him. ‘‘I have opened this road,’’ he
said, speaking in their own tongue, ‘‘so that you may come here to contemplate
the grandeur of your fathers, confident that inspired by them you also will aspire
to be great.’’
To the simultaneous and, at moments, cacophonous accompaniment of the
two very different musical groups, we all surged into the vast quadrangle. There,
Mr. Edward H. Thompson, owner of the Hacienda Chichén Itzá—comprising
an area bordering both sides of the highway, running two miles from north to
south and one and a half miles from east to west, the site on which the major
ruins were located—embraced Felipe as an old comrade and cordially welcomed
the visitors to what for over thirty-eight years had been virtually his personal
domain. The day marked both a beginning and the end of an era for the vet-
eran New England explorer. It foreshadowed the termination of his life of toil
among the ruins, of intensive study of the inhabitants of the region, descendants
of the builders of this once magnificent and still impressive Maya capital. Don
Eduardo, as he was affectionately known throughout Yucatán, not only had con-
ducted extraordinary explorations in cenotes and in the sepulchers of the priestly
dead, making such valuable discoveries as the inscribed and dated tablet of the
Initial Series, but had become an authority on almost every phase of the Maya
culture: the native habits and customs, language, history, folklore, and religion.
And now, after decades of patient but fruitful waiting, the emissaries of a power-
ful, richly endowed institution from his own country had arrived at last to take
over his lonely, one-man task of guarding the vestiges of Chichén Itzá’s splendor
against total destruction by natural forces and man’s vandalism.
With an agility and enthusiasm that belied his years, Don Eduardo guided us
over the crumbling remains of temples and palaces, relating, as we approached
the various structures, the legends associated with them and interpreting the
symbolism of their lavishly adorned walls and columns. The scientists, mean-
while, directed their attention to the object of their immediate interest, the zone
designated in previous planning for their first exploration. This was a huge ele-
vated area, resembling a chain of hills that was known to contain, beneath a
covering of tropical brush, quantities of collapsed material and a series of long
colonnades around a great open plaza some four and a half acres in extent. This
site was believed to have been the marketplace of the once heavily populated
metropolis.
peregrina 197

But all that any of us could see then of the now completely excavated and
beautifully restored Temple of the Warriors with its Court of the Thousand Col-
umns was an inch or two of masonry emerging here and there above the dense
mass of tangled growth. Dr. Morley and the members of his exploring staff, how-
ever, seemed pleased that the jungle had swallowed up the enormous architec-
tural complex. They explained that the lush vegetation had doubtless served as
a protective blanket for whatever bas-relief carving or hieroglyphic inscriptions
might remain on the columns, which they judged to be from eight to nine feet
in height.
Looking over that rambling, irregular mass of shrub-covered earth and rubble
on the first day of the Carnegie Preliminary Survey, who could have foreseen
with what rhythmic grandeur would emerge during the ensuing two decades the
vast ensemble of pyramids, colonnaded halls, massive platforms, terraced build-
ings, and exquisitely sculptured colonnades? Or who could have predicted that in
temples buried under earlier temples archaeology would discover such precious
objects as the celebrated turquoise mosaic plaque later evaluated by Dr. Morley
himself as an outstanding example of the finest development of ancient indige-
nous art? Or who could have guessed then, nearly forty years before Dr. Jorge
Acosta completed his exploration and restoration of the pyramids of Quetzal-
cóatl at Tula on the Mexican plateau that the Temple of the Warriors imbedded in
this unprepossessing mound would divulge the long-held secret of the identity
of the real builders of Chichén Itzá as we know it today?
For it was only in the 1960–1961 season that the true provenance of the tenth-
century invaders of the Maya capital was revealed. And it was the bas-relief fig-
ures of the columns forming the portico of the Temple of the Warriors, identi-
cal with those of the portico of Tula’s Quetzalcóatl Pyramid, that told the story.
In all details—features, attire, headdress, weapons, adornments—these sensitive
warrior portraits coincided perfectly. A second most convincing similarity was
the placing of a pillar at opposite ends of the ninth step of a broad staircase
in both structures. These analogous architectonic elements unequivocally sup-
ported Dr. Acosta’s discovery that it was the Toltecs of Tula and not the Teotihua-
canos, as previously believed, who were responsible for the non-Maya influence
of this sacred city of the New Empire.
Many other elements of Toltec origin from the Mexican plateau, as Dr. Alberto
Ruz Lhuillier was later to indicate, were integrated with the buildings of Chi-
chén Itzá. Among them were columns in the form of feathered serpents, abut-
ments against the side slope at the base of the temples, the use of a merlon on
the roofs, human sculpture of the ‘‘Atlantean’’ type, standard-bearers, the Chac-
Mool, intertwined serpents on balustrades, drawings of tigers and eagles de-
vouring hearts. But none served to pinpoint Tula as the source of Toltec cultural
198 Alma M. Reed

penetration in the capital of the Itzáes more precisely than the bas-relief portraits
and the ninth-step pillars of the Temple of the Warriors.
Anticipating by many years some of the attention-rousing tactics of the con-
temporary Yucatecan tourist guide, Don Eduardo brought to high pitch the dra-
matic interest of what for most of us was a first view of Chichén Itzá’s impos-
ing monuments. He stood, for instance, at the north end of the Ball Court—the
largest in the entire Maya area—and asked us to stand at the opposite end. Then,
speaking in a normal voice, he demonstrated its perfect acoustics. For at a dis-
tance of 450 feet, we could clearly hear his every word and even the sound of a
coin that he dropped upon the limestone.
Leaving the Carnegie explorers to puzzle over methods of attack to be used in
their proposed colossal excavations, Felipe joined us in the Ball Court. Don Ed-
uardo greeted his timely arrival with an invitation for him to assume the role of
guide. ‘‘I’m going to ask our sports-loving Governor to tell you,’’ he said, ‘‘exactly
what happened here. Better than myself, he knows how the ancient Maya played
juego de pelota, or tlachtli,2 as they called it in the old days. He’s an authority,
too, on the modern and far less strenuous version of tlachtli—not only Yucatan’s
greatest baseball ‘fan’ but rapidly making ‘fans’ of us all. Just recently, Governor
Carrillo organized and equipped baseball teams in every part of the state. He’s
even apt to revive tlachtli after the new road is officially opened.’’
‘‘That may happen someday,’’ Felipe answered, ‘‘but before it does, our new
generation of Maya youth will need a lot of hard discipline.’’ Then, illustrating
the points of the ritualistic game with lively gestures and swift movements, he
explained that it was played with the object of driving a rubber ball through the
small openings of stone rings still in place on each of the two parallel walls form-
ing the sides of the court, approximately twenty-eight feet above ground level.
He never ceased marveling, he said, at how the Maya players of the rival teams,
using only their elbows, knees, and hips in striking the ball, sometimes succeeded
in reaching the winning goal. This, he felt, was such a tremendously difficult feat
that it seemed only a fair reward that the victors be permitted to go among the
spectators and take all the costly feather mosaic cloaks they could carry away
with them.
Felipe assisted me up the steep climb of El Castillo’s principal stairway, and
for a moment we stood in silence, looking out over the uninhabited city as it slept
in the morning sun. When he spoke, it was to tell me how happy I had made him
by my quick response to the beauty created by Yucatan’s ancient peoples. ‘‘I was
certain from the very first moment,’’ he said, ‘‘that you, too, would deeply feel
the importance of preserving what remains of it for the future.’’
I knew that Felipe, like myself, had read the provocative works of Dr. Augus-
tus Le Plongeon, whose theories, rejected as bizarre in his own day, have steadily
peregrina 199

acquired repute with scholars and a growing public acceptance, due to the fact
that the so-called Diffusionists daily gain ground in their controversy with the
Independent Inventionists regarding the enigma of Maya origin. And I felt that
his thoughts, like my own, were directed in thanksgiving at the promise inher-
ent in the Carnegie Expedition. At least, we were both sure that the presence of
the North American scientists offered some hope of arresting the decay and the
disintegration encountered a half century earlier by the French savant, Dr. Le
Plongeon, in the abandoned Maya capital—neglect which he pictured in his chal-
lenging book, Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx: 3

The temples of the Maya sages are in ruins, slowly but surely crumbling to
dust, gnawed by the relentless tooth of time; and what is worse, recklessly
destroyed by the iconoclastic hand of ignorance and avarice. Sanctuaries
have become the abode of bats, swallows, and serpents. Lairs of the wild
beasts of the forests, they are not only deserted, but shunned by human
beings, who stand in awe of them. Where now are the sages who used to as-
semble within their sacred precincts to delve into the mysteries of creation,
to wrest her secrets from the bosom of Mother Nature? Do their spirits still
hover there, as the natives assert? Purified from all earthly defilement, have
they been reabsorbed in the great ocean of intelligence as Buddhists would
have us believe? Are they enjoying the perfect repose of Nirvana, waiting
to be summoned to begin another cycle of mundane existence in more
advanced planetary worlds than ours?

When we were joined by the esposos Barry and other expeditionaries, Vera
asked Felipe his opinion about the purpose of the enormous structure. ‘‘I be-
lieve—contrary to Diego de Landa—’’ he replied, ‘‘that this was not a temple to
Kukulcán, but one dedicated to the worship of the sun. And who can conceive of
a more logical or a more indispensable deity or a more munificent benefactor of
mankind?’’ He explained that this theory was strengthened by the measurements
of the pyramid itself. He pointed out that the four stairways of 91 steps each, plus
the step to the upper platform on which we stood, totaled 365, corresponding
to the number of days of the solar year. Moreover, in the nine terraced bodies
are contained fifty-two panels, equal to the years of the Toltec cycle. Still further
support for the pyramid’s identification with worship of the sun was to be found,
Felipe believed, in the fact that the nine terraced steps gave a total of eighteen
sections on each of the four sides when divided by its stairway, corresponding
to the eighteen months of the Maya calendar year.
The existence beneath El Castillo of an earlier pyramid of lesser dimensions
but similar design was unknown at the time. More than a decade later, the dis-
200 Alma M. Reed

covery was made by a member of our own party and provided one of the real
sensations of modern Mexican archaeology. While working with the National
Institute of Anthropology,4 Manuel Cirerol, who had been Felipe’s friend and
English interpreter and the treasurer of the Liga Central, after penetrating the
structure from the east side, found in the sanctuary of the hidden temple a re-
markable throne in the form of a life-sized jaguar. The spots of its vermilion coat
are represented by incrusted jade discs, the eyes are balls of the rarest quality of
jade, and the fangs are of flint.
Leaving Felipe to conduct the rest of our archaeological tour, Don Eduardo
returned to his residence, the nearby Hacienda House, to supervise arrangements
for his numerous luncheon guests. He urged us to visit the Sacred Cenote be-
fore the sun was much higher and said that he would expect us at one o’clock for
tamales motuleños 5 prepared especially in Felipe’s honor.
By an ancient causeway three hundred yards north of the ceremonial center
and in a direct line with the base of El Castillo, we reached the great sacrificial
well of the Holy and Learned Itzáes. Most of the expeditionaries were familiar
with the sinister legends associated with this enormous symmetrically rounded
mouth of a subterranean river some ninety feet below. These legends had been
recorded by Bishop Diego de Landa in 1566, and the French translation of his
work by Brasseur de Bourbourg made the story of the Sacred Cenote available
to the general public, concerning which the Spanish Friar had written:

From the court in front of these theaters (at Chichén Itzá) runs a wide and
handsome roadway as far as the Well, which is about two stone’s throws off.
Into this Well they have had and still have the custom of throwing men alive
as a sacrifice to their gods in time of drought, and they believed they would
not die, though they never saw them again. They also threw into it many
other things like precious stones and things they prized, and so if this coun-
try had possessed gold it would be this Well that would have the greater part
of it, so great is the devotion the Indians show for it.

De Landa’s account of the lurid Cenote Sagrado tradition stirred our eager
curiosity, but even in its physical aspect the well was a strangely eerie spectacle.
Its white walls uniformly lined in stratified patterns suggested a gaping wound,
a livid gash in the heart of the dark forest encircling its rim. Yet still more ex-
citing were the vague rumors that Don Eduardo himself had actually descended
into the yawning water-pit and recovered quantities of ancient Maya treasure.
We were warned, however, by the Peabody Museum representatives that this was
a very ‘‘touchy’’ subject with Don Eduardo and, consequently, when we arrived
at Hacienda House, where he warmly received us, there was a discreet silence on
the veteran explorer’s subaqueous research.
peregrina 201

Alma and Felipe accompanied by archaeologists and Yucatologists at a luncheon hosted by Sir
Edward Thompson at his hacienda at Chichén Itzá. Alma’s face—and engaging smile—may be
admired on the left (seventh seat, front to back).

Don Eduardo’s tamales motuleños did credit to Felipe’s native Motul and the
iced limonada proved to be the ideal beverage after the morning’s exertion in the
tropical heat. Following luncheon most of the party rested on the broad terrace
of the rambling old Colonial-style mansion, built, its owner informed us, on the
foundations of the original structure, which dated from 1681. I used the siesta
hour to transpose my stenographic notes into copy for cables I would send to the
Times on my return to Mérida and for the record I carefully kept of impressions
and of Felipe’s words. While I was writing, Don Eduardo seated himself near me
and complimented me on my ‘‘attention to duty’’ when the ‘‘other ladies were
idly swinging in hammocks.’’ After questioning me about my newspaper work
and my previous experience in archaeological reporting, he said: ‘‘You remind
me so much of a girl I knew long ago in West Falmouth. She was also quite a
student and had very large blue eyes like your own.’’ Then, lowering his voice
and moving his chair closer to mine, he asked if I would like to have an exclu-
sive story on ‘‘the greatest archaeological adventure of the New World.’’ I assured
him that I would indeed appreciate the chance of being the first to tell the public
about so important an event. ‘‘Well,’’ he continued, ‘‘you will have that chance,
but not today. I do not wish to talk before these Carnegie and Peabody people.
You must come here again within the next few days—and alone. I am sure that
202 Alma M. Reed

Don Felipe will arrange for your return. I’ve observed that he’s anxious to do
anything you may ask, just to please you.’’ Explaining that the archeological ad-
venture he referred to concerned the Sacred Cenote, Don Eduardo said that he
would relate his interesting and significant experiences there only on condition
I promised to quote him verbatim. ‘‘Much is involved,’’ he added, ‘‘in the way
my story is handled, because it is somewhat in the nature of a confession. Yet the
facts must come out someday, and I’d rather ‘confess’ to a pretty and ambitious
young journalist like yourself, especially since I find you so simpática.’’
I thanked him for his trust in me and promised to give a factual report of his
cenote ‘‘adventures’’ in a feature article that I would write for the Sunday Times
Magazine. He requested me to keep the matter ‘‘strictly confidential’’ meanwhile
and warned me that a secret so closely guarded for forty years was now in danger
of leaking out, particularly when there was new interest in Yucatán and when
there were ‘‘many scholars around’’ who were connected with rival institutions.
‘‘One group,’’ he said, ‘‘is in possession of some of the facts but has good reason
to keep them out of newspapers. The other group would like to give my story
the widest possible publicity.’’
Refreshed and rested, we were now ready to tour the ruins south of El Castillo,
among them some of the oldest in Chichén Itzá. Fortunately, Dr. Spinden, who
was then preparing his erudite paper on the reduction of Maya dates for the Pea-
body Museum, accompanied us to the most spectacular building of the southern
group, the Astronomical Observatory, known as El Caracol. Seen from a dis-
tance, this large elevated structure-in-the-round, rising upon three graduated
rectangular platforms surmounted by a massive tower some 50 feet in height,
dramatically dominated several kilometers of level land. On closer view, its com-
manding contours even gained in impressiveness through such striking elements
as two encircling galleries and a grand stairway leading to a parapet—20 feet high
and 220 feet in length—adorned with stone censers in the form of human heads.
A few of the more enterprising ‘‘Yucatologists’’ ascended the interior stairs, wind-
ing around a solid center, snail-like—as the Spanish word caracol signifies—to
a chamber that served as an observatory for the Maya astronomers.
Dr. Spinden explained that the small openings in the thick walls pointed to
the cardinal directions and to other prominent positions in the celestial geogra-
phy. The affable scholar—prematurely gray-haired but with the ruddy complex-
ion of a schoolboy—said that the observatory was inevitably associated in his
mind with America’s Unknown Scientist who, in the seventh century b.c., so ad-
mirably conceived and patiently completed the first piece of systematic science
anywhere in the world. ‘‘It was this ‘Great Unknown,’ ’’ he assured us, ‘‘a thinker
worthy of ranking with Buddha and Zoroaster, who solved the tangle of discor-
dant lunar months, planetary cycles and tropical years by his invention of the
peregrina 203

Alma and Felipe explore the ruins of Chichén Itzá and appear to be almost holding hands.

so-called Central American Time Machine. This feat Dr. Spinden regarded as all
the more remarkable since the Maya astronomer’s observations ‘‘were carried
out by the very tools of thought which he himself had created for his work.’’
The southern section of Chichén Itzá contains a group of important and very
old buildings, but our narrow schedule on that first visit limited us to four. One
was the Nunnery and Annex, with its western façade solidly adorned from base
to cornice with masks of the Rain God in an early Maya style called Chenes. The
next, to the southeast, was the heavenly ornamented building known as the Igle-
sia, or Church. Of the classic period, this structure is outstanding because of its
profusely decorated façade and the mask of Tlaloc, whose hooked nose extends
from the corners, a feature that brought out the full battery of tourist cameras.
Our third stop was at the greatly admired Chichán-Chob, or Red House, also be-
longing to the classic period and notable for its flying façade and roof comb—
or crestería—forming a latticed wall.
But the temple that intrigued us most and certainly attracted Felipe’s deepest
interest was the Akab-Dzib, believed to be the most ancient structure in the entire
Maya capital. Composed of various superimpositions and additions, it received
its name—meaning ‘‘House of the Obscure Writing’’ or ‘‘Writing in the Dark’’—
from a sculptured lintel on a doorway of the inner chamber at the south end.
According to the interpretation of one of the local archaeologists, the carving
represented a priest seated on a throne contemplating hieroglyphic inscriptions
on a vase or vessel containing incense.
204 Alma M. Reed

Dr. Le Plongeon, a recognized authority on the hieroglyphs of Egypt, Saba,

Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and other biblical lands, maintained that the ‘‘awful,
tenebrous record’’ referred to the submergence of a continent in the waters of the
Atlantic Ocean, Yucatán forming its western extension and Africa on the east.
The savant believed that this was the same dreadful cataclysm described by Plato
from the narrative of Solon, who, in turn, had received the account from the
Egyptian priests Psenophis and Sonchis. Several Maya records, notably that of
the Troano Manuscript—one of the three existing Maya codices—fixes the date
of the catastrophe as ‘‘the year Kan, on the eleventh Muluc of the month Zac,’’
and states: ‘‘There occurred terrible earthquakes which continued without inter-
ruption until the thirteenth Chuen.’’ The account relates that it was then that
the ‘‘country of the Hills of Mud, the land of Mu, was sacrificed. Been twice up-
heaved, it suddenly disappeared during the night, the basin continually shaken
by volcanic forces. These caused the confined land to sink and rise several times
and in various places. . . . At last, the surface gave way and the ten countries were
torn asunder and scattered in fragments, unable to withstand the force of the
seismic convulsions. They sank with their sixty-four million inhabitants, 8,060
years before the writing of this book.’’
Dr. Le Plongeon claimed that the date of the submergence became a new start-
ing point for the chronological computations of Maya historians. From it, they
began a new era and reckoned the epochs of their history as the Christians do
from the birth of Christ and the Mohammedans from the Hegira, or flight of
Mohammed from Mecca.
As we stood in the unlighted inner chamber, the possibility of truth in these
traditions was argued by the scientists and the tourists. Dr. Merriam, a confirmed
Independent Inventionist, treated the ‘‘Lost Atlantis’’ theories lightly and even
with disdain. ‘‘Why is it necessary,’’ he asked, ‘‘to connect resemblances between
such widely separated cultures as the Maya and the Egyptian? Were not the lands
where both flourished of about the same elevation, the same climatic conditions?
And were not the human beings who lived and created in the two places physi-
cally identical from head to foot? Doesn’t it seem logical that their reactions to
similar natural conditions might have been about the same?’’ Endorsing Dr. Mer-
riam’s stand, an expeditionary—also a devotee of the Independent Inventionist
School—quoted Sir James Fraser, author of the Golden Bough,6 who assumed
the extremist view that parallel developments grow spontaneously out of human
nature as a result of psychic unity between all men wherever found.
Felipe listened attentively but took no part in our discussion. Yet, despite his
silence, it was clear that he favored the Diffusionists and did not wholly reject the
idea of a submerged Atlantic Continent—an idea that seemed to trouble him.
This was the first occasion I had noticed how swiftly his face changed its usual
peregrina 205

relaxed expression for one of tense preoccupation. The smile that, as Dr. Ernest
Gruening wrote at the time, ‘‘could win a child’s faith or rivet the hearts of a vast
multitude’’ was suddenly replaced by a strangely disturbed, puzzled look—the
look of one completely absorbed in search of an answer he knew would forever
elude him. Somehow, his mood recalled to mind words he had spoken during
our very first conversation. He had told me on the road to Kanasín of his travels
‘‘over the length and breadth of the Mayab on foot and on horseback, through
the Yucatán, into the wilds of Campeche, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, and the for-
est jungles of Chiapas, hasta Guatemala,’’ and how, standing before the majestic
monuments in the silent and deserted cities, ‘‘wondering and wondering,’’ he had
tried to penetrate the age-old mystery that might draw him closer to his ‘‘blood
brother, the Maya.’’
While Antonio held up a flashlight, Felipe carefully studied Akab-Dzib’s lin-
tel bas-relief, still as intact as it must have been on the day it came from the
sculptor’s hands. Many times before, he had seen these carvings and, doubtless,
with his poet-friend Luis Rosado Vega, who, in his ode ‘‘Chichén Itzá,’’ refers to
‘‘Dismal Akab-Dzib, where all is silence and dread.’’ But, never, perhaps, had
he witnessed such scholarly concentration on the theory that the ‘‘obscure in-
scription’’ recorded humanity’s supreme disaster. Incredulously, he seemed to be
asking himself: ‘‘Does the solution to the Maya enigma lie, then, in these legends
of a terrible cataclysm? Could this very thing not happen again?’’ An ardent wor-
shipper of Nature—personified in his public utterances and in our intimate talks
as the bountiful dispenser of the multifarious gifts of the Good Earth—he ap-
peared, for the moment, unable to reconcile his hopeful outlook and Pantheistic
Faith with the ominous ‘‘handwriting on the wall.’’ It could have been my own
lively imagination, but I thought he had grown pale in his visible depression at
the frightful picture our quotations from Le Plongeon and the Maya codices had
evoked. In his sensitivity and his enormous love for people—for the helpless and
the afflicted everywhere—the possibility that the Great Universal Mother of the
warm, generous heart had, in mad fury, destroyed millions of Maya ancestors,
causing the last survivors to seek shelter on the fringe of the submerged conti-
nent, seemed to weigh upon his spirit like some evil portent.
With less vivacity but with more knowledge of the ancient Maya than they
could claim upon arrival at Chichén Itzá’s celebrated ceremonial center, the ex-
peditionaries walked back to the spot where the Fordingas awaited and, in the
deepening twilight, retraced the new Dzitas road to board the train for Mérida.
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 12. Ritmos del Mayab

S
ightseeing in and out of Mérida continued at an uninterrupted pace, but
as the close of the first half of the expedition’s stay in Yucatán approached,
many points of archaeological and historical interest still remained on our
schedule. For greater convenience and the saving of limited time, the hospitality
committee invited those official guests housed in private residences to change
to the leading centrally located hotels. At Felipe’s suggestion, I was assigned to
the Hotel Imperial, facing on the small plaza of La Tercera Orden 1 and only a
short distance from my almost daily objectives, the García Rejón Library and the
Yucatán State University.
The massive walnut furniture of my spacious, high-ceilinged room was the
same, the manager proudly informed me, used by President Porfirio Díaz when
he occupied the suite and one adjoining mine on his visit to Yucatán for the
celebration of Mexico’s Independence Centennial. Among the more spectacular
notes in the ponderous mid-Victorian scheme was an enormous mirror with a
hand-carved wooden frame that extended almost the full length of the wall. An-
other was the elevated four-poster bed, also of heavily carved walnut and draped
with a voluminous muslin canopy. Adding to the pompous atmosphere was the
huge sunken Roman bath set in an elaborately patterned tile floor—a perfect
symbol of the grandiose inefficiency that appealed to the taste of the typical Díaz
regime oligarch.
But there was little likelihood that a reputation for conservative elegance had
wholly determined Felipe’s choice of the Hotel Imperial for the final days of
my Yucatecan sojourn. I soon guessed—what he later cheerfully confessed—that
he had selected the old stone building because its corner location afforded the
ideal setting for serenades. Below my second-story balcón around two o’clock
each morning, his favorite cantante, Alfonso, whose tall, slim figure and soul-
ful dark eyes recalled the traditional troubadours of Spanish chivalry, could be
seen with the three short, rotund muchachos of his quartette, strumming guitars
and singing the lovely canciones of Ricardo Palmerín, Guty Cárdenas, and other
208 Alma M. Reed

local composers, with an occasional plaintive song in Mayan. I knew that Felipe
was always somewhere in the background, hovering on one side or the other of
the convenient corner. Out of the serenaders’ range of vision and following the
course prescribed in amatory literature, I would muster up the courage to drop
a rose from my window, like any romantic maid of sixteenth-century Castile—
or twentieth-century Mérida.
My favorite serenata was ‘‘Las golondrinas,’’ by the poet Rosado Vega, for
which Palmerín had written the hauntingly tender music. The theme itself, remi-
niscent of Bécquer’s famous poem of the same name, which I had already memo-
rized, conveyed with poignant simplicity the cosmic truth that all cycles are
destined to close . . . ‘‘The swallows that came, bathed in light, in youth’s fair
morning’’ and ‘‘like its loves and its dreams, disappeared with winter’s dark
clouds.’’ The words fascinated me because of their ominous if imagined rela-
tion—in my strange forebodings—to the life pattern of someone dear to me—
or could it have been my own?
Another serenade, ‘‘Mi guitarra,’’ in which the same two sensitive Yucatecan
artists united their talents, seemed to speak to me with Felipe’s voice. Both the
music and the exquisite lyric had recaptured and translated into sweet lingering
cadences the ineffable sadness that enveloped his and their native land. And long
after Alfonso and his muchachos had vanished into the night and Felipe had re-
trieved the rose that I hoped would spell out the unspoken words that were in
my heart, the final stanza remained with me as his personal message:

The profound silence rends with nameless sorrow

My canto of love,
Listen, Alma mía, hear my guitar
That with me sings and weeps my Song.

I was fascinated by the Maya songs with which the cantantes, strumming mono-
rhythmic guitar accompaniments, would usually conclude their serenades. Ma-
yan, I realized, was Felipe’s favorite language, and although Spanish was spoken
in his paternal home, he had acquired the ancient Indian tongue in early child-
hood and continued to use it throughout his public life. With obvious pride, he
had mentioned the fact to me and with equal pride had also related how, follow-
ing the Conquest, the people of the Mayab preserved the purity of their ancestral
idiom from the disfigurement that occurred throughout centuries of hybridiza-
tion in other areas of their folk culture. Mayan not only was the language of the
grandfathers of the grandfathers of the founders of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá, he
explained, but was the one in which, from unknown ages, the creators of the race
and their first offspring expressed themselves.
peregrina 209

While I found some of the Mayan words rather harsh or rasping, their sounds
always vibrated for me with haunting overtones, suggesting remote times and
vague, far-off places. As Prof. Esteban Durán Rosada was later to observe, the
tones and inflections of Mayan speech were like ‘‘winds from the sea blowing
through a conch shell.’’ My own impressions were further confirmed by the Yuca-
tecan scholar who noted that the Maya songs strangely evoked the mood and
images of that vanished yesterday when, in the same land, the Maya would gather
on moonlit nights beside cool cenotes or under fronds of the ceiba tree, while
their bards, to the monotonous chords of zacatanes and tunkules,2 recounted ven-
erable legends and fantastic tales of xtabayes—sirens who waded along sacbeob,
the white roads of Mayab, to lure the guileless wayfarer to his doom.
During our very first conversations, I discovered Felipe’s almost passionate
desire to perpetuate the Mayan tongue. As I surmised, his crusading interest
aimed primarily to provide the non-Spanish-speaking bulk of Yucatán’s popula-
tion with a defensive weapon in the struggle to win and maintain control of their
own civic affairs. One of the many ways I soon learned in which he demonstrated
his crusading spirit was his sponsorship of the Dictionary of Motul. Shortly be-
fore our meeting, he had commissioned his friend, the eminent North Ameri-
can historian and etymologist Dr. William E. Gates, to prepare the monumental
work in English and an amplified Spanish translation. Previously, Dr. Gates, who
had made a lifelong study of Mayan linguistic problems and was a recognized
authority on Mayan glyphs, had translated into English, Bishop de Landa’s Las
Cosas de Yucatán. He was also the author of several interpretative treatises on
the codices, among them, Codex Maya-Tzental-Pérez, published in 1910 by the
Peabody Museum of Harvard University.
There were many elements in the Mayan language—Felipe assured me—that
vividly reflected the Maya temperament and character. He explained that the
Maya seldom affirms categorically and that rarely does he compromise himself
by asserting that something is good or valuable unless he has given the matter
mature reflection. This attitude of permanent doubt, he pointed out, was im-
bedded in the language as bey ulale, implying deeper meaning than the Spanish
así será—‘‘perhaps so,’’ or ‘‘thus it could be.’’ 3 While bey ulale may appear to be
a synonym of obedience or resignation, it is, in reality, an expression of irony
that provokes a mysterious inner smile—one that never reaches the lips of the
Maya. On the other hand, the negative ma—‘‘no’’—is constantly and emphati-
cally heard. In the picturesque definition that Professor Durán Rosado has given
to the word ma is the ‘‘thorny cuirass that protects the flower of Maya sentiment,
jealously guarded by the racial atavism.’’ The Maya will say ‘‘no’’ even when he is
consumed with desire to say ‘‘yes,’’ faithful to the hermetic withdraw of the race.
It was this same hermetic withdraw to which Felipe had made implied reference
210 Alma M. Reed

on our memorable ride to Kanasín—the spiritual ailment at the core of racial

consciousness he was attempting to probe and heal with psychological therapy.
The Maya’s regard for his age-old language, Felipe was convinced, was one kind
of stimulus that might help transform a ‘‘sad’’ people into a happy one, awaken-
ing in them the capacity to feel both pride and joy, to respond more quickly to
‘‘yes’’ than to ‘‘no’’ after so long a period of humiliation, sorrow and skepticism.
Shortly after my arrival at the Hotel Imperial, Antonio appeared one morning,
bearing a basket full of gay tulipanes and a large cardboard box that contained
my eagerly awaited fiesta dress. With it came a gold filigree rosary and a crucifix
to complete the beautiful costume. In a note attached to the flowers, Felipe asked
me when I would receive the photographer Badia for my portrait as ‘‘una guapa
Mestiza de Yucatán.’’ 4
Meanwhile, he hoped that I would be free to visit the new Archaeological
Museum, of which his friend, the poet Rosado Vega, was the director, and after-
wards to join them both at luncheon. I had met Don Luis at the expedition re-
ceptions, but I wanted to know him better because of my growing admiration for
his poetry, legends, and songs. Just a few days before, I had received as Felipe’s
first gift to me, a two-volume set of the poet’s collected works, one titled Libro
de ensueño y dolor (Book of Reverie and Pain) and the other, Alma y sangre (Soul
and Blood).
In the heart of the city at the ancient church of San Juan de Dios, we found
Don Luis supervising the adaptation of the building to its new role as an archaeo-
logical museum. An additional nave to accommodate the already large and daily
augmented collection destined for public display was also under construction.
In his vigorous forties, of medium build but appearing shorter than his actual
height alongside Felipe, Don Luis—his eyes aglow with zealous enthusiasm be-
hind their thick bifocals—led us around the atrium and through hidden corners
of the old temple to the sacristy, where the prize items of different types of an-
cient objects were temporarily stored. It was clear that his was a labor of love and
that his poet’s nature was wholeheartedly responding to the cultural undertaking
that Felipe had astutely entrusted to him.
Although in close touch with the entire museum project in his ambition to
have it all completed before the formal opening of the new Chichén Itzá Highway
in July, Felipe received a pleasant surprise when Don Luis triumphantly uncov-
ered several remarkable pieces he had collected during the week while every-
one was occupied with the Carnegie Expedition tours. The newly acquired lot
included a Chac-Mool, two large figures—a warrior and a goddess—masks of
Tlaloc, and other treasures that formerly would have been shipped to the Na-
tional Museum of Anthropology in the Mexican capital. It was moving to watch
these modern-minded sons of the Mayab reverently handling and even affection-
peregrina 211

Reed in Mérida, photographed by Badia in her traditional Maya costume,

known as a traje de mestiza, given to her by an enamored Felipe Carrillo
Puerto in the fall of 1923.

ately caressing the vessels and artifacts their ancestors had fashioned in a spirit
of religious devotion and left as an artistic legacy to unborn generations.
Eager to have me fully appreciate the significance and the broad scope of the
Museum’s educational program that he and Felipe had together devised, Don
Luis spoke rapidly, stressing his points with characteristic gestures. Usually, there
was a picaresque flavor to his words, in striking contrast to the gentle romanti-
cism of his verses. ‘‘Socialists,’’ he explained, winking at Felipe, ‘‘are invariably
unorthodox. Consequently, here in this Socialist State our Museum will not fol-
212 Alma M. Reed

Reed appears on the cover of the periodical El Agricultor,

wearing the same outfit as well as her gold filigree rosary,
also a gift from Felipe.

low the standard routine but will introduce activities aimed to give a fresh mean-
ing to the ceramics and sculptured stones we exhibit.’’ Among the innovations,
he cited models of Yucatán’s principal monuments that were then being built
by skilled native craftsmen, bibliographies containing special reference to the
diverse theories of Maya origin already in preparation, and recently organized
classes for the study of the ancient codices and other historic documents relating
to the Maya. A very important aspect of the educational program, he pointed
out, and one that bore directly on the present economic reality, was the launch-
ing of a campaign to promote Maya stylization in art and architectural works.
All these factors, Don Luis believed, formed an ensemble that would synthesize
Felipe’s various efforts and advance his underlying purpose and social objectives,
which were to stir and activate among the patient, long-suffering Maya Indians
subconscious memories of Yucatán’s epic aboriginal race.
peregrina 213

Felipe was not the only one to be pleasantly surprised that day by Don Luis.
As we left the Archaeological Museum and drove to a little fonda 5 with a tropical
setting off the Paseo de Montejo—one that Felipe said he could highly recom-
mend for its excellent pollo p’bil and my favorite sorbetes—the poet revealed that
he also had a surprise in store for me. ‘‘I hope that you will find my surprise to
your liking,’’ he began. ‘‘It is a song—composed with cariño 6 and admiration.
From the moment we met, I knew that I must write a song to you. But I can
claim only half the credit for the result of my impulse. You see, I was not alone in
my decision. No sooner had the idea occurred to me than our great good friend
here, Don Felipe, conceived the very same idea. In the name of our long com-
pañerismo,7 he begged me to write and dedicate to you ‘‘the real masterpiece’’ of
my career. He gave me the title for it—‘‘La Peregrina’’—and during these days,
when he has unburdened to me his thoughts and his feelings about you, he has
even unconsciously provided me with many of the sentiments and phrases. So
now, Señorita Alma, you are to be ‘La Peregrina,’ and soon our lyric will have its
musical accompaniment.’’
‘‘Yes, very soon,’’ Felipe added, beaming at the prospect. ‘‘Palmerín, Yucatán’s
greatest composer, is already at work on the music. You know some of his other
songs—‘Mi guitarra,’ ‘El rosal enfermo,’ ‘Las golondrinas,’ which Alfonso has
played for you. But I feel that Palmerín will surpass himself with your song.’’
The moment we were seated at our table on the fonda’s palm-enclosed ter-
race, I begged Don Luis to recite the words of my song. Some of the nostalgic
nuances of Alfonso’s minor-keyed serenades were in his deep-throated voice as
he read the lines of ‘‘La Peregrina’’ from a handwritten page. When he finished
he presented the manuscript to me, bowing low in a gesture of Quixotic Span-
ish gallantry. I glanced over the phrases extolling my eyes ‘‘claros y divinos,’’ 8
my ‘‘empurpled lips,’’ ‘‘engaging smile,’’ and ‘‘beauty as radiant as the sun,’’ and
as any young woman might have felt under similar circumstances, I was pro-
foundly pleased that a poet whose work delighted me should have pictured me in
such glowing terms. Yet despite the compliments and the flattering metaphors,
the song itself did not make me happy. I wondered why the lovely sentiments
aroused no joyous response in my heart, and why, instead, they left me saddened.
Soon I realized that their suggestion of unsatisfied longing, the implied prophesy
of separation, the emphasis on the vast distances between the ‘‘virginal snows’’
of my own ‘‘Northern land’’ and the ‘‘palmeras,’’ the ‘‘perfumed nectar of the
flowers’’ of Felipe’s ‘‘tierra tropical,’’ evoked the sorrow experienced at parting
forever with the dearly beloved one . . . I could easily have wept—although I
managed to smile—when I grasped the resignation in the words of unfulfillment,
stressed in the closing lines with Felipe’s reiterated appeal: ‘‘do not forget, do not
forget my land, do not forget, do not forget my love.’’
214 Alma M. Reed

That night, I went with Felipe and Don Luis to the modest home of Ricardo
Palmerín in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Mérida. In a cool, moonlit
garden beneath blossoming orange trees, Felipe and I sat on a bench before the
open door of the composer’s sparsely furnished little studio. Inside, Palmerín was
playing a small upright piano while Don Luis stood near him, listening intently
to the various musical phrases as they rippled off the keyboard in swift melodic
succession. But not one of the many beautiful strains impressed the sensitive ears
of the two judges as the ‘‘inevitable’’ theme of ‘‘La Peregrina.’’ The short, heavyset
musician, whose placid countenance, tranquil poise, and trim black mustache
seemed to type him as a physician or a member of the legal profession, rather
than as a master weaver of the gossamer fabric of ethereal sound, cheerfully ac-
cepted the unfavorable verdict. He assured us that the right mood and rhythm
were soon bound to come to him. He asked us to return, and Felipe said that we
would do so within the week.
My second trip to Chichén Itzá to hear Don Eduardo’s ‘‘confession’’ on his
Sacred Cenote exploits was combined with Felipe’s regular Thursday Agrarian
Program. Leaving Mérida by early train, we rode together to Dzitas, where I was
met by one of the faithful Fordingas and again driven over the new highway to
the old Maya capital while Felipe went on to a pueblo some fifty kilometers be-
yond. He would call for me that same afternoon, following the land partition, at
the Thompson Hacienda House, and we would return by railroad to Mérida. He
realized, he said, that there was a full day ahead, but if I still felt in the mood, we
would make another night call with Don Luis at Palmerín’s home.
En route to Dzitas there was little opportunity to resume my interview with
Felipe covering his background, now behind schedule, since it did not include
the first years of his public life. Discussions with the agrarian officials over de-
tails that had to be worked out before the day’s ejidos ceremonies occupied most
of the journey, but he ‘‘solemnly promised’’ to talk ‘‘only with Almita’’ on the
homeward trip.
 13. Well of Sacrifice

U
pon my arrival at Chichén Itzá, Don Eduardo announced that he was
fully prepared with all the facts of ‘‘America’s greatest archaeological ad-
venture’’ for my New York Times Magazine article. But mere facts, he
warned, were not enough. If I were to tell his story as it should be told, it was
essential that I feel the tragedy repeatedly enacted at this place in those remote
days. He said that he would try to make me feel the ancient tragedy so that I might
convey how his response to the human values involved with the Maya ritualis-
tic sacrifice had originally impelled him to risk the terrible hazards of a descent
into the Sacred Well. I agreed with him that feeling was a vital element in effec-
tive journalism or, for that matter, in any form of communication. And so, with
wide-eyed eagerness, I followed every word of the aging explorer’s narrative as
it summoned a lovely young phantom out of the cenote’s depths.
Don Eduardo’s natural flair for atmospheric ‘‘buildup’’ and the creation of
dramatic setting would have done justice to a professional stage director. He ap-
proached his strange tale by leading me from El Castillo along the three-hundred-
yard macadamized causeway to the sinister, brackish pool I had seen for the first
time earlier in the week. On the way, he pictured, with the aid of descriptive
movements and swift changes of facial expression, a maiden of flawless beauty
who has emerged from the sanctuary that crowns the mighty pyramid. Even a
mole on her cheek, he observed, would have disqualified her for the exalted pub-
lic mission toward which her entire education and spiritual training had been
directed. She wears a bridal wreath of white flowers, as the black masked priests
escort her from the sculptured chamber. To the beating of the death drum, the
shrill screeching of a reed whistle, and the mocking notes of a high-pitched flute,
she descends the imposing stairway. Below, in the shadow of the vast monument,
await other priests and a company of nobles in stately procession. Trembling and
helpless, the maiden joins them in their march along the sacred road. They pause
at the cenote’s edge. The ominous music increases in volume as, unresisting, she is
lifted to the granite platform supporting the little temple. The nobles and priests
216 Alma M. Reed

form a line around the pool’s circular rim. Their voices are raised in loud sup-
plication. At a signal they throw their precious jewels, treasured ornaments, and
vessels of smoking incense into the pale green water. Then comes the moment of
appeasement—the moment of supreme sacrifice to the offended deity. A priest
chants while another tears the clapper from a tiny copper bell that the maiden
wears around her neck. To the Maya, the act signifies death. The mystic bride has
been mercifully drugged with balché,1 the sacred nectar. Her whole life has been
a preparation for this hour. She believes that her symbolic marriage to Chac—
the Water God—in the depths of the Great Well is the sole means of saving her
people from present or impending disaster. She believes, too, that the cenote is
only the door to immortal happiness. But the urge to live and love is stronger
than drug or faith, and a shriek of despair may pierce the forest as she is hurled
headlong into the yawning water pit.
As we sat on the stone platform of the temple that projected out a foot or
two from the rim of the cenote, Don Eduardo explained that this cruel ritual was
performed whenever pestilence, famine or military defeat threatened the Itzáes.
Invariably the spectators waited a while for the return of the beautiful victim,
assured that such a miracle would mean an immediate answer to their prayers.
It is said that once or twice a maiden did return.
The legendary tale finished, Don Eduardo told me the equally dramatic story
of how he had translated the tradition of the Sacrificial Well into historic fact;
how, after years of lonely labor, he proved that the Sacred Cenote was the place of
human sacrifice as reported by Bishop Diego de Landa in his sixteenth-century
book Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, as well as by Fray Diego López de Cogo-
lludo and other chroniclers.
‘‘The mysterious, dismal aspect of the cenote,’’ Don Eduardo began, ‘‘im-
pressed me as much as its tradition of human offerings to the gods. For years I
experienced a growing belief in the accuracy of the Spanish historians, although
they made it clear that they were reporting merely from hearsay the dreadful
religious rites practiced here until the Conquest.
‘‘But my own intuitions,’’ he continued, ‘‘on the close association of the Maya
religious conceptions with physical Nature was a strong factor in my decision
to search for proof of human sacrifice in the cenote’s murky depths. If human
beings were actually consigned to a watery grave in Yucatán to avert the anger
or win the favor of a deity, I reasoned that this would be the logical place of their
doom. I had seen the cenote under all conditions—in the soft glow of sunrise, at
brilliant noonday, in the silver moonlight, and always there was the suggestion
of solemnity, mystery, and tragedy.’’
But when he decided to verify the cenote legends, Don Eduardo related, ob-
stacles on all sides confronted him. His faith met with ridicule from the layman
peregrina 217

The back of this photograph reads: ‘‘Governor Carrillo and members of the Carnegie Expedition
beside the Sacred Cenote. I’m fourth from left, front row, with large hat.’’

and discouragement from the scientist. The scholarly W. H. Holmes, visiting Chi-
chén Itzá in 1895, wrote of the plan: ‘‘There has been some talk of exploring the
bottom of this cenote with the expectation of securing works of art or other trea-
sures. But the task is a most formidable one and will require the erection of strong
windlasses and an efficient dredging apparatus. It is doubtful if promised re-
sults warrant the expenditure necessary for carrying out the work in a thorough
manner.’’
Don Eduardo said that he had been in perfect agreement with Holmes that
the task was indeed a formidable one, especially since the money for the ‘‘strong
windlasses’’ and ‘‘efficient dredging apparatus’’ was not available. The cenote
measures 165 feet in diameter. The limestone wall drops an average 60 feet from
the tree-fringed rim to the surface of the pool. And beneath approximately 33
feet of water is a mud bed 30 feet deep. Unable to find the proper support for
his extensive enterprise, Don Eduardo recalled how he decided to pursue less
costly research methods. He learned the diver’s art from a Greek sponge diver,
and night after night he descended in his diving suit only to have his inexperience
meet with accident. In many instances, he narrowly escaped death.
Don Eduardo had but slight precedent for his exploit. Years later historians
brought to light the fact that the only person known previously to have dived
218 Alma M. Reed

into the Sacred Well and live to tell about it was Hunac Ceel, who became ruler
of Mayapán as a result. Many doubted the claim of Richard Halliburton, the
popular travel writer, that he, on two occasions, had also done so.
The legends held that in addition to the sacrifice of the maidens, victims were
sometimes thrown into the Well at dawn to receive messages from the Rain God,
Yum Chac. If they lived until noon they were rescued and asked to reveal the
message that had been given them regarding the rain for the coming year. This
happened so rarely that survivors were signally honored after emergence from
the Sacred Cenote, as was the case of Hunac Ceel of Chichén Itzá.
One night, Don Eduardo related, his perseverance was rewarded by the dis-
covery of human bones, which proved to be those of a girl between twelve and
sixteen years of age. This success sharpened his enthusiasm, and finally, by sheer
force of determination, he won the interest and aid of a wealthy North Ameri-
can. By 1903, a simple dredging apparatus had been purchased and installed.
Soon thereafter, the work was well under way, the cranes being operated by hand
power of the Indians. Almost from the start the dredging yielded results. Again,
human bones—among them those of young girls—were brought to the surface
to support the theory of sacrifice. Gradually, precious pre-Colombian objects
began to make their appearance in the scooped-up silt. The assortment included
jade, gold, copper, ebony, balls of copal, obsidian, knives, weapons ornamented
with turquoise mosaics, and even fragments of hitherto unknown weaves. All
this treasure, Don Eduardo admitted to me, was then in the Peabody Museum,
having been sent there via the U.S. consular mail pouch as, over the years, he
recovered it from the cenote during his diving operations.
‘‘And now you know the whole story,’’ he said as we arose to turn away from
the Sacred Cenote and its somber traditions towards the ancient causeway. ‘‘It
is a confession that has to be made sooner or later. And since life is so uncer-
tain, I have waited long enough.’’ Again, I thanked him for his confidence in me
and assured him that my first-run account of his extraordinary discoveries would
surely further my ambitions to succeed as an archaeological reporter.
In the flaming sunset Felipe called for me, as arranged, at the Thompson Ha-
cienda House. He was followed by several worshipping Maya, who remained a
short distance from the terrace while we chatted and took our leave of Don Ed-
uardo. As we walked toward Chichén Itzá’s ceremonial center, where Antonio
waited at the wheel of the Fordinga, the Inditos trailed behind us until Felipe
beckoned them to join us and, shyly, they approached. Addressing each one by
name, he introduced me as ‘‘La Indita Blanca, Pixan Halal’’—Alma Reed, the
white Indian girl. I greeted them in the few Mayan phrases I had learned and
took their timidly extended hands. Their approving smiles seemed to welcome
me as a member of their ancient tribe. In words that Felipe translated, their young
peregrina 219

spokesman returned my greeting and said: ‘‘Remain with us, lovely Pixan Halal,
but if you must leave us now, may your absence be only a short one.’’
The little group encircled us while we stood for a few moments to enjoy the
spectacle of changing light on the colossal symbol of Maya ancestral grandeur.
From its broad base to its surmounting sanctuary, the monument was flooded
with a golden glow that obliterated the melancholy scene so vividly reconstructed
in Don Eduardo’s dramatic narrative. The image of the doomed maiden, de-
scending the great stairway between rows of black-masked priests to the ominous
beating of the death drum receded, and another that supremely projected love
and compassion took its place in my vision of the Mayab. A few of the older men
pressed close enough to Felipe to touch gently with affectionate respect the hem
of his white linen jacket or the tops of his black leather riding boots. To each
of these inarticulate humildes,2 the mere fact of his presence obviously brought
comfort and reassurance. I recalled how Mr. Hart had earlier depicted him as
‘‘towering above his ‘Inditos’—truly a god among them.’’ This was now my im-
pression of the relationship he bore to the exploited peoples of his land. Such a
relationship explained why the Greek Euripides exalted heroic humanity over the
divinity of the arrogant, vengeful deities. And I was aware, too, that this sunset
hour in the capital of the ‘‘Holy Men beside the Sacred Well’’ would immutably
shape the course of my deepest, most intimate recognition of all that mattered in
my personal life. For it was the hour when I first realized that I could ask no ful-
fillment of self more complete than the privilege of adoring Felipe for all the days
that remained—of working beside him in his Messianic labor, serving him while
he fought to win for Earth’s helpless ones their long-withheld right to beauty,
dignity, and creative joy. And even then I knew with the total knowing that over-
whelms the senses like some mighty tidal wave of prophetic discernment that
whatever the future might hold for us, my own destiny was now inevitably united
with that of a Maya savior.
That night I wanted to share with my diary the feelings that had gripped me
in the shadow of Chichén Itzá’s immense pyramid. But the words to describe my
awakening to the unimagined possibilities of consciousness eluded the usually
cooperative fountain pen. Like some sudden fugitive solar ray that can be cap-
tured in passing only by the most highly sensitized film, the radiant energy that
pervaded my spirit defied the inept process of written analysis. Frustrated, finally
I gave up the attempt. Instead, under the date of February 22, 1923, as a postscript
to notes covering Thompson’s Sacred Cenote ‘‘confession’’—until that time one
of the two most sensational events in my young journalistic career—I recorded in
a brief sentence the emotional experience that was to embrace life’s most magical
memory: ‘‘Love, beyond my every hope or dream, comes to me at last!’’
Yet the words that could have expressed what I felt about Felipe in that
220 Alma M. Reed

hour of my heart’s decision were eventually written. A year later, the perceptive
Dr. Ernest Gruening, historian and North American statesman, wrote in tribute
to his friend, Felipe Carrillo Puerto: ‘‘Like a great comet he came out of age-long
darkness, lifting men’s eyes and hearts, a fiery token of cycles reaching into the
vast unknown, a vision unforgettable. He was a cosmic figure. He linked in his
single person the far-flung epic of the great American race and the undying epic
of man’s quest for freedom.’’
 14. The Arena

W
e were alone on the observation platform of the Mérida-bound
train. Felipe’s right arm, which had become a symbol of protection
throughout Yucatán, rested reassuringly across the back of my chair
as it swayed with the movement of the speeding car.
Deep emotions were still responding to the spell of the Chichén Itzá sunset,
and I would have preferred to sit silently beside him, watching the unruly lock
of hair that had fascinated me from our first meeting, as it played in the wind
over his ample forehead. But I could not escape the haunting thought that our
remaining hours together were numbered. Prompted by some driving sense of
obligation, I felt that I must learn everything possible about the course of his
life from the very beginning. Thorough knowledge of his motives, his acts and
aims, seemed of the utmost urgency not only because of my own intense desire
to understand him completely as a man, but because of a crusading spirit that
longed to bring to the awareness of current and perhaps future readers facts that
would acquaint them with his true significance as a public figure.
With little enthusiasm, however, at the prospect of disturbing with historic
data a blissful mood wholly immersed in the ‘‘beauty that was in passing,’’ and
emotionally aloof at the moment at the things of yesterday and tomorrow, I
nevertheless produced my reporter’s pencil and notebook. Felipe himself ob-
served my determined move with a look of disappointment. This was the first
occasion that we had not shared with a crowd or at least with a third person.
His voice betrayed resentment as he said: ‘‘I would rather, of course, talk about
you . . . Less than a week now remains for me to convince you that you should
stay here with us or quickly return to Yucatán. You have no children to care for
and you are not married to your capitalist newspapers. Why won’t you consider
a ‘new life’—one that I feel will bring you deeper satisfaction and even a more
rapid literary success than your present occupations?’’
Suggesting that I write books on archaeology, Felipe added: ‘‘There is so much
to be learned today about our Maya and the other advanced races of ancient
222 Alma M. Reed

Mexico. This is the golden hour for getting at the truth about the long-buried
past. While taking part in this great adventure of rediscovery, you would, at the
same time, be able to satisfy your own love of humanity by working with us in
the causes that I know are your very own.’’ I promised to give my most serious
thought to his words but I reminded him that as a former journalist he could
understand how, with my present commitments, ‘‘time was of the essence,’’ and I
begged him to resume the story of his entry into Yucatán’s political arena where
he left off on our unfinished interview.
‘‘Very well, Almita, you win. If it will make you happy, I’ll do my best, now
and always, as you doubtless already know.’’
Felipe’s chronological outline of events was related with directness and char-
acteristic modesty. At points where his modesty of understatement left the nar-
rative incomplete, I have amplified it with details gleaned from subsequent con-
versations with his mother, Doña Adela, Elvia, Acrelio, Benjamín, and Gualberto
Carrillo and the recollections of family friends. From each source came fresh tes-
timony to support the ineludible fact that Felipe’s entire youth was lived under
conditions of ceaseless struggle, sacrifice, and constant peril in pursuit of the
single goal of achieving for his helpless people the substance of their social needs
and impulses.
Reports published in the newspapers of the period document much of the
challenging story, which opened with mention of his first prison sentence, served
while he was still an adolescent. He had defied, he explained, the proprietor of
a large henequen plantation who had ordered a passageway closed to the Indi-
ans because they had dared to reclaim their rights to communal lands. After de-
livering an impassioned speech, the teenage crusader resolutely tore down the
barriers that blocked traffic.
In 1906, around the time of the crucial strikes of the Río Blanco Textile Mill
workers and the Cananea copper miners, Felipe began publication of a weekly
paper, El Heraldo de Motul, an organ aimed at the uprooting of the intolerable
enganchado, or company store, system, which John Kenneth Turner was soon to
call to the attention of the English-speaking world through his exposé, Barba-
rous Mexico. During this period, Felipe was also correspondent for La Revista
de Mérida. In both papers, he vigorously denounced the evil practices on the
haciendas and the flagrant disregard by their owners of the laws of the nation.
Talk of silencing the fearless young journalist was so common in Motul that
Don Justiniano was persistently pleading with him to be on his guard against
paid assassins. But Felipe, refusing to heed his father’s warnings, would answer:
‘‘No, papacito, tú en cada individuo ves a un enemigo mío—No, dear Papa, it is
not so. In each person you behold my enemy.’’
Opposition of the guilty slaveholders to his public stand was intensified with
the formation in Mérida during 1907 of the Independent Electoral Center, an
peregrina 223

agency that launched the candidacy of Delio Moreno Cantón for the governor-
ship of Yucatán. Felipe became the ardent supporter of the gifted poet, coura-
geous editor, and champion of democratic methods. To further the campaign, he
organized the liberal elements of the Motul region. His leadership in the Centro
Electoral Independiente 1 in its fight against the humorously titled Partido Demó-
crata 2 was, obviously, a mere farcical declaration of principles, since Molina, one
of the richest men in the Republic and the most powerful and ruthless latifun-
dista in Yucatán, could laugh at the popular vote as a means of obtaining his
reelection. But the array of political and financial forces enjoying government
protection failed to weaken Felipe’s efforts for reform. To that end, he created the
Centro Obrero Motuleño.3 Through this organization, dedicated to the intellec-
tual and material improvement of the local wage earners, he spread the gospel of
human and civil rights and even finally succeeded in establishing a fine library
for the benefit of the members.
Meanwhile, in order to promote the liberal Morenista 4 program, Felipe en-
listed able collaborators in his forthright and incorruptible periodical El Heraldo,
among them, Prof. Pedro Pérez Miranda and Dr. Manuel Amézquita. The Cen-
tral American contributors included Dr. Silvio Salas and Don Mariano Tovar.
Other well-known writers whose columns added distinction to El Heraldo were
Don Luis Librado Montesinos of Tampico and Don Salvador Martínez Alomja
of Campeche, then residing in Motul. To meet the accusations against the ruling
políticos and monopolists, an opposition paper, La Gaceta de la Costa,5 was
founded by the government clique. And as charges and countercharges incited
passionate polemics and fanned the already explosive situation, the local officials,
bent on defeating Moreno Cantón and fearful of his reform measures, caused
Felipe’s arrest and detention. The trumped-up indictment was based on the
‘‘abuse of the Chief of the Public Ministry, Manuel Palma Cervera,’’ ex-director
of La Gaceta de la Costa, who also happened to be the nephew of the jefe político.
Through the latter’s absolute power, Felipe was consigned to the Penitenciaría
Juárez 6 in Mérida on the plea that his accuser lived in that city.
Commenting on the ‘‘unusual course of justice’’ pursued by the Public Min-
istry, the Revista de Mérida stated: ‘‘Sr. Carrillo for his honesty and the indepen-
dence of his character is highly esteemed by the society of Motul, which is pained
to witness the unjust proceedings against him. Nevertheless, with the President
of the Republic, who holds that we ‘must have faith in justice,’ we are certain
that Sr. Carrillo will soon again breathe the air of liberty.’’
After spending twenty days in the Penitentiary, Felipe was freed and cleared of
the charges, the same journal announcing his vindication in the following note:
‘‘Yesterday afternoon, Sr. Don Felipe Carrillo was the object of a warm reception
from his many friends upon his arrival at Motul after suffering unjust incarcera-
tion. The railroad station was crowded with admirers and well-wishers.’’
224 Alma M. Reed

In connection with this incident, Felipe’s generous spirit and tolerant nature,
his willingness to overlook injuries and forgive those who had harmed him, is
shown in an anecdote related by his brother Acrelio. Upon learning that Manuel
Palma Cervera, who had maliciously caused his imprisonment, was gravely ill,
Felipe, to the amazement of the Palma Cervera family, visited the sick man. He
recalled their old friendship, explaining that he thoroughly understood the devi-
ous machinations of politics, which had ruptured but not destroyed their years
of neighborly relationship.
With the spread of the movement in favor of Francisco I. Madero for Presi-
dent there emerged after 1908 a new challenge to Felipe’s idealism and boundless
energy. During this period he attended and called secret meetings, often at his
own home, protesting the failure of Díaz to relinquish the presidency in accor-
dance with the promise made in the James Creelman interview published by Pear-
son’s Magazine in March 1908. His opposition to the ‘‘Reelectionists,’’ headed in
Yucatán at the time by the interim Governor, Enrique Muñoz Aristegui, became
increasingly vigorous as the 1910 expiration date of the dictator’s thirty-three-
year-old tenure of office and eighth term approached. When it became known
that the hated Sonora Governor Ramón Corral—who had masterminded the
cruel deportation of thousands of Yaqui Indians to Yucatán for slavery on the
haciendas—was selected as the vice presidential candidate, Felipe’s outspoken
condemnation of the choice brought severe reprisals. With local rebels against
the Díaz despotism, including Carlos R. Menéndez, the Yucatecan journalist,
Felipe was again jailed. In an attempt to silence his popular voice, the políticos
held him incommunicado—but aided by loyal followers he managed to wage an
effective propaganda campaign from behind prison walls. And soon after his re-
lease he engaged intensified efforts on behalf on the Anti-Reelection and other
political campaigns, some of which frequently took him to Valladolid, a center
of restlessness and of incipient collective resistance.
An incident recalled by Sr. Rafael Quintal of Motul, who had known Felipe
since his first railroading period in 1891 and had occasionally acted as his substi-
tute during vacations or leaves of absence, is eloquent on the ‘‘human’’ methods
of approaching problems, which helped him win the faith and support of Yuca-
tán’s dispossessed thousands. Sr. Quintal relates that he was with Felipe in Valla-
dolid when he spoke from a platform to an Indian gathering. As he was finishing
his talk, an old Indio, literally in rags, shoeless, and with a tattered sombrero,
said to him: ‘‘Listen, Chanzul (young gentleman), in other days there came to us
another like you. He told us that he wanted to do on the fincas the things that
you now want to do . . . But he never accomplished . . . Never.’’
Felipe replied: ‘‘Don Fulano (Mr. So-and-so) spoke thus to you . . . What do
you say?’’
peregrina 225

‘‘I say that he never accomplished . . . And I say now, let the Maya rise up.
And I am going to tell them to go to Mérida to urge others to do the same. I am
ninety-six. I am very poor. I have only my grandson.’’
‘‘Why so poor?’’ asked Felipe. ‘‘Why have you no clothes? Why are you without
shoes, camisa, and calzones? ’’
‘‘There are no pesos for us . . . anywhere!’’
‘‘Is there someone here who can make the clothes you need? If so, I shall buy
the white cloth and get a hat and cloak for you . . . But help me make conditions
better for all. Help me with your fellow townsmen that I may accomplish . . . Here
are thirty pesos. Keep them in case you fall sick.’’
A few weeks later Felipe returned. The old Indio, wearing shoes and hat and
his new outfit, was on hand to greet him: ‘‘Come on,’’ he shouted to his Maya
companions . . . ‘‘Here is Chanzul.’’ And addressing Felipe, he said: ‘‘In Valladolid,
we are bathed in joy, because you have come back to accomplish!’’
But the hour for Felipe’s greatest accomplishment had not yet struck. He was
destined to struggle for another five years before the hopes he held out to Valla-
dolid’s Indians in 1910 could be realized with their deliverance from slavery on
the fincas and from the abject poverty that was their lot when too old and feeble
to toil for their heartless masters. And Valladolid was to witness much shedding
of blood and tears before the chains that bound the Mayab to degradation were
broken.
Felipe is generally recognized as the intellectual director of what has been
called ‘‘la primera chispa de la revolución social’’ (the first spark of the Social
Revolution)—an uprising of the workers in Valladolid on June 4, 1910. As a con-
ductor and baggage master on Yucatán’s railroads and as an organizer of labor
during the years preceding the rebellion, he took advantage of his frequent stop-
overs at Valladolid to enlist Maderistas 7 and to disseminate Revolutionary ideas
through persuasive arguments at underground meetings. When the rebellion, in
which fifteen hundred campesinos took part, finally broke out, a wave of con-
sternation swept the state and nation, already tense with expectancy of startling
events. Federal troops were rushed to the scene, but it was some days before
the rebels abandoned possession of the city. The three principal chiefs—Maxi-
miliano R. Bonilla, Atilano Albertos, and José Kantún—were captured and, on
June 25, shot by a firing squad in the patio of the church of San Roque de Valla-
dolid. Two other leaders of the thwarted armed movement escaped. One of them,
Miguel Ruz Ponce, took refuge in the Quintana Roo jungles. Marrying the daugh-
ter of the native cacique, he returned to Yucatán after the fall of Díaz. The other
leader, Claudio Alcocer, was later assassinated.
In his book, Mi vida revolucionaria,8 Félix Palavicini, Mexican intellectual and
publisher of El Universal,9 records that Don Francisco I. Madero once declared
226 Alma M. Reed

in an interview: ‘‘If there is a Social Revolution in Mexico, it will commence

in Yucatán.’’ His prophetic words were fulfilled to the letter, as Antonio Busti-
llos Carrillo points out, when the Revolution, which the Apostle of Democracy 10
himself headed, actually did originate in Yucatán, sparked five months earlier at
Valladolid by Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
Felipe once told me that he had served a total of seven years on five differ-
ent occasions in Yucatán’s prisons on charges growing out of political activities.
A natural target for the embattled enemies of social renovation, he evidently
avoided additional years of incarceration and possibly death by escaping to the
United States immediately after the Valladolid uprising in which the rebels were
virtually annihilated. Different accounts of what actually occurred in the sum-
mer of 1910 leave a hiatus in the verified record of this crucial period. A frequently
published version is that when Felipe crossed the border, he personally contacted
Madero, who in early October had broken jail in San Luis Potosí and, disguised
as a laborer, reached safety in Texas. According to Edmundo Bolio, Felipe went
directly to New York, where he worked on the docks as a longshoreman. Con-
trary to some accounts, it is the opinion of Professor Bolio, who was a close friend
and, later, director of the cultural programs of the Liga Central, that Felipe did
not meet Samuel S. Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor,
during this or any of his three visits to the United States.
Professor Bolio informed me that his friendship with Felipe dated from 1909
when, as a young schoolteacher from Izamal, he was invited to Motul by Gual-
berto Salazar, jefe político, to attend a reunion in his home. Salazar had expected
that the learned Maestro, an authority on Mayan language, history, and legend,
would speak in laudatory terms of his administration. But when Felipe produced
the record showing that the same Salazar was an enemy, not the friend of the
Maya Indians, Professor Bolio, instead of praising, publicly rebuked him. A fist-
fight was prevented only by the interference of the other guests. But knowing
that the Maestro was in danger, Felipe hid him before dawn in his carreta, well
concealed beneath sacks of cattle fodder. Then, driving off to Temax, he placed
his new friend on the train for Mérida.
Whatever Felipe’s associations north of the border after Valladolid, his ab-
sence from Mexico could not have been longer than three months. On Septem-
ber 13, 1910, we find him in San Luis Potosí as one of the two delegates from
Yucatán to the Third Congress of Periodistas de Prensa de los Estados.11 The other
delegate, Carlos R. Menéndez, discloses in his book, Ninety Years of Yucatecan
History (1821–1910),12 that together they presented a motion that, ‘‘in the midst of
great applause, was approved by acclamation.’’ The motion called for the send-
ing of two urgent telegrams, one directed to the President of the Republic, Gen-
eral Porfirio Díaz, and the second to Governor Muñoz Aristegui of Yucatán. ‘‘By
unanimous accord,’’ the message read, ‘‘this Congress respectfully asks that lib-
peregrina 227

erty be granted to the political prisoners who languish in the Castle of San Juan
de Ulúa and in the penitentiary of Mérida, respectively, imploring you that at
sunrise of the Centennial not a single Mexican will be in prison because of his
political convictions.’’ As a postscript to the reproduced telegram, Sr. Menéndez
commented that neither President Díaz nor Governor Muñoz Aristegui took the
trouble to answer the Congress. At the time, five thousand Madero sympathizers
were in Mexican prisons.
From his own passing references to his movements following San Luis Potosí
and from the detailed accounts of several of his associates in that ominous period,
I learned that Felipe, before returning to Yucatán, went to Belize to supply himself
with arms for the struggle he anticipated. But during a brief stay at Champotón
on the Campeche Coast, he learned of the swift succession of Mexican events in
the last week of May 1911. The series of happenings—the most sensational per-
haps to occur up to that time in any single week of the nation’s modern history,
began on May 24, when Porfirio Díaz reluctantly submitted his resignation as
President. On May 26, Francisco de la Barra, a member of the Díaz cabinet and
former Ambassador to the United States, assumed the interim presidency. On
the same day, the insurgent leader, Madero, issued a manifesto calling upon the
citizenry to recognize the interim government of de la Barra, stating: ‘‘He is en-
tirely with us.’’ Finally, on May 31, amid shouts of ‘‘Death to the dictator,’’ the
eighty-two-year-old Díaz, ‘‘respecting the will of the people,’’ sailed away from
Veracruz into European exile, thus confirming the triumph of the Madero-led
Revolution.
Going at once to Mérida and then to Motul, Felipe placed himself at the head
of the partisans of Delio Moreno Cantón, who, for the second time, had been
nominated for Governor of the Centro Electoral Independiente. Opposing him
was Licenciado José María Pino Suárez, also an independent and editor of the lib-
eral paper El Peninsular. Pino Suárez sought the aid of Madero and tried through
various inducements to win Felipe over to his side. But aware that the trust and
hopes of the campesinos and obreros 13 had been wisely placed in their long-tested
defender, Felipe indignantly rejected the offers, preferring, as he said, to lose
with Moreno Cantón. Madero himself had suggested to Pino Suárez in a letter
dated August 15, 1909, that he supported Moreno Cantón for Governor in ‘‘ex-
change for the aid of all his elements for the National Anti-Reelectionist cam-
paign of the next year.’’ Felipe’s own unswerving faith in Moreno Cantón was
obviously shared by Madero, whose decision in the matter was prompted, how-
ever, by political expediency rather than personal conviction. As Stanley Robert
Ross observed in his biography, Francisco I. Madero: 14

Although he believed that the long-range objective would be served best by

the candidacy of Moreno Cantón, he revealed his respect for local wishes
228 Alma M. Reed

by withholding endorsement until after the state convention had been held.
The government was not concerned about the preference of the people.
Governor Enrique Muñoz Arístegui was reelected. Madero could then point
to events in Morelos, Sinaloa, and Yucatán as proof that Díaz would not
promote a truly democratic government by himself.

In answer to my question concerning the man who shared Madero’s tragic

fate, Felipe related that Pino Suárez had come as a youth from his native Tabasco
to Yucatán, where both as a lawyer and as a journalist he had defended Maya
workers on the haciendas and, ‘‘as a poet, had fanned the Revolutionary flame.’’
In June 1909 when Madero visited Mérida, entering the Yucatecan capital amid
a tremendous ovation, Pino Suárez was one of the six persons to welcome him
at the Progreso docks. Throughout the following year, up until the eve of the
‘‘rigged’’ elections, Pino Suárez organized Anti-Reelectionist groups in Tabasco,
Campeche, and Yucatán, but during the election period, both he and Delio Mo-
reno Cantón were forced into hiding. In the name of the Revolutionary Army,
Pino Suárez signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez on May 20, 1911, calling for the
resignations of President Díaz and Ramón Corral before the end of the month.
The Treaty also provided that Francisco León de la Barra, Secretary of Foreign
Relations, be named as President Pro Tem of the Republic and that he issue a call
for national elections. During the interim presidency of de la Barra, Pino Suárez
served as Yucatán’s Governor.
With Madero’s election on October 15, 1911, as Constitutional President, he
was able, with his immense influence as a national idol, to swing the nominating
convention of the Progressive Constitutional Party to the side of Pino Suárez, de-
spite the greater popularity of the opposition candidate, Dr. Francisco Vázquez
Gómez. A single eulogistic speech had tipped the indecisive balance between the
contenders to his favorite. The act was interpreted by many staunch Revolution-
aries of the period—and I gathered from Felipe’s tone in discussing the incident
that he was among them—as clear ‘‘imposition.’’ Their judgment has been sus-
tained by several eyewitness historians, including Jesús Silva Herzog, who con-
tend that Madero’s vigorous support of Pino Suárez brought about the alienation
of numerous sympathizers of the President-Elect and marked the beginning of
the decline of his bright political star.
A radiant bed of amapolas 15 alongside the railroad track interrupted my note
taking. At a passing glimpse of the vermilion blossoms glowing flamelike amid
the dull stretch of tawny shrub, Felipe exclaimed: ‘‘Mira, Almita, ¡qué preciosas!—
Look, Almita, how lovely! You must have a few of them!’’ I wondered how this
poetic impulse might be realized, but I soon learned when, stepping inside to the
far end of the parlor car, Felipe aroused the dozing Antonio and handed him an
peregrina 229

order for the engineer. In answer to the message a workman appeared, and Felipe
asked to have the train slowly backed up for a kilometer or two. When we reached
the poppies, he got out and gathered a bouquet of the flowers. The episode made
an enduring impression on me, for it dramatically illustrated a rational attitude
towards the Machine and its role as the servant rather than the master of man. It
also indicated a philosophy that held beauty to be an essential element of life. But
the all-pervading magic evoked by the lyrical interlude of the amapolas faded
abruptly when Felipe resumed his narrative. For it was then—and he was the first
to inform me—that I learned of the tragedy that overshadowed the years of his
young manhood.
‘‘It is not easy, Almita, for me to tell you,’’ he began, ‘‘something that sooner
or later you will have to know about me. Just a few years after my entrance into
public life, I killed a man. It was an act of self-defense. I was fired upon by a po-
litical enemy, one who had been paid by rich and powerful opponents to get rid
of me, but who for a long time had posed as a family friend. His name was Néstor
Arjonilla. And since you insist upon probing into the past of a Socialist leader, I
feel, in fairness, you should know all of the circumstances.’’
Felipe then related that he was on his way to the Motul railroad station on
July 16, 1911, to await the arrival of the newspapers for which he was local corre-
spondent and agent. Arjonilla approached him to complain about some severe
criticisms of the city officials that had appeared in the Mérida press. Felipe re-
plied that if the reports were signed by the correspondent, he had sent them.
Insults followed, and Arjonilla boasted that Motul was supporting José María
Pino Suárez instead of Felipe’s close friend and journalistic collaborator, Delio
Moreno Cantón. Explaining that the bitterness had erupted at the height of the
struggle between the two vice presidential candidates, Felipe said that Moreno
Cantón, with whom he had been associated in reform movements since 1906,
was the popular choice, while Pino Suárez had been imposed by Madero.
In the heat of the argument, Arjonilla struck with such violent force that Felipe
doubled under the surprise blow, and his assailant, taking advantage of a mo-
mentarily stunned condition, fired at close range, burning a hole in his coat
sleeve. ‘‘When I saw him preparing to fire a second time,’’ Felipe continued, ‘‘I
realized that to save my life, I must return the shot. Most certainly, I did not
aim to kill, merely to disarm my attacker. The bullet penetrated the left fore-
arm near the wrist, but unfortunately, it traveled in such a strange course that it
lodged in his heart.’’ Other details of Arjonilla’s unsuccessful attempt to eliminate
Felipe from the political scene were recorded in Motul’s annals and preserved
in the collective memory. Later, I was to learn the whole story and its aftermath
chiefly through Don Efraín Palma Castro. He had accompanied Felipe to the rail-
road station and had, in fact, warned him that there could be truth in the street
230 Alma M. Reed

rumors. Living in the Yucatán until his death in 1958, Don Efraín used to relate
how Felipe, after the fatal encounter, went immediately to his father’s store and
announced: ‘‘Papacito, sucedió lo que teniá que suceder: Creo que maté a Arjo-
nilla porque lo ví tendido en el Parque José María Campos—Dear Papa, what had
to happen, has happened: I believe that I have killed Arjonilla, for I saw him
stretched out in the Parque José María Campos.’’ Don Justiniano, who had also
previously warned his son against Arjonilla’s murderous intentions because of
certain incidents that had aroused his suspicions, now counseled him to go alone
to police headquarters and surrender to the authorities.
There was one detail, however, that Felipe himself recalled with the pride in-
variably reflected in his voice and eyes whenever he spoke of his parents. He said
that after he had given himself up and was held in the case, his father went to the
plaza where the shooting had occurred and where a large crowd had gathered
around Arjonilla’s body. Going among the people, Don Justiniano boldly ad-
dressed those whom he recognized as the instigators of the murder plot. In defi-
ant tones that everyone present could hear, he said: ‘‘If you have another bull, I
have more bullfighters. One is now a prisoner because of your iniquity, but I have
others who are ready. Just tell me who has been chosen as the next bull so that
I may give orders to another torero.’’ ‘‘There were not many men in those days,’’
Felipe observed, ‘‘who, like my father, dared to confront the wealthy landowners
and the slavish officials protected by ruthless Porfirista 16 power.’’
A tyrannical local cacique, controlled by the jefe político, sentenced Felipe to
a long prison term. But after serving more than a year instead of the seventy-
two hours decreed by law for homicide in self-defense, the verdict was reversed
because of ‘‘legal defects,’’ affirming that Felipe had killed in the act of saving his
own life. The testimony submitted at the rehearing revealed that the same jefe
político who had used his potent influence with the court also demanded that the
eyewitness, Sr. Palma Castro, make a declaration in favor in Arjonilla, describing
him as ‘‘an honest worker’’ and observing that ‘‘Felipe had the attack coming to
him.’’ But Sr. Palma Castro remained firm, stating that he could testify only to
the truth and to what he had seen.
Despite the court decision absolving Felipe of guilt, it was clear to me then, as
he recounted the details of the case and on later occasions, that Arjonilla’s death
at his hands remained an ineradicable cause of profound regret. His abhorrence
of violence that apparently grew with the years became at last so firmly rooted
that he even refused to take part in the killing of animals for sport. With the look
of one still shaken by a dread experience, he related how he had once joined a
group of friends on a western Yucatán safari when a huge antlered deer suddenly
appeared on the crest of a hill. He aimed, and the magnificent stag fell helpless
at his feet, its great brown eyes seeming to plead with him for mercy. The sight
peregrina 231

filled him with such deep remorse that he determined on the spot to make this
his last appearance as a huntsman.
A period of intensive physical and mental labor followed Felipe’s acquittal in
the Arjonilla case. Retiring to his father’s finca, ‘‘Akim Kek,’’ near the pueblo of
Uci, he chopped wood and engaged in other heavy farmwork. His free hours were
devoted to completing and editing his translation of the Mexican Constitution
into Mayan and to acquainting non-Spanish-speaking Indian groups with the
document’s guarantees of human and civil rights. As part of his defiant resump-
tion of his ‘‘field work,’’ he organized the hitherto voiceless masses, forming them
into coherent and articulate units in the various areas. In reality, it was his insis-
tence upon making thousands of Yucatecan slaves aware of their illegal bondage
that had in the first place aroused the hostility of the hacendados and led to the
hiring of Arjonilla for the carrying out of their sinister plans. For the most part,
Felipe’s narrative was confined to the main turning points along the rough and
perilous road to his future political leadership. At the time, I lacked sufficient
information to frame questions that might stir the memories of other dramatic
experiences in his twenties, among them a period of captivity in Mexico’s south-
eastern jungles.
It was not, in fact, until he became Governor—when as one of his first official
acts he invited General Mai, venerable high chief of the Quintana Roo Maya, to
visit Mérida as an honored state guest—that the story of his kidnapping more
than a decade earlier by the same cacique was generally known in Yucatán. For
motivating the warm welcome and the round of colorful festivities that greeted
the arrival of the long-haired, befeathered and ring-nosed aboriginal ruler—as
vividly described to me by Elvia and Maestra Rosa, both of whom assisted in
the royal reception program—was the following background: A few years after
his marriage, Felipe mysteriously disappeared, failing to return from one of his
occasional trips to Belize, where he traded farm implements, arms, and miscel-
laneous merchandise for chicle 17 produced by the natives of the interior. At the
time, he was in charge of the post office located in his own home, fronting on
the Motul Plaza. After weeks and months had passed without word from him,
Isabel was appointed as his substitute. The family had long since given up hope
of his return, even mourning him as dead, when suddenly, unannounced, and
to the joyous surprise of all, Felipe appeared. Heavier by several kilos than when
he left Motul, his darkly tanned skin contrasting curiously with his shoulder-
length blond hair and full beard, he explained that on his homeward journey he
had been captured and, in the depths of the Quintana Roo jungles, held prisoner
by a group of Maya Indians. There he was required to serve as their interpreter
and instructor and to organize their commerce in chicle, hardwood, and other
forest products. In numerous ways they demonstrated their absolute confidence
232 Alma M. Reed

that he would protect the tribal interests in dealing with the sharp Belize traders.
But while they trusted him completely in the conduct of their business affairs
and treated him with every consideration, he was closely guarded day and night
to prevent escape or communication with the outside world. Aided by his own
thorough knowledge of the Mayan language, he taught General Mai to speak
Spanish and gradually worked out a sound basis for barter and financial negotia-
tions. Then, one morning, amid expressions of profound gratitude from the chief
and the assembled tribesmen, Felipe was released and ceremoniously escorted
back to the edge of civilization. In discussing his long absence with members of
his family and his intimates, he did not seem to regret the ‘‘lost’’ period of his
captivity. He assured them that his months of sharing the daily lives of the people
of the tropical selva 18 had given him a firsthand knowledge of their good char-
acters and their serious problems that he could have gained in no other way. He
was deeply sorry, he said, to have caused everyone anxiety and fear for his safety,
but he felt that the strange adventure would serve him as an invaluable guide in
his plans for ending the isolation of millions of Mexico’s Indians.
The White City’s mingled mass of buildings assumed gracious contours in
the pallid moonlight, enveloping impartially Vice-Regal façades and nondescript
storefronts in a soft luminosity of shadow. Structural crudities and disharmonies
vanished, and even the tragic memories imbedded in the stones of Mérida’s old
churches and palaces were forgotten as Antonio drove us from the railroad sta-
tion to the open-air Nevería Colón, the popular ice cream parlor that faced the
Parque de las Armas.19 Despite the gaiety of the evening promenaders and the
bright street illumination, everything seemed to be part of a mystical backdrop
for the reenactment of situations summoned by Felipe’s narrative from the ever
receding realm of ‘‘that which was but can never cease having been.’’
During the three-hour ride from Dzitas, he had outlined determinative events
and activities of his stern apprenticeship, revealing to me unimagined facets of
his integral character. There was no need now for words as we lingered over our
guanábana sorbetes or just wonderingly gazed at each other, oblivious of on-
lookers who gathered, as they invariably did, whenever we appeared together in
a public place. Taking the longest and somewhat roundabout route across the
central plaza as he escorted me to the foyer of the Hotel Imperial, Felipe, in a
serious mood, suddenly paused and said: ‘‘This has been an important day in
my life, Almita. I want you to know that I no longer feel lonely . . . or alone!’’
I eluded his sincerity with a defensive impersonal reply. The day was also an
important one in my life, I assured him, since it had shown me how consistent and
courageous a Mexican youth could be in his struggles for a happier, saner world.
There were many other thoughts besides my awareness of his true greatness
as a leader that I longed to convey to him then. Yet I sadly realized that if these
peregrina 233

deeply personal things were ever to be said, it must be at some distant future
hour. How intensely at that moment I wanted him to know that he represented
for me all possible beautiful relationships of life between man and woman—
father, brother, friend, comrade, lover, teacher, guide, and symbol of the ultimate
realization of self !
But when he impulsively pressed both my hands to his heart as he said, ‘‘Hasta
mañana—until tomorrow,’’ I smothered the impulse to shatter the foolish re-
straints of my conformist code. Instead, I locked the unspoken words ‘‘Te quiero
—I love you’’ in the recesses of my consciousness, sharing them only with my
private diary later that night.
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 15. Flowers of Stone

A
visit to the Cave of Loltún some one hundred miles south of Mérida was
the most exciting event of the expedition’s final week in Yucatán. The
trip had been proposed by several of the scientific investigators not only
because Loltún—Mayan for ‘‘Cave of the Stone Flower’’—was regarded as an
outstanding natural wonder of southeastern Mexico, but also for its archaeologi-
cal possibilities, since it was said to conceal within its forbidding depths ceram-
ics of an important Maya cultural phase known as the Tzakol. Corresponding
to a period of the Old Empire, the Tzakol stage, according to Dr. Morley, wit-
nessed in the course of its Early, Middle, and Late phases (a.d. 317 to 633), major
architectural developments, including the appearance of stone monuments and
corbelled roof vaultings.
Felipe welcomed the suggestion of the scholars with enthusiasm but warned
them that the journey was not an easy one. He said that he had learned much
about the cave’s marvels from his own visits there, sometimes in the company
of his friend Don Eduardo, who was more familiar, perhaps, with Loltún’s geo-
logic structure and archaeology than anyone in Yucatán. As far back as 1888, the
intrepid explorer, then in his adventuresome youth, had conducted a Peabody
Museum party through the cavern’s hidden tunnels and chambers, recording
his observations and discoveries in the 1897 volume of the Harvard University
Memoirs.1
At Felipe’s suggestion and by group acclamation, Don Eduardo was named
Director General of the tour, and at dawn, three days before our departure for
New York, we started out from Mérida by railroad for a trip of some four and a
half hours. The route led due south for about fifty miles and at Nuna swerved
into the Low Hill, or Puuc, country, stretching for the same distance in a south-
westerly direction. We left the train at Oxkutzcab, where Felipe and his guests
were warmly greeted by the presidente municipal, the full membership of the
local Liga, and scores of schoolchildren, all to the accompaniment of spirited
music from a native stringed orchestra. At the station, the Feministas, attired
236 Alma M. Reed

for the occasion in colorful embroidered huipiles stood against a background

of their massed triangular red banners, behind long tables, dispensing hospi-
tality in the form of assorted fruits and cool beverages. After a few words of
official welcome and Felipe’s response, both spoken in Mayan, Oxkutzcab’s en-
tire population, preceded by musicians, escorted us to the several waiting plata-
formas—iron-wheeled flatcars drawn by mules over the railroad tracks. For the
comfort of the norteamericanos, mattresses had been very considerably laid on
the plataformas—vehicles ordinarily used to transport henequen from the ha-
ciendas along the line—and we all settled down for another hour’s ride in the
optimistic mood that envelops the start of a novel and exciting group adventure.
While grateful for small favors, the expeditionaries kept good-naturedly be-
moaning the fact that the mattresses were not ‘‘bigger and better and in more
generous supply,’’ as we were jounced and jolted over the bumpy roadbed beyond
Oxkutzcab. Occasionally, the monotony of the bleak, tawny landscape, stretch-
ing to the limit of vision in a phalanx of calcareous hills, was varied with a humble
thatch-roofed dwelling. And in one of the few planted areas in a narrow valley,
stood a small chapel, La Ermita, dedicated to the Virgin María del Pilar.
On the final lap of the journey we stopped at a weather-beaten house that
functioned as the government caretaker’s lodge, an inn for the accommodation
of the rare tourist who remained overnight in the region, and a station for the
guides. Here, we were met by a group of chicleros 2 from the state of Campeche
who, as a sort of ‘‘auxiliary corps,’’ were awaiting our arrival there.
Felipe warmly greeted Nacho, leader of the chiclero group, as an old compa-
ñero and introduced him to the archaeologists as ‘‘un buen colaborador.’’ 3 From
a chain around Nacho’s neck was suspended a small camera that had been given
to him, Felipe explained, by the Partido Socialista del Sureste for the purpose
of photographing unknown Maya ruins concealed in the lush vegetation of the
chicle-producing region, the dense Campeche forests. Other chicleros of proven
intelligence were also given little cameras. For the delivery of each negative of
an undiscovered or unexplored structure or site, they received a bonus of fifty
pesos. ‘‘This method of locating zones for future study,’’ Felipe said, ‘‘saves the
government time and money. And no less important, it creates for these poor
exploited Indians, whose brief annual working periods are filled with hazards,
deeper pride in the achievements of their Maya ancestors.’’ Felipe pointed out
to us why the chiclero’s life was so pathetically short. The fact was due not only
to the wild animals, reptiles, and poisonous insects of the jungle, but to falling
trees. Frequently the chicleros cut too deeply into the trunk of the tall sapodillas
that yield the white sap for the manufacture of chewing gum to supply a large
international market. When this happens, the tree topples to earth carrying with
it the chiclero to serious injury and often to death. He disclosed that the chicleros
peregrina 237

of Yucatán, Campeche, and Quintana Roo had recently organized themselves

into a sindicato 4 and that the Liga de Resistencia was preparing a series of de-
mands upon the employers that would protect them and their families against
industry-caused liability or fatal accident.
As Director General, Don Eduardo proved to be an authoritative, stimulating,
and entertaining guide, his quips and reminiscent yarns often making us forget
that we were being bounced over the rough roadbed in primitive conveyances.
As we approached Loltún’s deeply shadowed mouth, guarded by what appeared
to be a defensive barricade of heavy boulders, he related experiences of his first
research project in Yucatán. ‘‘Our purpose at that time,’’ he explained, ‘‘was to
sound the cave’s hitherto unknown depths and to photograph its moss-covered
walls where, in some remote era, man had carved strange figures and mystic sym-
bols.’’ Recalling his earliest impressions of Loltún, the explorer remarked: ‘‘It was
like entering an enormous tomb—truly like a place of the dead.’’
I could fully appreciate Don Eduardo’s descriptive powers only after I my-
self had descended by rugged stone steps to the damp, chalky floor. For here, if
anywhere on earth, could one visualize the netherworld, the dismal abode of dis-
embodied spirits, as pictured in the Stygian myths and the sixth book of Virgil’s
Aeneid. As I glanced into the black overhead spaces—which opened, Don Ed-
uardo assured us, upon still larger and more awesome chambers, pierced here
and there with patches of light that seemed as distinct as stars in the night sky—I
was filled with admiration for our scholarly guide’s vivid and accurate reporting.
Amid Loltún’s inescapable associations with death, the members of our party
moved very slowly along a narrow ledge in single file. The Indians, clad in white
cotton camisas, lighted our way with candle flares while another group, carrying
ropes and tackle for emergency use, formed a rear guard. The mingled sounds of
Maya, Spanish, and English voices echoed through the vast silence, to evoke the
eerie suggestion of the futile moaning of lost souls. Through long corridors that
connected grottoes that might have been planned for human habitation, Felipe
guided my steps until we emerged into a high-domed gallery hung with stalac-
tites of varying lengths and colors. Some of the more massive forms were a dull
gray or stained with a reddish brown—rust coated by centuries of dripping water.
Others, of delicate shape, were spotless white, their crystalline tips sparkling like
multifaceted brilliants in the glare of the candles.
In what at first seemed to be a prospect of unrelieved gloom, we discovered
other beautiful objects fashioned by Nature’s artistry. Leading us to a passage
between two of the chambers, Don Eduardo pointed out his personal selection
as ‘‘the prize exhibit in Loltún’s vast subterranean museum.’’ This object, as he
poetically described it, quoting from his memoirs, was ‘‘a cylindrical pedestal of
white stalmite of fluted walls and base, the rounded crown of the column resem-
238 Alma M. Reed

bling the tightly closed petals of a snow-white blossom. At its center is a cavity
like a chalice, half-shielded by a transparent limestone veil.’’ He explained that
while not a single drop entered the chalice from the cavern’s roof, it was always
filled with cold, clear water, which, as we could see, overflowed down the sides
of the pedestal. The curious phenomenon was the result of an interior reservoir
and a natural siphon within the walls.
The spectacle and the magnitude of the Cave of Loltún, believed to extend for
miles beneath Quintana Roo’s limestone cap, entirely captivated the imagination
of the Yucatalogists. Its fascination for the scientists, however, was centered in
the traces of ancient man and his handiwork for which the cavern served as a de-
positary. Don Eduardo had himself located numerous signs of prehistoric occu-
pation, notably, deep layers of broken pottery. There were also the haltunes—or
water troughs—hollowed out of boulders and placed where they received water
that percolated, drop by drop, through the roof openings. He also called our at-
tention to a broad band of hieroglyphs carved on a smooth section of vertical
wall near the entrance. Moss had grown over the inscriptions, but they were still
visible. The archaeologists interpreted certain rock carvings as the conventional
design for mummies but conceded that no proof had been found as yet to in-
dicate that America’s pre-Columbian races interred their dead in the Egyptian
manner.
Curiously enough, it was during this erudite discussion of ‘‘mummy’’ symbols
that we were abruptly plunged into total darkness. The several candle flares were
simultaneously extinguished, and at the moment no one knew why. In the con-
fusion, the obvious cause—a strong air current blowing through some overhead
opening—could not be immediately verified. The bolder of the Indian workers
ran to escape from some nameless terror; others stood as though petrified with
fear. Murmurs that grew in volume to loud wailing reverberated through the un-
charted spaces. Clearly, these Maya had accepted the sudden failure of the light
as a sign of impending disaster. Tales of similar panics at archaeological sites
where native laborers believed that their old deities still possess the power to de-
stroy those who desecrate their altars are plentiful in the travel books of all lands.
Most of the expeditionaries were probably thinking of incidents of this kind. My
own thoughts wandered off to the Valley of the Kings, at distant Luxor, where
the violators of Tut-Ankh-Amen’s tomb met with fated vengeance in fulfillment
of Pharaoh’s far-reaching curse.
The Indians of the Loltún region were known to hold the cave in superstitious
dread, and except when acting as guides to inspectors or tourists, they rarely visit
it and then only in groups. It is not illogical that in the mysterious blackout they
should read evil omens, a supernatural warning that their worst fears were about
to be realized. The inflammable situation threatened to leap completely out of
peregrina 239

control when someone shrieked: ‘‘Estamos perdidos—We are lost . . . We cannot

find the trail . . .’’ In the rising commotion, Don Eduardo’s slightly nasal voice,
pleading in Mayan for calmness, was barely audible. When the pleas went un-
heeded, Felipe assumed the Director General’s role, and with the shock effect of
an earthshaking blast, he thundered commands in his ancestral tongue. Almost
instantly the howling ceased and every Maya present stood at rigid attention.
Fortunately, Felipe was prepared with an electric flashlight. Wielding it as though
it were an imperial scepter, he swiftly passed its glare back and forth across the
faces of the demoralized ‘‘auxiliary corps,’’ while his stentorian voice continued
to resound with accelerated power and tempo. His commands were answered
with immediate action. The candle bearers came forward to relight their flares
from matches supplied by the expeditionaries. Nacho, with two of his men, went
off with Don Eduardo in search of our ‘‘lost trail.’’ I sensed an indefinable mys-
tical quality in the silent speed and precision with which all orders were carried
out. It occurred to me that implicit obedience of the Inditos might be less a result
of their fear of Felipe’s official authority than recognition of Maya tribal leader-
ship inherent in his royal Sotuta lineage. After some moments of uncomfortable
suspense, Nacho returned to announce that Don Eduardo had located the pas-
sage from which we had inadvertently strayed in the confusing maze of chambers
and tunnels.
When, to the infinite relief of the party’s most seasoned explorers, we finally
emerged into the radiant sunlight, the reinstated Director General assured us
that in all their long friendship he had never known Don Felipe to be in so ‘‘auto-
cratic’’ a mood. While the directives aimed at getting us out of the cave in the
shortest possible time were clear and to the point, Don Eduardo said that Felipe
used language so vehement and accompanied with such ‘‘awful imprecations of
all the gods of the Maya pantheon’’ that his words would hardly bear English
translation, especially ‘‘in the presence of ladies.’’ The Inditos were evidently
stunned by this unsuspected side of the personality of their kindly, generous-
hearted Big Brother ‘‘H’pil,’’ as they called him. They now realized he was capable,
when the occasion required, of giving a superb imitation of a formidable, out-
raged deity. The archaeologists, too, appeared startled by the display of imperi-
ous wrath from their mild-mannered, gracious host. Vera Barry later reported
that she overheard Dr. Merriam remark: ‘‘Governor Carrillo knows how to as-
sert his ancient kingship and his modern political sagacity—and both with con-
structive results. His is a potent brand, and they certainly feared it more than the
darkness.’’
During the return trip to Mérida, Felipe, with his usual composure and in
amiable mood, exchanged witty observations with his guests over the ‘‘rigors of
the journey, which, through circumstances out of my control and with the best
240 Alma M. Reed

intentions, I have caused you all to endure, because we lack roads and electrifi-
cation.’’ But some good, he assured us, would come out of the day’s discomfort
and perils, even though ‘‘the belated benefits might be of small consolation to
the present greatly inconvenienced company.’’ He explained that as a result of
our experiences, he had decided to project and to build at once a direct highway
to Loltún and to equip the grotto with special illumination. ‘‘When Nature has
staged such an extraordinary spectacle, it is our duty to make it easier and safer
for everyone to enjoy it.’’
 16. Civil Liberties

U
pon their return late at night from the strenuous and rather disturb-
ing Loltún trip, the expeditionaries unanimously decided to rearrange
the scheduled itinerary in favor of needed relaxation and the leisure for
eleventh-hour gift shopping in Mérida. The ‘‘free day’’ removed my preoccupa-
tion about how I was going to complete the frequently interrupted interview with
Felipe before we left Yucatán. I realized that many local matters, which had been
postponed because of the time and attention he had so generously devoted to
the entertainment of his American guests, must now demand his presence at the
Liga Central. Taking the initiative, I suggested that we continue our conversations
there during intervals between his official duties. This would positively be my last
chance to victimize him with ‘‘personal questions,’’ I assured him, although my
motives in again wishing to visit the Liga were not ‘‘purely journalistic.’’ I frankly
confessed to harboring ‘‘an ulterior aim and a suppressed desire.’’ The latter, I
explained, was to strengthen and to fix fast forever my cherished memory-image
of him ‘‘in action,’’ formed on the afternoon of our first meeting while I watched
him ministering with paternal solicitude to the appeals of his Indito suppliants.
At the professional level, I realized that my report on his public career lacked
an important chapter—an account of those years following his association with
Zapata and his return from Morelos to Yucatán, until after his elevation to the
governorship.
Felipe expressed hearty approval of the idea, finding, he said, ‘‘the romantic
motive involved especially appealing.’’ He continued, ‘‘It will save time and talk
that could be very profitably used for themes more worthy than my unhappy past
and perhaps, I venture to hope, for the discussion of our mutual happier future.’’
Besides, at the Liga, he added, there was a complete collection of the Partido So-
cialista publications, so that whatever information he neglected to give me about
his public record, I could find in the folletos.1
Alfonso called for me the next morning at eight, and when we arrived at the
Liga, the large upstairs assembly room was half-filled with Indian and Mestizo
242 Alma M. Reed

petitioners. Many others, I learned, had already come and gone, since, according
to his usual custom, Felipe was at his desk before seven o’clock. Smiling radi-
antly, he arose at our entrance and ushered me to a seat a step below the slightly
elevated platform he occupied. A table with a typewriter had been placed for my
use, and a number of brochures and pamphlets arranged according to subject
matter were at hand. Two or three of the booklets referred to the work of the
Congresses of Motul and Izamal. Others contained reports of state-sponsored
education, the feminist movement, birth control, temperance campaigns, prison
reform, land distribution, and general progressive legislation enacted by the So-
cialist Government. He excused himself momentarily from a group of maestros
and schoolboys, seeking a baseball field in their pueblo, to call my attention to the
more ‘‘useful’’ booklets for my immediate reading. Selecting a small volume from
the table, he recommended it as a ‘‘good synthesis,’’ the authoritative work of
his estimado compañero 2 Juan Rico, published only recently and titled La huelga
de junio.3 He said that it was clearly and concisely written, but whatever points
seemed obscure he would clarify for me later.
I read with the keenest interest Juan Rico’s outline of the proceedings of the
Workers Congresses of Motul and Izamal. As Felipe was careful to point out,
these two historic assemblies were the culminating events in a long succession of
efforts to achieve labor movement cohesion and solidarity. They were destined
also to define unequivocally the future course and the major content of his own
political action. Although the Leagues of Resistance, as he had related to me in
the story of his entrance into political life, had been organized years earlier in
various communities of the peninsula, it was not until 1917 that the different local
units were consolidated and their diverse programs for the attainment of a better
life for the bulk of Yucatán’s population coordinated. As the author of La huelga
de junio had reported, almost an entire year was spent in preparation, but on the
morning of March 29, 1918, there assembled, with poetic fitness, in Felipe’s native
city of Motul, 144 delegates to Mexico’s First Congress of Workers. Nominated
by Enrique Jiménez of the Liga of Izamal, Felipe was elected President. Named to
serve with him as members of the directorate were Bartolomé García of Mérida,
Vice President, and Gonzalo Ruz of Valladolid, Secretary.
Significantly, the first theme on the Congress agenda concerned the cultiva-
tion of products of the soil—not only henequen but, as Felipe was vigorously to
advocate for the rest of his days, the production of cereals, tubers, dye plants,
orchard fruits, berries, sugarcane, and all the plants grown in the home regions
of the individual delegates. From this first session resulted conclusions and deci-
sions that were to reverberate through the succeeding years in Mexico’s agrarian
movement and organizations of agricultural workers.
Among the accepted provisions at the Motul Congress was one calling for the
peregrina 243

rejection of routine agricultural methods that yield ‘‘a minimum result for the
maximum of labor.’’ Instead, scientific methods for intensive production were
urged in the cultivation of corn and other cereals that serve as the basis for general
nutrition. To facilitate this end, the Ligas were required to possess two hectares
of land as local experiment stations where the members could assist in the prac-
tice of intensive farming and learn how to avoid plant diseases. Conferences on
these subjects were to be called periodically. The Ligas were to be held respon-
sible for the training of the workers in the experimental field in order to achieve
the specified ends—an increase of farming lands, the renovation of soil, a saving
of energy, and a maximum of production and profit.
The Congress provided for education along economic lines through the Ligas,
which were to be converted into cooperativas de consumo—production coopera-
tives—so that ‘‘in this manner will be attained the goal envisioned by Socialism,
namely, that there may be ‘neither exploiters nor exploited.’ ’’ It was pointed out
that cooperativas de consumo had failed in most places and especially in the Yuca-
tán Peninsula for two well-known reasons: lack of administrative ability and, sec-
ondly, lack of honesty on the part of those entrusted with directing them. Head-
ing the committee drafting the proposals on cooperatives was one of Felipe’s
most reliable and devoted supporters, Sr. Franco Aguilar of Motul. Serving on
the same committee was Roberto Haberman, a Romanian Socialist known as a
‘‘professional atheist,’’ who had injected himself into Mexico’s Revolutionary af-
fairs, for the purpose, as many believed—and as Felipe ultimately realized—of
his personal aggrandizement. He was the confidant and international ‘‘legman’’
for Calles, through whom Felipe had met him, and was sometimes accepted as
a sincere Socialist and a loyal friend of the workers. I met him in Mexico City
before coming to Yucatán and distrusted him at sight, a first impression that was
later to be strengthened by revelations made to me in New York by Mr. Harry
Weinberg, the generous volunteer attorney who handled the defense of the im-
prisoned pacifist Ricardo Flores Magón, a cause for which large sums were con-
tributed by labor organizations and individuals in the United States and Mexico
and deposited with Haberman as treasurer.
In approving the plan of the formation of the Liga night schools, it was pointed
out to the Congress that ignorance of the larger part of the citizenry of the states
was not only a weakness but also a grave political and economic danger. The
complete slavery into which the worker had been plunged was vividly pictured.
Now that he had acquired, through severe struggle, his rights as a citizen, he
must take the next step, which was to seek adequate means to emerge from his
ignorance and make himself a conscious individual so that he would not again
be dragged along by the reactionary current that constantly tried to persecute
him. The educational provision stressed the urgency for the worker to acquire the
244 Alma M. Reed

rudiments of social organization and the economic sciences. The curriculum of

the night schools was clearly indicated as preeminently Socialist, ‘‘discarding all
that foments the prejudice encountered in the books and the living voice of offi-
cial teachers that until now have come to be a hindrance and an obstacle for the
recovery of the proletariat.’’ A stated aim was ‘‘to make known to the people that
political liberty is a myth if it does not rest upon economic liberty.’’ Another aim
was to awaken, ‘‘under a simple regimen, the soul of adults to the truth, making
them aware of their oppressors.’’ The object of the night school was defined as
‘‘not primarily to teach the workers to read but rather to show them how to draw
conclusions from their reading as to their social condition.’’
The resolutions adopted by the committee stipulated that the ‘‘adult night
schools should confront with the truth all the errors that materially and morally
have enslaved the people.’’ The recommended curriculum consisted of the Span-
ish language, arithmetic, natural sciences, and ‘‘ideas that would lead to the col-
lective rehabilitation.’’
When discussions arose as to the best ways of forming treasuries to support
schools, Felipe, who, with Agustín Franco and Esteban Andrade, was a member
of the investigating committee, suggested that ‘‘a good and safe rule was to be
guided by experience.’’ In this regard, he stated that he could point with pride
to the campesinos of Espita, who, in order to collect funds for their association,
decided to cultivate one thousand mecates 4 of land. ‘‘I believe,’’ he said, ‘‘that if
the members of the other Ligas would do likewise, they would very soon possess
the common fund they aim to create. We should have in mind that the treasuries
of the Ligas are the pooled result of efforts of all the workers and thus, as each
Liga member regularly contributes five or ten pesos for the formation of a com-
mon fund, we should be disposed to give four or five hours of work each month,
dedicating the entire product to the enrichment of the treasuries. This method
is not only more representative but can improve the operations.’’
In addition to the nine scheduled themes considered at the Motul Congress,
the delegates at the closing session discussed ideas related to the collective wel-
fare. Among them were the suppression of the sale of intoxicating liquors; the
use of marijuana, which Florencio Ávila Castillo declared was spreading ‘‘like a
plague’’; and other poisonous drugs. One of the more controversial subjects in-
formally debated was the prohibition of religious worship, a proposal made by
the brilliant and fiery Elena Torres, later a national feminist leader of the Mexican
capital. When the delegate, Ávila Castillo, reminded compañera Torres that the
general Constitution of the Republic granted liberty of worship, she answered:
‘‘It is true that we cannot act contrary to the Constitution, but I believe that it is
possible to eliminate ostentatious worship. It would be easy for the government
to eliminate, for instance, the clanging of the church bells, calling people to mass
and to other religious ceremonies. Since they are Catholics, they should attend
peregrina 245

ceremonies quietly in the same way as Protestants and those belonging to other
religions observe their respective rituals.’’
Before his election as Constitutional Governor, Felipe had twice served as
Chief Executive of the State of Yucatán. Both periods occurred during the in-
cumbency of his close friend and Socialist collaborator Governor Carlos Castro
Morales, head of the Railroad Workers’ Syndicate of Motul. The first interim
period lasted only four days, between September 5 and 9, 1918, while Sr. Castro
Morales was in Mexico City. It has been claimed that the Governor carried back
with him to Mérida an order from Carranza to expel Felipe from the country
because of his radical pro-labor activities. In any case, such an order could not
have come as too severe a blow or much of a hardship, since Felipe had long de-
sired to visit the United States. His object was to contact Socialists there and to
let them know of the Party’s achievements in Yucatán. A deeper reason, perhaps,
and one that he had mentioned to me when I asked him about this particular
trip, was his need to rid himself of a sense of loneliness and isolation and to share
in a community of interests with his spiritual brothers. He longed to experience,
he said, the comforting assurance that the cause he had so ardently espoused was
a universal one in which all men could join in fraternal cooperation, working
together for a world free from aggressive wars, rivalry for power, and riches at
the expense of the ‘‘inarticulate ones.’’ On this and other occasions when Felipe
discussed Socialism, I inevitably associated his personal concept of the politi-
cal system with the ‘‘gentle’’ type as envisioned by the young Clement Attlee,5
who left his home of wealth and ease to live down in London’s Limehouse slums,
from which he wrote his compassionate poems, among them my favorite, which
begins, ‘‘How shall they work tomorrow, who have no bread today?’’
But voluntarily or otherwise, shortly before the close of World War I, with
the Armistice of November 11, 1918, Felipe found himself in Manhattan. His ar-
rival there coincided with the terroristic climax of one of the most repressive
developments in recent American history—the infamous ‘‘Palmer Raids.’’ 6
Only vague references or no mention at all of Felipe’s unscheduled move ap-
peared in the little books and pamphlets stacked on my typewriter desk at the
Liga Central. But his own reminiscences when I questioned him about the par-
ticular trip and my later conversations in Mexico City with Sr. Jorge Rodríguez,
who had acted as English interpreter throughout the New York visit, supply many
colorful, often amusing details. Felipe’s dramatic experiences in the Great City
not only illumine facets of his magnetic personality but vividly highlight the
acute fear and suspicion that gripped the United States immediately after the end
of the international conflict, the rigid restrictions that mocked Constitutional
guarantees of privacy and individual liberty, and foreshadowed the reactionary
McCarthy-McCarran legislation.
At the time, Sr. Rodríguez was secretary to Dr. Álvaro Torre Díaz, general
246 Alma M. Reed

manager of the Comisión Reguladora del Mercado de Henequén,7 with offices on

120 Broadway. As a member of the local Chamber of Deputies, a former interim
Governor, and the president of the state’s leading political party, Felipe was al-
ready regarded as Yucatán’s most prominent and influential citizen and, accord-
ingly, was shown the attentions due to his status by the state-controlled henequen
interests. Sr. Rodríguez, who was delegated to act not only as interpreter but as
Felipe’s full-time guide, recalls that the New York atmosphere of the period was
charged with the hostility bred of suppression, the ever-tightening censorship
of the spoken and printed word arousing strong resentment among intellectuals
and progressive, spirited youth. But the incipient hope of a new order was also
in ferment. It was a hope sharpened by the success of the Russian Revolution,
the vain efforts to thwart its advance by the international capitalism working
through England and Vladivostok, despite such measures as the devaluation of
the Russian currency, nonrecognition, and complete diplomatic ostracism.
Up until that year, the Socialist ideal had not taken political root in any part
of the world except Mexico. In New York, Party members were even forbid-
den to carry the customary red cards, and the organizations were compelled to
change them to pink. Probably unaware of the true situation, Felipe spoke freely
about the advantage of Socialism and predicted its ultimate triumph. He ex-
pressed great eagerness to meet with the various groups because he felt that he
had something encouraging to tell them, considering himself the bearer of wel-
come news about what the Party had accomplished in Yucatán. When he finally
met the leaders of the American movement, they all voiced tremendous sur-
prise at the Yucatecan achievements—the divorce laws, labor code, birth control
clinics, feminist ‘‘liberation,’’ distribution of lands to the workers and the well-
organized Ligas de Resistencia. In their enthusiasm, they at once invited him to
lecture at different centers, among them, the Rand School of Social Science. In
his direct, persuasive manner, Felipe, speaking in Spanish, described the Social-
ist gains, and judging from the riotous applause he evoked, his message evidently
lost little of its emotional impact through the expert translation of Sr. Rodríguez.
In discussing the transformation that had taken place in Yucatán in the short
space of a few years, he told how, during the Díaz regime, men and women were
enslaved on the haciendas and publicly whipped for minor infractions at the
whim of the mayordomos. He described, too, the changes in the attitude of entire
populations, the new dignity and self-assurance the people had acquired through
cooperative ownership of lands by those who worked on them, with resulting
material progress throughout the state. Sr. Rodríguez spoke of Felipe’s recep-
tion everywhere as ‘‘nothing short of sensational,’’ stating that he was a ‘‘real
hero’’ to his audience, for he showed them what miracles Socialism was capable
of performing.
peregrina 247

On the morning following a ‘‘monster mass meeting’’ in the Bronx Theatre,

the New York daily World reported that Felipe had caused so much excitement
that people were leaning out of their windows on either side of the street to see
what the ‘‘big uproar’’ was about.
Felipe himself had once unconsciously indicated to me that his appearances
at the Rand School, the Bronx Theatre, and other Manhattan centers must have
indeed caused a ‘‘big uproar,’’ when he casually remarked: ‘‘The next time I go
to your country, Almita, I shall take with me many handkerchiefs and a supply
of neckties.’’
‘‘And why all the excess baggage?’’ I asked.
‘‘Porque me robaron . . . a pedacitos . . . como recuerdos—Because they robbed
me of them and tore off little pieces for souvenirs.’’
But while Felipe’s New York reception demonstrated popular admiration for
the man and his cause, both were considered to be highly suspect and even dan-
gerous in the eyes of the dozen or more policemen who kept armed vigil outside
the various meeting halls where Felipe lectured. Ever at his side, Sr. Rodríguez
was asked as they emerged from the Bronx Theatre: ‘‘Are you Bolsheviks?’’
‘‘No, we are Mexicans . . . If you want to find out about us go to the Reguladora
offices. We have eight lawyers there to answer your questions.’’
The impressive Lower Broadway address and the size of the Reguladora legal
staff had their calming effect on the guardians of public safety, and the two
‘‘aliens’’ were permitted to depart by taxi instead of the ‘‘paddy wagon.’’ Gradu-
ally, as Sr. Rodríguez recalled, Felipe became aware of the risks he was running
and toward the end of his stay took care to assure his audiences that the North
American concept of Mexico was a myth.
Felipe was particularly anxious to meet Morris Hillquit, the brilliant Russian-
born Socialist lawyer and author who grew up in Manhattan’s East Side. Hillquit
was confined to a tuberculosis sanitarium on Lake Saranac, which, with the en-
tire northern part of the state, was under the ice and heavy snows of a very severe
winter. But, with Sr. Rodríguez, Felipe visited the staunch veteran of many labor
battles, who in the period between 1904 and 1933, the year of his death, was Social-
ism’s most authoritative spokesman at international conferences. For an entire
afternoon, Sr. Rodríguez relates, the two leaders held a heartwarming session,
exchanging the advances made by the workers through the Socialist Government
in Yucatán. A week later, on the date he was scheduled to leave for Yucatán, Felipe
went to the Ward Line pier, accompanied by his faithful interpreter. But before
the sailing hour, complications and delays were encountered at the U.S. Customs
office, in line with the rigid surveillance of the ‘‘comings and goings of all for-
eigners,’’ imposed by Attorney General Mitchell A. Palmer. Brusquely shoved to
one side by two detectives, Felipe and Sr. Rodríguez were informed theirs was
248 Alma M. Reed

‘‘a federal case.’’ After pulling out all the drawers of Felipe’s wardrobe trunk, the
‘‘Palmer raiders’’ announced in triumphal tones they had found what they were
‘‘looking for.’’ The ‘‘revelation’’ consisted of a thousand small bright red satin
banners stamped in gold with the words ‘‘Liga de Resistencia—Partido Socialista
del Sureste.’’ Felipe had ordered them made to his design at a badge-and-emblem
shop and was proudly taking them back to Yucatán for distribution among the
Ligas as a souvenir of his New York trip. With the vainglorious strut of heroes
who have made some momentous discovery in the nick of time to save the nation
from catastrophe, the investigators cleared a space on the wharf and carefully laid
out the little red banners in rows, for all the world to behold. Then, while a guard
stood by the ‘‘incriminating exhibits of Mexican subversion,’’ Felipe was taken
inside and searched for further evidence of the ‘‘plot’’ conceived in the rampant
imagination of the two enterprising sleuths.
There was some blundering talk about holding him, but again Sr. Rodríguez
came to the rescue. He explained Felipe’s official position, hinting at the ‘‘Wash-
ington influence’’ of the powerful Reguladora with which he himself was asso-
ciated and at the Commission’s eight-manned legal battery ready to come to his
countryman’s defense. Just a minute before the liner’s gangplank was lifted, the
detectives decided to allow Felipe to go aboard with a practically empty trunk.
Meanwhile, the thousand gilt-stamped scarlet banners were carried by the winds
in all directions, drifting like a swirling shower of leaves out to sea or back to-
wards the multimillion-dollar towers of Wall Street. With a typical Mexican sense
of the dramatic, Sr. Rodríguez assured me that he would not be at all surprised if
some of the ‘‘evidence’’ had not finally been borne over the bay as far as Bedloe’s
Island, perhaps to become impaled on the bronze tongues of the flame leaping
from freedom’s torch, upraised by the Goddess of Liberty.
 17. Social Justice

A
t three o’clock on the sultry afternoon, Felipe, appearing a trifle weary but
cheerful of mood and voice announced that ‘‘man must eat and, inciden-
tally, las mujeres—the ladies.’’ Clearing his desk, he added that both of
us had fully earned ‘‘our daily bread.’’ I agreed that he, at least, was fully entitled,
by any labor code, to take time out from exacting demands of the presidency
of the Partido Socialista del Sureste for a leisurely comida and that, speaking
for myself, I was entirely satisfied with my morning’s work. Between numerous
phone calls, for several hours, he had been continuously hearing and disposing
of petitions, requests, and applications covering a wide range of human needs
and desires—and had been doing so even before my arrival at the Liga—always
with patience and courtesy. To one of my own countrymen, a melancholy-eyed
Spanish-speaking professor from Chicago, he had given detailed information
on the proposed state divorce law as it would affect foreigners. For a Montreal
merchant, he had clarified complicated data on henequen shipments to Canada.
For scores of native petitioners—most of them Inditos in white cotton camisas
and huaraches, he had explained how they must go about the organization of
local Ligas, agrarian committees, experimental farms, and adult evening classes.
With personally signed recommendations, he had arranged on the spot for Maya
mothers in embroidered huipiles and dark rebozos to enroll children of unusual
aptitudes in special technical schools where they might learn trades and profes-
sions. Other mothers who complained to him—speaking with greater frankness
than they might have shown to their parochial ‘‘father confessors’’—that they
were already overburdened with large families, he directed to the newly opened
birth control clinics.
Amid the vestiges of faded Porfiriana 1 elegance, I dined with Felipe at the Gran
Hotel where the owner, Sr. Rafael Gamboa, a veteran Socialist crusader affection-
ately known as Ravechol, personally supervised the service of a typically Motu-
leña comida, specially prepared, he announced, in honor of ‘‘el Sr. Gobernador
y la encantadora periodista Almita—the Governor and the charming journalist
250 Alma M. Reed

Almita.’’ My efforts to divert our table conversation back to the issues presented
in Juan Rico’s reports on the Workers Congresses met with swift defeat. Gently,
but resolutely thwarting what he called my ‘‘inveterate journalistic preoccupa-
tions,’’ Felipe assured me there would be plenty of time on the long voyage to
New York to study carefully all the little informative folletos that Antonio had
collected at the Liga and delivered to my Hotel Imperial suite. ‘‘At the moment,’’
he insisted, ‘‘I’m less interested in past events, however noble they may be, than
in future plans—beginning with a delightful plan for this very evening, unfortu-
nately your last one among us, at least for a while.’’
He proposed that we again pay a visit to Ricardo Palmerín to find out how the
music for ‘‘Peregrina’’ was progressing. Accompanied by Don Luis, he would call
for me around nine o’clock, immediately after his scheduled conference with the
Carnegie archaeologists to conclude arrangements for the Chichén Itzá permit.
No plan for the evening could have been more appealing, since I was eager to
hear the melody to which my lovely song would be sung before I left Yucatán.
For several days I had been considering the idea of writing at some future date
Felipe’s biography, not as a magazine article but as a well-documented book.
From what I already knew and sensed about his ideological position, social atti-
tudes, political program, and aims, I believed that his life story held significance
for the reader not only in Mexico but everywhere. And as I worked on the hotel
terrace through the cool sunset hours before our meeting appointment, taking
notes and organizing the voluminous material that defined the major achieve-
ments of his public career up to that time, the idea of the biography assumed
decisive form. One could hardly read the record without becoming aware of the
universal implications of Felipe’s undeviating redeemer’s role or his consistent
vigilance for the worldwide welfare of the common man.
The most desultory statistical survey of Felipe’s efforts and accomplishments
demonstrated his total dedication to fundamental causes, all designed to lift hu-
manity to higher levels of collective thought and action. It was evident, at least,
that he had lost no opportunity to contribute to the welfare of the state, the na-
tion, and humanity as a whole throughout the years of his political maturity. He
achieved major reforms even during periods of delegated authority.
Prior to his election as Constitutional Governor, Felipe had twice been called
upon to serve as the state’s Chief Executive. On both occasions, Don Carlos
Castro Morales, Socialist railroad worker and labor organizer, was the incum-
bent. The first period of Felipe’s occupancy of the gubernatorial office lasted only
four days, from September 5 to 9, 1918. Between November 11 and December 24
of the same year, Felipe, the presiding deputy of the local congress, was Acting
Governor during a prolonged visit of Sr. Castro Morales to the national capital.
It was in this later pro tempore forty-one-day period, at the Twenty-fifth Consti-
peregrina 251

tutional Congress, that on December 16 he promulgated one of Mexico’s earliest

regulations of a radical character dealing with labor. Known as the Código de
Trabajo del Estado de Yucatán,2 it prohibited all work on Sunday in commercial
houses, factories, and shops and established an eight-hour maximum and a six-
hour ordinary working day. Differing from the 1916 Código Laboral 3 of General
Alvarado, Felipe’s Código de Trabajo authorized strikes and recognized the right
of free association or union organization for collective bargaining.
Often referred to as the ‘‘most advanced Socialist legislation on earth,’’ the
Código de Trabajo is based on the principles that work is free to all, that every-
one should work and live on the proceeds of such labor, and that no one has the
right to exploit the workers. The text adds that all workers have the right to unite
in defense of their personal and common interests, forming Ligas de Resistencia
or other similar associations.
The code also insists that contracts between the employer, known as the pa-
trón, and the workers, designated as obreros, must be in writing and that no con-
tract is valid for more than a year. When prices of common necessities rise or
when, for whatever reason, the cost of living increases, the worker may demand
a revision of his wages. A Central Conciliation and Arbitrations Board is autho-
rized to fix a percentage of the profits of the business in which the worker will
at all times share. All disputes between employer and employee must be referred
to this Board, whose decisions will be final.
The Código recognizes the validity of contracts made between workers of
either sex of eighteen years or more, but persons between the ages of fifteen and
eighteen must secure the consent of their parents or guardians or, failing these,
of the mayor of the town in which they live. The usual considerations under
which a contract between employer and worker is made are recognized, but a
special paragraph provides that if the employer should cease to operate his busi-
ness without justifiable cause, the government may step in and run it in order
‘‘to avoid losses to the worker.’’
Many of the measures since adopted by the most advanced social security sys-
tems in the United States and elsewhere are contained in Felipe’s Labor Code.
Among them are full pay for the worker in case of accident or illness contracted
on the job and half pay during illnesses directly traceable to his employment. In
the case of death by accident or illness contracted at work, if in the employ of
his patrón for more than one year, he will be paid his full salary during illness. In
case of death, his funeral expenses will be paid, and his next of kin will receive
a year’s salary.
Stipulations regulating the employment of women require that an employee
about to become a mother rest at home two months prior to and two months
immediately following her confinement. Upon her return to work, she shall have
252 Alma M. Reed

two periods of an hour each, free from work, in which to nurse her child. Mini-
mum salaries were fixed by the local Ligas under direction of the Liga Central in
Mérida. Double pay was required for all extra work.
As a member of the Federal Chamber of Deputies, to which he was elected in
July 1919, Felipe fought at the national level for the right of labor organizations
to strike. His initiative as reported in the Diario Oficial 4 of September 18 of the
same year (no. 15, page 12) is as follows:

Citizen Felipe Carrillo, president of the Ligas de Resistencia of the Partido

Socialista de Yucatán, sends from the city of Mérida a telegram in which, in
the aforementioned Ligas, he asks this Honorable Cámara 5 not to approve
the amendments to Article 123 of the Constitution calling for the restriction
of the right to strike and the substitution of Arbitration Tribunals formed
by a Special Tribunal of the Statute Labor Law (Fuero del Trabajo) with
irrevocable decisions.
The undersigned have examined the said petition and, finding it accord-
ing to legal regulations, feel honored to submit to the deliberations of this
Honorable Cámara the following economic resolution (acuerdo económico):
The telegram of Citizen F. Carrillo should be delivered to the united
commissions of Labor and Previsión Social.6
Sala de comisiones. Cámara de Diputados 7 . . . Sept. 17, 1919. Signatures:
Manuel Andrade, José P. Saldaña.
The resolution was put to discussion but no one was willing to discuss it.
When submitted to a vote, it was approved.

In opposition to the presidential candidacy of Ingeniero Ignacio Bonillas, the

leaders of the Partido Laborista 8 under the slogan of ‘‘For Justice and Democ-
racy’’ held their first convention in Zacatecas, where the then stalwart ‘‘Obrego-
nista’’ 9 General Enrique Estrada occupied the Governor’s Palace. Felipe was
among the forty-four delegates who met at the Calderón Theater in Zacate-
cas City early in March 1920. The group included the Generals J. D. Ramírez
Garrido, Jesús M. Garza, Francisco R. Serrano, Licenciado Emilio Portes Gil, and
Luis N. Morones, who was President of the CROM, and members of its Central
Committee.
Meanwhile the Socialist cause in Yucatán and those who led and supported it
were destined to pass through a prolonged reign of terror before a Second Con-
gress of Workers could assemble in conformity with the schedule fixed at Mo-
tul. Socialist hostility to the imposition by Venustiano Carranza of the unpopu-
lar Ingeniero Ignacio Bonillas as his successor to the presidency of the Republic
brought on a persecution of the ‘‘dissidents,’’ which did not end until late 1920.
peregrina 253

Colonel Isaías Zamarripa, Chief of Operations, was given a free hand by Car-
ranza to crush the opposition, and he burned and killed with barbaric ferocity.
The agitation became so acute and the disorder so general that Governor Castro
Morales went to the capital to intercede with the President and refused to re-
turn to Mérida while Zamarripa continued his orgy of violence. Hundreds were
killed, their homes destroyed. The Ligas were broken up, the buildings burned,
and their meager, laboriously accumulated funds confiscated.
Felipe and the more prominent Socialist leaders barely escaped with their
lives; several of them were not so fortunate. Only through the intervention of
General Obregón, who became President on December 1, 1920, were the murders
and the destruction halted. At the height of the Zamarripa persecutions, insti-
gated and abetted by reactionaries who paraded under the name of ‘‘Liberals,’’
Doña Adela called together her sons and said to them: ‘‘Do not go out. Do not
walk along the streets, exposing yourselves to the savagery of the Liberals. But
if you are ever unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, kill, or defend your-
selves until they kill you. I would rather have you dead than try to mend your
broken backs.’’
The maternal admonition of this extraordinary Yucatecan woman was spo-
ken in the great ancient tradition of the valorous autochthonous American race.
Native chroniclers tell us that when a warrior youth left his home for battle, his
mother, standing at the door of their dwelling, would, by age-old custom, deliver
to him his shield with these words of farewell: ‘‘Return to me with it—or on it!’’
The elections of July 1921, designating Felipe, candidate of the Partido Socia-
lista, as Governor of Yucatán for a term of four years took place, according to
all reports and to quote the local press, ‘‘with notable animation, but without
sanguinary clashes.’’ By an overwhelming margin Felipe emerged as the popular
choice in what Dr. Ernest R. Gruening, an on-the-ground witness, describes as
‘‘one of the first thoroughly square elections ever held in Mexico.’’ Forced for the
first time to resort to democratic methods, the hacendados complained that their
candidate was not getting a fair hearing from the Indians. Felipe, as the historian-
statesman relates, at once hired a special train at his own expense, turned it over
to his opponent, and issued a proclamation urging all to give his rival ‘‘the fullest
attention.’’ The election results showed 60,765 votes for Felipe against 4,048 for
the candidate of the hacendados and 621 for a third candidate. The entire Socialist
legislature of fifteen deputies was likewise elected.
In conformity with Article 49 of the Constitution of Yucatán, the Governor-
Elect, upon taking the oath of office, was required to pronounce certain words
in connection with the inaugural act. At the special session of the State Con-
gress held at ten o’clock on the morning of February 1, 1922, Deputy Ariosto
Castellanos Cárdenas, who, as President of the Congress, administered the oath,
254 Alma M. Reed

presented Felipe with the prescribed text, which he read, with the addition of a
few significant words of his own. After promising ‘‘to guard and have guarded
the political Constitution of the United States of Mexico, the particular state of
Yucatán, and the laws that emanate from them and loyally and patriotically to
discharge the office of Governor, which the people have conferred upon me, seek-
ing in all welfare and prosperity of the Union and of the State,’’ he concluded
with another promise—one that did not appear in the formal oath. To the amaze-
ment and great satisfaction of all present, he added: ‘‘I equally promise to fulfill
and have fulfilled the principles postulated at the Congresses of Workers of Mo-
tul and Izamal, and if I do not do so, may the Nation and the State take action
against me.’’
Then, from the balcony of the Government Palace, Felipe, speaking in Mayan,
addressed the enormous throng as follows:

Compañeros:
For all workers this should be a day of rejoicing and of deep satisfaction,
because today there has been realized one of the great dreams of the Partido
Socialista del Sureste. Because here are united all true Socialists who have
come to celebrate the triumph of our cause, the cause for which we have so
long struggled. In our hearts, we should feel profound gratitude, because
today we have ended the era of Socialist propaganda and the era of work be-
gins, and because from today we can make a start at realizing that for which
so long a time our enemies have impeded; because, from today, we shall
give ourselves no rest in our eagerness to do something in direct benefit of
the laboring majority.
Compañeros:
The moment has arrived to demonstrate to the Señores 10 that we know
how to govern, that we, not they, are the builders. It is necessary that we tell
them that without workers this sumptuous cathedral would not exist; that
without the workers this palace would not exist; and without the workers
we would not have this lovely plaza where all may come for rest and to en-
joy the aroma of flowers. And finally, we must remind them that without
the workers would not exist the railroads, the automobiles, the carriages; in
short, without the worker, nothing that is useful to man would exist.
It is necessary also that we tell the ‘‘all-powerful’’ ones that we are fully
aware that labor came before capital; we must make them understand that
those who produce everything have the right to possess all that exists,
instead of the old way, where the minority always absorbed everything
without exerting the least effort.
Now that the glorious and legitimate triumph of the Partido Socialista
peregrina 255

del Sureste has been achieved, now that the people have elected me to gov-
ern them, we shall show to these Señores that we are not thieves or assassins
as they have always claimed, that we do not come to this palace to rob the
public funds, that we are not here to deceive the workers, but that we are
here resolved to give them true tranquility and authentic well-being.
Compañeros:
The government has much before it, and it is necessary to see that our
plans materialize. Roads must be opened for the traffic of all kinds of ve-
hicles. Many schools must be founded. How many schools must be estab-
lished so that your children and yourselves learn to read and write and,
above all, that you learn Spanish and can give validity to all your rights! All
the wilderness of Yucatán remains to be planted. We shall plant as much
as we can. We shall plant henequen that produces great wealth so that this
wealth may reach the hands of the people who have the indisputable right
to enjoy it.
I repeat, the land belongs to you . . . You were born here, and here you
grew up; here you have passed your lives, bent over in the fields, cutting
sisal leaves for the owner, who has possessed himself of the soil.
But you will retrieve your rights in accordance with the new laws, which
recognize these legitimate rights. And since the land belongs to you, and
since you are the ones who work it, the crops, the production, naturally,
also belong to you.
All this, compañeros, you know, and if you have not realized until today
that everything belongs to the proletariat, it is because you yourselves
have contributed to the delay, by wasting your time in the saloons and in
sleeping.
You will be directly responsible for not learning to read and write, for not
knowing the Constitution of the Republic and of the State, for not making
the men you elevate to public office fulfill their obligations. You must de-
mand of these same officials that they carry out the agreements reached in
the Congresses of Motul and of Izamal.

Felipe personally commented on the tranquility and order of the elections in

a letter written on the stationery of the Liga Central to General Francisco J. Mú-
jica, Governor of Michoacán, under date of November 21, 1921, and reading as
follows:

My very distinguished and dear friend:

The Partido Socialista del Sureste won the last elections held in the
state and, in the course of the democratic decision, gave proofs of laudable
256 Alma M. Reed

patriotism and political solidarity. There were no scandals or sanguinary

clashes. The serenity that dominated in the contest brings great irritation
to the reactionaries—those who do not know against whom to fire their
cannons of insult and falsehood. Scarcely were the elections over, relieving
me of ‘‘politics,’’ than I placed my thoughts at a higher level, intensified my
efforts in the good direction of the social struggle, and directed to all the
Socialists the circular that I herewith enclose, that you may study it and tell
me what you think about it since, for me, your judgment is of real value,
having as I do that highest concept of your culture and talent. Your firm-
ness in sustaining radical ideals in this rich land, but in which still survive
memories of Munguía 11 to obscure the emblem of Ocampo,12 is a source of
pride for all your co-religionists. It is necessary to struggle constantly with-
out losing heart on the journey. With my profound wishes for your personal
happiness, and once more recalling my affection, I remain your friend,
Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

A factor in the enforced postponement of the Izamal Congress had been the
burning, at Zamarripa’s order, of the archives of the Liga Central. The delegates,
however, finally convened in the Teatro Izamal on August 15, 1921, under the
chairmanship of Governor-Elect Felipe Carrillo Puerto. The Congress agenda
consisted of fourteen points, most of them concerned with determining ade-
quate ways and means for raising the workers’ living standard, achieving higher
social and cultural levels for the masses, and measures for financing the edu-
cational and other communal projects of the Ligas. Typical of the conclusions
reached by the Congress were those of ‘‘Theme Five,’’ dealing with civic ideals,
reported as follows by the committee over which Dr. Louis Torregrosso presided:
‘‘Virtue, education, union, economy, hygiene, love, respect for woman, order,
sacrifice, and courage are the complex of precepts that, engraved in the minds of
the worker, will lead to the road of liberation for which we are struggling.’’
Cultural matters were considered in ‘‘Theme Nine,’’ calling for the support
and patronage of the fine arts, especially music, singing, dance, and cinema as
‘‘molders of the generous spirit of the masses, which must be activated.’’
‘‘Theme Thirteen,’’ concerning social questions, exhorted the Ligas de Resis-
tencia to support with enthusiasm and true love the Feminist Leagues, whose
noble and elevated principles would lead to the integral emancipation of woman:
‘‘With emancipation will emerge wives and mothers who, within the spirit of lib-
erty and justice, will shape the incipient consciousness of the children that have
been entrusted to them and, later, to the well-performed labor of the teachers.’’
In its long-range effect on the course of Mexico’s political future, the most
significant proposal, perhaps, to come before the Izamal Congress was ‘‘Theme
peregrina 257

Fourteen.’’ The last on the agenda, it submitted this question: ‘‘Should the Par-
tido Socialista del Sureste and the Agrario de Campeche 13 unite themselves with
the Third International of Moscow?’’
All of the other thirteen propositions had been accepted by the delegates with
several conclusions, in a few cases with as many as ten. ‘‘Theme Fourteen,’’ alone,
was rejected with but a single—única—conclusion by the reporting committee,
headed by Juan Rico. The decision read: ‘‘The Partido Socialista del Sureste and
El Agrario de Campeche will not ally themselves with the Third International of
Moscow, while declaring that they may be emphatically in agreement with the
step it has taken for the social transformation of the universe.’’
Thus, as has been pointed out by the historian Prof. Antonio Bustillos Carrillo,
who since 1909 had played an active role on Yucatán’s Revolutionary scene, the
Workers Congress of Izamal laid the basis for a new and superior political ori-
entation by definitely repudiating Moscow’s repeated invitations to Yucatán’s
Socialist movement to align itself with the Third Communist International. As
directing head and the most influential single voice of the Congress, Felipe as-
sumed this unequivocal stand against the communizing of a Mexican state, even
though—years earlier with scores of Mexico’s young radical idealists—he had
been a member of the Continental Bureau of the First International. The total
effect of the Izamal Congress was to reinforce and improve thoroughly demo-
cratic and evolutionary Socialist doctrines of a distinctly Mexican origin and
character. With Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán, the Congress created,
subject to a Federal Council, a Federation of Parties of the Southeast, with a
fundamental desire to achieve a glorious unity along ethnic, revolutionary, and
traditional lines. No aim could have been more logical or even basically national-
istic, since these regions of the Republic shared the same history and their people
were descended from the same race, who for unknown centuries had lived under
cloudless skies between the same tropical forests and the immemorial azure sea.
In effect, as Prof. Bustillos Carrillo maintains, the Workers Congress of Iza-
mal did no more than to evoke those distant times of the New Maya Empire
when the people in its jurisdiction created the Confederation of Mayapán, a pact
of race and of blood, of juridical and political standards, to defend the liberty
altered by the invading Toltecs.14 And this same base served for the formation of
the Federation of Central American States, pursuing unity of a people in defense
of its autonomy and its independence when trampled underfoot by the hosts of
Cristóbal de Olid, Pedro de Alvarado, and Francisco de Garay.15
Yucatán’s Socialism, as he further points out, never adopted Communist prac-
tices. Always a party of the state, it never secretly worked in the cells of the
Communist International or in the Mexican Communist Party. Politically, it was
maintained within the National Revolutionary Party, and its posture was in-
258 Alma M. Reed

variably clear, urgent, and definite. Over the years, its influence may be traced
through the transformations of the NRP 16 into the political party and the Con-
federación Sindical 17 until, as a sector, it entered Mexico’s dominant political
organization, the Party of Revolutionary Institutions, known as the PRI.18 With
the latter have been incorporated some of the outstanding features of the Partido
Socialista del Sureste.
For the third time in two weeks I found myself with Felipe and the poet Luis
Rosada Vega in the orange-scented, moonlit garden of Ricardo Palmerín. As
on our previous visits there, the gifted and very modest Yucatecan composer,
after greeting us with a few simple words of welcome, went at once to his small,
weather-beaten upright piano. But with an artist’s typical penchant for dramatic
climax, he prepared us gradually for the pleasant surprise he was certain he had
in store for us. Lightly gliding over the yellow keyboard, his sensitive fingers pro-
duced several themes in Yucatán’s romantic tradition—one to which he had him-
self made many contributions. Felipe, seated beside me before the open door of
the humble studio living room, listened with critical ear to the tentative accom-
paniments for my song, ‘‘Peregrina,’’ but his silence and his cheerless expression
plainly indicated disappointment.
Suddenly, a glow of excitement flared in his jade green eyes—the passion-
ate response of his own trained musicianship—when Palmerín, with an abrupt
change of mood and tempo, played a completely different kind of melody. ‘‘Now,
here at last, my friends, I think we may have something,’’ the Maestro announced
with a confident and slightly roguish smile. Again and again, with occasional
variations, he repeated the throbbing notes of the opening motif, as though to
reassure his fascinated audience of three that, unlike the famous ‘‘Lort Chord,’’
the lovely strains would not drift out, irretrievably, into the cosmic ether.
‘‘Keep on playing, hombre, por favor, keep on playing,’’ Felipe pleaded with
him. Then, impulsively, he ran into the studio and, bodily lifting the short, plump
Maestro from the piano bench, warmly embraced him. ‘‘Sí, sí, querido, compañero
mío—Yes, yes, my dear compañero,’’ he exclaimed, ‘‘you, indeed, have something
here—something very beautiful, something really marvelous! This is what my
heart has been waiting to hear!’’
Voicing his own profound satisfaction and gratitude, Don Luis, who, all the
while, had been standing behind the composer, also congratulated him with a
fervent abrazo.19 He assured Palmerín that his music had already made articulate
all the elusive shades of feeling that he wished to express in ‘‘Peregrina’’ but which
mere words were powerless to convey. With Felipe, the poet strongly urged that
the work be finished without delay so that an orchestration might be started at
the earliest possible moment.
I, too, was deeply aware that Palmerín had presented to us the ‘‘inevitable’’
peregrina 259

melody for the poet’s moving lyric. For even then, as the first measures of the
composition frilled the perfumed stillness of the tropical night with their poi-
gnant burden of longing, enveloped in recurrent overtones—strangely seeming
to foreshadow some imminent nameless sorrow—I felt that Palmerín had re-
captured much more than the pain of the individual soul at parting from the
dearly beloved one. I realized then, as I have ever since that enchanted hour in
his little garden, that the composer had caught in the magic web of sound, woven
of ecstatic harmonies and evocative minor nuances, vibrations that penetrated
the unutterable age-old tragedy of the Mayab. His sweet, sad rhythms, born of
a creative impulse rooted in some remote yesterday, stirred me to a new con-
sciousness of the portentous mystery that still hovers over the Yucatecan earth.
They revealed to me, too, Palmerín’s racial pride in the brilliant culture that had
once flourished on his ancestral soil, his congenital if unrecognized grief over
the disappearance forever of all this ancient splendor—grief that echoed from
his musical idiom like a sob of anguish.
The next day at noon, February 28, 1923, the American scientists and the Yuca-
talogists assembled at the Mérida Electric Railway Station to bid an unwilling
farewell to the White City. Individually and in groups they thanked Felipe for his
magnificent hospitality and directed appreciative sentiments to the good people
and the great state he represented for having made possible their memorable ex-
perience. They assured him that they would come back in the not too distant
future to the fascinating land they were so regretfully about to leave. During the
forty-five-minute train ride to Progreso, Felipe and I sat together, both of us
glibly exchanging across-the-aisle pleasantries with our fellow passengers. Only
a few words of personal import passed between us—Felipe’s expressions of pain
at my leaving, my own emphatic promises to return soon. Yet our nearness and
the occasional meeting of our hands served to communicate in the silence all the
unspoken thoughts that were clamoring for a voice in the few precious moments
that remained to us. Thus were conveyed our intimate emotions at separating,
our mutual adoration, our unfulfilled desires, our faith in a predestined need for
each other and an ordained relationship. Felipe’s face revealed his feelings of de-
pression, and only with effort I managed to hold back my own tears. But from a
verse written long ago by Sir Phillip Sidney and curiously recalled from my col-
lege course in Elizabethan Literature, I gleaned a little consolation. In any event,
all the way to the Ward Line dock, my mind kept repeating the old English poet’s
concept of supreme realization in the life of the woman who could confidently
say: ‘‘My true love hath my heart, and I have his.’’
I already knew that I could say as much—shouting, singing it from the house-
tops—without fear of contradiction!
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 18. Homeward Journey

D
uring the homeward voyage, conversation among the passengers of the
Ward liner Mexico differed radically in tone from the tirades spear-
headed by the reactionary Yucatecan hacendados who, less than a month
earlier, had sailed with us on the same vessel between New York and Progreso.
To the general relief, the more loquacious and vehement of Governor Carrillo’s
political enemies, with the exception of Sr. Luis G. Molina, had remained in their
patria chica permanently or on extended vacations from their adopted northern
land. Sr. Molina himself, I soon learned, had left Mérida only with the greatest re-
luctance, since the main objective of his return to his native city was to court the
Governor’s young golden-haired daughter, Gelitzli, whom he had known during
her attendance at a Long Island academy for girls. His criticisms of the ‘‘Red Idol
with the Eyes of Jade,’’ as he previously referred to the man he now selected as his
future father-in-law, were milder and less frequent. Everyone missed the esposos
Barry, who left Mérida on a tour of the Republic a day or two before our depar-
ture. Dr. Morley had also remained in Yucatán to work out exploration details
with Felipe and Don Eduardo Thompson.
The archaeologists and tourist members of the Carnegie Expedition, eager to
share their common exciting experiences and enjoy the new friendships formed
during their Yucatán adventure, grouped themselves at adjoining tables in the
dining sala. Across the boards at mealtime, the scholars exchanged theories or
made predictions of significant discoveries in the majestic Maya capital they had
so recently surveyed and which they planned to explore the following season. To
my intense delight, however, many of their discussions began or ended in expres-
sions of esteem for Felipe as a sincere, able, and dedicated public servant and a
vigorous promoter of the arts and sciences. It was clear that these distinguished
representatives of Middle American research from my own country regarded him
as an official on whom they could depend for moral support and practical assis-
tance in their contemplated long-range program. As I listened to their eulogies
of the leader whose image had become my radiant emblem of life’s fulfillment,
262 Alma M. Reed

I even experienced a certain pride of having my intuitions and intellectual con-

victions verified by such authoritative male judgment.
Placed between Dr. John C. Merriam, Carnegie Institution president, and
Dr. Marshall H. Saville, director of the Museum of the American Indian (Heye
Foundation), at the dinner table, I absorbed ideas and conclusions resulting from
their years of investigation among Maya ruins in various regions of southeast-
ern Mexico and Central America. Seated opposite was the senior member of
the party, General William Barclay Parsons, who headed the Carnegie Board of
Trustees. A man of striking appearance, tall and of commanding bearing, his
fine aristocratic features, graying hair, and meticulously trimmed Vandyke, sug-
gested the model for a builder of railroads and international bridges. His very
articulate admiration of Felipe found a fervent response in my intimate thoughts
and emotions, for as he had done from the moment of their first meeting in the
offices of the Liga Central, he continued to comment that ‘‘Governor Carrillo
was the handsomest man he had seen in all his worldwide travels.’’
A theme that on several occasions elicited incredulous or witty comment and
even sighs of regret was the story of how the United States, through its own voli-
tion, lost the proffered chance of owning Yucatán’s pre-Colombian cities as well
as the state’s multimillion-dollar henequen industry.
Little-known facts dealing with this dramatic period of Mexican history
emerged at dinner-hour and deck-side meetings of the expeditionaries, most of
whom were well informed on all phases of the nation’s remote and recent past.
It was explained that preceding the crisis of 1848, the people of Yucatán had
become disgusted with the prolonged chaos. During the dictatorship of Santa
Anna, when the self-styled ‘‘serene Highness’’ occupied the Presidential Palace
between his periods of exile, their state was abandoned by whatever still func-
tioned of the federal authority. Governor Santiago Méndez, who had moved his
capital from Mérida to Maxcanú, was hard-pressed by the mass uprising of Maya
rebels in vengeance against their white and Mestizo oppressors. The radical re-
bellion, known as the Caste War, began in 1847 and reached its peak of terror
with the total collapse and rout of government forces at Valladolid on March 25,
1848. Before the struggle had run its sanguinary course, leaving both sides ex-
hausted in resources and fighting spirit, more than half of the population of the
Yucatán Peninsula had been killed or put to flight, and the Maya rebels had all
but succeeded in driving their former masters—the Ladinos, or ‘‘crafty ones’’—
into the sea.
With the fall of Valladolid, Governor Santiago Méndez, in his desperation,
sent identical letters to the three powers closely linked with Yucatán’s political
situation. These were the United States, which, at the time—the period of the
1847–1848 Mexican-American War—maintained a blockade of Yucatán; Great
Britain, whose Admiral in Jamaica was in control of the Belize gunrunners; and
peregrina 263

Spain, with Antillean possessions and a triple bond of language, religion, and
tradition with Yucatán’s ruling class.
From each of the three nations, Governor Méndez asked for ‘‘powerful and
effective help,’’ offering the first to respond to his call ‘‘complete domination and
sovereignty over Yucatán,’’ thus following a Spanish precedent set by the legend-
ary Count Don Julián, whom historians claimed avenged a personal insult by
inviting the Moors into Spain. To further the negotiations, Governor Méndez
sent his son-in-law, the young historian and liberal intellectual Justo Sierra, as a
special envoy in Washington. Sierra offered Yucatán’s neutrality in the Mexican-
American conflict in exchange for the lifting of the tariff on shipments of goods
moving between Ciudad del Carmen in Campeche and Yucatán.
President Polk granted this concession, but in addressing Congress, he re-
jected the idea of United States domination of Yucatán and invoked the Monroe
Doctrine against any European power that might accept the Méndez offer. When
the so-called Yucatán Bill came to vote, his stand was supported by the senators
from the slave-owning Deep South, who opposed annexation of the territory on
the grounds that it was populated by a ‘‘colored race.’’
In wistful notes, one of the archaeologists, commenting on the historic inci-
dent, remarked: ‘‘Just imagine, if our Senate had only seized this marvelous op-
portunity, we might have had the world’s greatest ancient ruins right in our own
backyard!’’ Bemoaning the loss to the United States from the financial stand-
point, an International Harvester representative who had joined our group ex-
plained that the American farmer was entirely dependent for the binding of his
grain crop upon Yucatán’s sisal hemp production. He quoted figures to show
how American ownership of Yucatán’s ‘‘green gold’’ would have boosted by as-
tronomical sums the national economy during the previous half century.
In all of its lurid details, Yucatán’s Caste War continued to be a popular topic
with the history-conscious expeditionaries. Discussions of the conflict that had
left such deep scars upon the ‘‘Land of the Pheasant and the Deer’’ 1 revealed that
after Washington had spurned the Méndez annexation offer, peace by negotia-
tion between the Yucatecan Government and Jacinto Pat, the most influential of
the native chiefs, allegedly of Irish descent, was achieved through a ‘‘New Decla-
ration of Independence.’’ The document called for the end of three centuries of
exploitation and enslavement of the Maya. It included a provision that canceled
all the debts incurred by Indian workers on the haciendas, anticipating President
Álvaro Obregón’s legislation to the same effect by some seventy years.
But the uneasy peace won by the treaty was short-lived, and it was only after
another eight years of bitter struggle involving incredible cruelties, widespread
destruction, broken agreements, and provoked rivalry between the two rebel
leaders, Jacinto Pat and Cecilio Chi—both of whom, as Felipe had informed me
at Kanasín, were commemorated by the central monument in the plaza—that the
264 Alma M. Reed

Caste War officially ended. This was in 1855, although repercussions continued
in sporadic hostilities until 1912.
Meanwhile, the New Declaration of Independence had long since become a
dead letter. The Ladinos had recognized it only as an expedient to gain time
in their determination to subjugate and control the indigenous people, keeping
them enslaved through the old ‘‘service for debt’’ system while they produced vast
wealth to support the hacendados’ generally sybarite way of life. To accomplish
these ends, the ‘‘crafty ones’’ relied mainly upon the Machiavellian technique of
dividing Maya loyalties, attempting especially to stir enmity between Jacinto Pat
and Cecilio Chi. Acts of vengeance against peaceful Maya were resumed by the
whites, who revoked the civil rights of the Indios. In retaliation, the Mazehual,2
as the rebels were called, declared a war of total extermination, burning villages
and crops. Atrocities mounted on both sides, and in the midst of the havoc the
Bishop of the Tekax District, alarmed at the destruction of religious objects and
threat to the churches, preached that ‘‘Divine Justice’’ would be directed against
those who tolerated the growth of secularism. To his warning, a group of Maya
chiefs gathered at Tabi replied: ‘‘It is only now that you remember that there is a
True God? You were always recommending the name of God to us and you never
believed in His Name.’’
Eventually, both Ladinos and Mazehuales in their common exhaustion ended
a fight in which military victory eluded both camps. And lacking real leaders
until the appearance among them of Felipe Carrillo Puerto some forty years later,
the Maya were again maneuvered into servitude on the haciendas. This time the
rich and powerful landowners joined in unholy alliance with the unscrupulous
jefes políticos and trapped them in a peonage more rigid and degrading than the
one they had struggled so desperately to uproot.
Many who refused to return to the haciendas sought refuge in the southern
and eastern forests of the peninsula. Faced with hunger—for during the Caste
War, agriculture except in the west had been neglected—the remnants of an en-
tire people migrated, while thousands of others were sold as slaves in the Cuban
markets by the Governor Miguel Barbachano. The strong protests that flared in
the Mexican press forced him to order the trade to stop, and he sent the Indios
to Veracruz instead. But the refugees who managed to survive the hardships of
the long trek settled in Quintana Roo at a place called Chan Santa Cruz, about
fifteen miles inland from Asunción Bay and twice that distance southwest of Tu-
lum’s famous ruined citadel overlooking the Caribbean. There, in the heart of
the tropical jungle, they established a religious center around a cult known as
Cruzob, the Mayan word for ‘‘cross.’’ In this mystic society they hoped to find
spiritual solace and relief from insupportable physical burdens. Their symbol and
fetish was a ‘‘speaking cross,’’ manipulated by a priestly ventriloquist concealed
peregrina 265

in the floor of the huge thatched church. His voice, purporting to be that of the
True God, uttered counsels and commands that directed the lives of the faithful.
During those scholarly deck-side excursions into Yucatán’s tragic past, who
would have ventured to predict that the courageous rationalist then guiding Maya
youth away from the withering grip of atavic superstitious fears to the eman-
cipation of a humanist philosophy, and whose political and social action was
aimed at the eradication of religious fanaticism, would one day give his name to
the town that harbored the shrine of the ‘‘speaking cross’’? Yet, in keeping with
the flagrant irony that accompanies almost every chapter of Mexican history,
this strange thing happened. Today Chan Santa Cruz, long the holy place and
high seat of Cruzob worship, with its crude deceptions and weird perversions of
Catholic ritual—boasting an electrically lighted plaza and sharing its now under-
cover devotees with the Maryknoll missionaries, due to what the Mazehual define
as Ladino infiltration—is known as El Pueblo de Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
But long before a proud, defiant remnant of the Mayab was to honor Felipe
by renaming its venerated jungle refuge in his memory, the Mazehual who re-
mained on the agricultural lands were destined to endure several other agonizing
decades. The melancholy sequence of late eighteenth-century events as narrated
by the Manhattan-bound historians aboard the Mexico revealed that with the
destruction of its cornfields, the chief source of sustenance, and the sugar plan-
tations, pivot of the state’s economy, Yucatán faced virtual ruin. The imminent
danger of total collapse would be averted only by a lucrative crop that could be
grown on the barren, rocky soil of the vast latifundista estates of the peninsula’s
northwestern region. Henequen was the answer, and it proved to be an auspi-
cious moment for the production of Yucatán’s sturdy fiber, since new needs and
multiple uses were created with the dawn of the period of rapidly expanding
industrial development everywhere in the world. Before long, the hacendados
were holding what amounted to a global sisal hemp monopoly. As profits soared,
they would purchase greater political power, enabling them to tighten their grip
upon the courts, with the correspondingly weakened capacity of the Indios to
win or even seek legal redress of injustices. Impoverished, frustrated, and help-
less, they suffered beatings, insult, and inhuman hours of forced labor, ever at
the mercy of merciless mayordomos, conditions that were first brought to my at-
tention through John Kenneth Turner’s fully documented, epoch-making book,
Barbarous Mexico.
Some of the more conservative Yucatalogists of our party found it difficult to
believe that such practices as the scholars described could have existed anywhere
on the American continent in the twentieth century. But the Austrian woman
psychiatrist, who during her Yucatán sojourn had avidly gathered information
on the history and social patterns of the Maya, observed, as one of the most tragic
266 Alma M. Reed

chapters of the Caste War story unfolded: ‘‘These terrible things have really hap-
pened in our time. And isn’t it better that we face the truth? How else can we
appreciate what that great man, Governor Carrillo, has done and is now doing
for his people?’’
The Mexico’s twenty-four-hour stopover at Havana had been long enough for
me to learn that unfriendly rumors preceded our arrival at the pearl of Antilles.
Not only did the reactionary press, naturally antagonistic to Felipe’s Socialist pro-
gram, disparage the state-sponsored plans for the Carnegie exploration at Chi-
chén Itzá, but Governor Carrillo was showing ‘‘marked attentions to the young
and beautiful New York Times correspondent Alma Reed.’’ Felipe’s discreet gift
to me of the gold filigree rosary was mentioned in such inflated terms that the
reader might assume it to be at least an emerald necklace or a diamond bracelet.
The ‘‘news’’ item greatly amused several members of our party who were them-
selves taking back to their wives and daughters replicas of my rosary, a typical
souvenir of Yucatán’s distinctive popular arts.
Our brief stay in Havana allowed time also for the sending of a cable to the
Times editor, stating that Edward H. Thompson, former United States Consul in
Yucatán, had given me an account of his explorations at Chichén Itzá’s Sacred
Cenote. I had been careful not to mention his ‘‘confession’’ to any of the archae-
ologists, fearing that somehow the secret so closely guarded for a quarter of a
century might leak out before the publication of the Sunday Magazine feature
article.
The cable brought an eager ‘‘star’’ reporter to interview me upon my land-
ing at Brooklyn’s Ward Line pier on the morning of March 5, 1923. He requested
‘‘details’’ on the spot, but I explained that I had solemnly promised Mr. Thomp-
son to write his story just as he had given it to me and that it would even be
necessary for me to make certain investigations before I wrote anything further
under my byline. I telephoned this decision to Mr. Ochs immediately upon ar-
rival at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria, explaining that the veteran explorer’s narra-
tive might well be a ‘‘tall tale’’ or ‘‘a madman’s dream,’’ the imaginary adventure of
the ‘‘science’’ fictionist. I reminded the already famous publisher how he taught
me that accuracy was journalism’s first essential, and he laughingly admitted that
his words had been meticulously heeded. Arrangements were soon made with
the Mexican Consulate General to have my friend Sr. Roberto Casas Alatriste,
then in New York on an official mission, and a young woman in the consular ser-
vice accompany me within the week to Cambridge. Sr. Casas Alatriste, I knew,
could represent his government as a qualified witness to verify that the half ton
of ancient Maya treasure recovered from the Sacred Well was, as Don Eduardo
had claimed, still preserved in the Peabody Museum.
 19. Mexican Crusade in Manhattan

A
cablegram from Felipe greeted my arrival at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria.
With an intensity of delight seldom experienced before or since, I read it
again and again, lingering over words that conveyed to me the thrilling
reassurance of his devotion. ‘‘Almita,’’ the message ran, ‘‘I anxiously await notice
of your safety. You have left my heart overwhelmed . . . I love you deeply. All my
thoughts are at your side . . . Felipe.’’
My profound emotion was stirred by his ardor, filling me with an overwhelm-
ing desire to board the next southbound passenger ship. But my first hours in
Manhattan after a month’s absence afforded little time to indulge in romantic
daydreams. Numerous duties in connection with work and social obligation de-
manded immediate attention. There were consultations with the Times editors,
telephone and personal calls from friends who had eagerly awaited my return,
among them the husky-voiced charmer who had seen me off to Yucatán and who
now, by comparison with Felipe, had lost his allure. There were, too, meetings
at the Mexican Consul General’s office to arrange for a visit to the Peabody Mu-
seum with Señor Casas Alatriste and the young lady secretary connected with the
Ministry of Foreign Relations then on vacation in New York. Since Mr. Ochs was
anxious to have my article on Don Eduardo Thompson’s Sacred Cenote exploits
as soon as possible, the Cambridge trip was scheduled for the third day after
my arrival. The diary entry showing that a few of my precious hours were spent
downtown in the selection of a ‘‘guaranteed’’ noiseless typewriter indicated my
determination to work into the late-night hours, free from the fear of disturbing
other hotel guests.
Armed with the ‘‘confession’’—parts of which Don Eduardo had signed—we
arrived at the Peabody Museum, and not finding the salvaged material on pub-
lic display, we asked permission to inspect it. None too willingly, and only after
considerable delay and argument, were we led to an upper-floor storage room
where, in rows of glass-covered cases, we found the enormous collection exactly
as the discoverer had described it to me. My signed article detailing the story be-
268 Alma M. Reed

hind the Museum’s possession of the archaeological objects appeared in the New
York Times Sunday Magazine of April 4, 1923, under the headline, ‘‘The Well of
the Maya’s Human Sacrifice,’’ the opening paragraphs reading as follows:

Within the year, the Peabody Museum of Harvard University will announce
officially the finding of the Maya treasure at the bottom of the Sacred Well
at Chichén Itzá.
The discovery, although admitted to be the most important in the his-
tory of American archaeology, has been a carefully guarded secret for over
two decades. Exactly how much light it will throw upon one of civilization’s
most obscure paths is a question that must remain unanswered until Prof.
A. M. Tozzer and Dr. Herbert J. Spinden publish their erudite commen-
tary. For the present, we know only that a quantity of precious material
and an astonishingly weird romance have been reclaimed from the ever-
receding past.
But there is the romance that science pursues, and there is the one lived
in the pursuit! And the ‘unofficial’ announcement of the recovery of human
bones, gold ornaments, and objects of jade, copper, and wood from the
depths of the Sacred Well, or ‘‘El Cenote de los Sacrificios,’’ involves a
worthy sequel to the strange story that the world had forgotten.

I then related in detail the account given to me by Don Eduardo when I inter-
viewed him in Yucatán, wording the article as tactfully as I knew how, fully aware
that the revelations it contained could provoke an international incident. The
day following its appearance I was asked by the editor of the New York World to
rewrite the article for his paper. On April 22, the World published it as a front-
page Sunday feature under an eight-column headline that read: ‘‘Thompson’s
own story of his discoveries in Yucatán,’’ illustrated with the three photographs
I had supplied.
Several newspapers and magazines in the United States and Europe requested
amplified versions of the sensational Chichén Itzá exploit, and for months I was
kept busy writing and lecturing on the subject. Almost immediately, there were
other repercussions from Don Eduardo’s ‘‘confession.’’ Some of them were felt
not only in New England’s halls of learning but in the United States Congress and
in the Mexican courts. In less than sixty days after the disclosures—which, due to
Mr. Thompson’s status as American Consul in Yucatán, had created a scandal—
the government of Mexico, demanding return of the whole collection of ancient
objects or an indemnity of two million dollars, instituted a lawsuit against the
Peabody Museum.
Meanwhile, I had received Felipe’s first letter, dated March 10. But when it was
peregrina 269

delivered to me at the hotel desk, what should have been pure elation was tem-
pered with a mild sense of shock. I noticed, or, at least, my self-consciousness
imagined—as a result, doubtless, of the Ward Line captain’s chilly reaction to the
Havana newspaper item—that the mail clerk had handed it to me only after a
lifted-eyebrow scrutiny of the envelope, addressed in red ink. I fully realized that
this circumstance at the period might easily have aroused suspicion, especially
in the ultraconservative precincts of the Waldorf-Astoria. It was on our memo-
rable ride to Kanasín that I had gently warned Felipe about the unpopularity in
my country of tinta roja (red ink), impressing upon him that its use, except on
balance sheets, was interpreted as indicating Leftist affiliations. In jesting words
but with a serious intent I had assured him that I would always have an infallible
clue to his identity, regardless of how he signed his letters. Red ink, I explained,
was strictly taboo in the personal correspondence of my other men friends. It
occurred to me that the suspect nature of my ‘‘foreign communication’’ might be
highlighted in the mind of the mail clerk by the emblem of the Partido Socialista
del Sureste, an embossed globe in screaming vermilion encircled by the clasped
hands of universal brotherhood at the upper corner of the envelope. And cer-
tainly not designed to allay the worst fears of super-patrioteers, there appeared
beneath the symbolic globe of solidarity the slogan of the Liga de Resistencia:
‘‘Tierra y Libertad—Land and Liberty.’’ Little did I then surmise that these same
words were soon destined to become the most revered of my private vocabu-
lary. In Yucatán, the red ink of the Socialist insignia had not only seemed to
me perfectly natural but even inevitable among a people so recently redeemed
from the hunger, exploitation, and slavery that had flourished for decades under
the guise of a democratic system. In economically thriving Manhattan, however,
barely emerged from the Bolshevist witch-hunting era of the Palmer Raids, both
the Partido’s favorite color and its official slogan could be construed by the ‘‘one
hundred percenter’’ fanatics as subversive or as a sign of involvement in some
movement to overthrow the government. Stranger accusations had been made
against loyal American citizens in the not too distant past.
But all my naive fears and misgivings dissolved of their own futility soon after
opening Felipe’s letter. The red ink of its two closely spaced typed pages even
impressed me as a much more appropriate color than blue or black or brown to
convey his human longing for love and companionship and his affirmation of
life’s most radiant possibilities in adventures of the mind and sprit. Written in
answer to the note I had mailed to him from Havana, the letter read:

Unforgettable Alma: I am thinking with great intensity on the sympathy

that already exists between us. But taking into consideration your public life
and the work you are doing in the New York press, I sometimes think that
270 Alma M. Reed

you cannot care for me nor believe in the love that we, as Latins, passion-
ately feel for the woman we adore. From the day I met you until the moment
I write you this letter, you live perpetually in my mind. I am tremendously
desperate to see you, and the only things that give a little consolation are
your photographs and the lock of your hair that you left with me. I do not
know when I shall see you again, but I conform myself with loving you until
who knows what future date.
Recently, I visited the caves of Calcehtok, of which I send you photo-
graphs. We passed through all the galleries, and as we entered them, I felt
that you were always at my side. The caves are marvelously adorned with
Nature’s art and are even more beautiful than those of Loltún. In one of
the galleries through which we managed to pass by creeping along, we
encountered a stalagmite, which the Indians, with much justice, call Lacich-
panxinan, meaning ‘‘the Beautiful Lady.’’ But these, our poor compañeros,
are greatly mistaken, because the statue that I see represented in my Pixan
Halal 1 is so much lovelier that I remain in ecstasy much of the time, regard-
ing her with my soul and with a desire that is very sure of itself.
When we left Calcehtok, we went to the ruins of Oxkintok, where we
came upon the extraordinary hill Za Tun Zat, which means ‘‘labyrinth.’’
Here, one enters through a door and must leave in a crouching position by
another, that is, if the guide knows the terrain perfectly. Many comments
have been written on this hill, especially by Ingeniero Reygadas who be-
lieves it to be a vast sepulcher of the Maya. The construction, however, of
the galleries does not seem to indicate that it had served this purpose but,
rather, was a place of vigilance or of inspection for all those who wished to
belong to the religion of the inhabitants of Oxcintok or dwell in the com-
munity and who, before being accepted, must pass severe initiation tests,
as in the epoch of Masonry. We took a photograph of an almost completely
ruined building, and I am enclosing a copy of it. Later, we visited a very
beautiful grotto with a huge single sala in which, according to the natives,
the Maya held their fiestas. The place is so enormous that one can readily
believe that it accommodated, as they claim, thousands of guests.
How many times during these trips do I think of my lovely Alma and
how many times do I find my soul in New York while my body is in this
land suffering annoyances, even to a crash of my automobile that broke my
arm. It happened when my tranquility had completely evaporated and my
thoughts had traveled to you with tormenting doubts that this little city
holds, as you said in your letter, your sentiments or that you remember our
promises of love. I send you various photographs already colored to bring
out your true loveliness, for surely it is your mission on this earth to go
forward with your intellect and your beauty.
peregrina 271

Receive my endearments and my wish that you do not delay in answer-

ing me, and in your delicious Spanish . . . I do not sign this letter by hand
because it is only three days since I broke my arm.

In the signature typed by his secretary, Felipe had used his Mayan name, H’pil
Zutilché. On the ride to Kanasín he said he would sometimes sign his letters
‘‘H’pil,’’ since that was the name by which his Inditos knew him and he wanted
me to become accustomed to it.
Upon my return from Cambridge, Mr. Ochs phoned, requesting that I see him
on a matter of ‘‘great importance.’’ At our meeting, he complimented me both
on the Mexican and Carnegie Expedition coverage and then, broaching the real
purpose of the interview, said: ‘‘If what you have been writing for the Times in
the past months on the performance and aims of the Obregón Government is
factual, and I do not in the least doubt the absolute veracity of your material, I
am seriously considering editorial support for the recognition of Mexico by the
United States. The real proof of President Obregón’s intentions will be found in
the 1923 budget to be released publicly on September 1. But we could save time
in bringing about normal relations between the two governments if we were to
have the budget figures now. The figures will show where the emphasis lies, since
we could know what amounts are appropriated for educational and cultural ac-
tivities and those allocated to armament and military purposes.’’
The publisher assured me that he knew of my contacts with the top Mexican
officials, laughingly commenting that he heard I ‘‘had led the grand march with
President Obregón at the American Legion’s Armistice Day Ball.’’ But what he
regarded as even more important at the moment, he explained, was my friend-
ship with the members of the technical committee then in New York to prepare
the documents necessary for the operation of the terms of the so-called De la
Huerta–Lamont Agreement. I was aware that through this agreement the obli-
gations contracted by the usurper General Victoriano Huerta were rejected as
having no binding force upon the Mexican government, but all other debts were,
including those representing notes signed for larger amounts than the sums col-
lected and saddled upon the Mexican people during the Díaz dictatorship, to
create a per capita national debt for fifteen million Mexicans that was one of
the world’s highest. The technical committee, headed by my friend Sr. Roberto
Casas Alatriste, whom I had first met on the trip to Yucatán with the Carnegie
Expedition, included the prominent banker Sr. Elías de Lima, Licenciado Miguel
Palacios Macedo, and Sr. Olallo Rubio, secretary.
Instantly recognizing the importance of such influential journalistic support
for Washington’s recognition of Mexico, I at once advised Sr. Casas Alatriste
of the suggestions made to me by Mr. Ochs. The brilliant and patriotic young
economist, to whom the great Wall Street firm of J. P. Morgan Co., through its
272 Alma M. Reed

director, Thomas W. Lamont, had made tempting offers for his services, commu-
nicated with Chapultepec 2 and received the budget statistics Mr. Ochs had re-
quested. The article favoring recognition of the Obregón Government appeared
as the leading Times editorial on April 29, 1923. Occupying four half-page col-
umns under the caption, ‘‘Mexico’s Budget Indicates Progress,’’ the editorial read
as follows:

A significant statement of Mexico’s aims and policies made by the present

Government has just reached the world through the publication of the
Federal Budget for 1923. More forcibly than the eloquence of official proc-
lamation, the plain figures tell where President Obregón’s Administration
is placing its emphasis. The fact that this budget is the first in a decade to
fulfill all the constitutional requirements points to a new era in Mexico’s
financial scheme of things, with certain effects of internal strengthening and
improved international relations.
The budget for the current year is the first one issued by the legislative
power on behalf of the Mexican people since the Madero Congress of 1912.
If one excepts the unrecognized legislation of Provisional President Victo-
riano Huerta, the public funds of Mexico, from that time until last January,
were created and used at the will of the President, acting under ‘‘facultades
extraordinarias en Hacienda’’ (extraordinary powers in the treasury).
This unchecked control of the national purse strings was tenaciously
held by Carranza throughout his regime, on the plea of ‘‘unsettled con-
ditions.’’ Even after the restoration of the constitutional government, the
‘‘First Chief ’’ did not permit the Cámara de Diputados (House of Repre-
sentatives) to exercise its vital constitutional right, in spite of the long and
bitter struggle of the ‘‘Obregonistas.’’
But there was a prompt surrender of ‘‘facultades extraordinarias’’ by
President Obregón, as soon as the financial reorganization of the country
had been perfected under his Minister of Finance, Adolfo de la Huerta. This
act, indicative of official sincerity and national stability, made possible the
first budget backed by the Mexican people.
Economy is its keynote. Compared with the budget of 1922, there is a
total decrease of 10 percent. The amount provided for last year’s Federal
expenses was 383,658,608 pesos. For this year the budget totals 347,006,719
pesos, showing a savings of 36,651,889. But the reduction gains its real sig-
nificance from the fact that 11,470,000 applies to the wiping out of national
obligations, and that 30,000,000 pesos of this amount appears as a new
item, being Mexico’s first payment of her international debt, according to
the De la Huerta–Lamont Agreement of June 16, 1922. Already 21,000,000
peregrina 273

pesos of the payment has been deposited with the international committee
of bankers, whose conferences in this city with the Mexican financial com-
mission have just come to a close. In Mexico’s movement to pay back her
foreign loans lies the fulfillment of the promises made by President Obregón
in his message to the people of the United States, on June 26, 1921:

We have stated repeatedly that Mexico would not repudiate any just obli-
gations. We have always paid our debts: we always will pay our debts. We
have seen a loan of $20,000,000 received in 1824 changed magically into
a debt of more than $100,000,000. We have seen Maximilian sign off an
obligation of $40,000,000 in return for a loan of $20,000,000. We have
seen Miramón, the counter-revolutionist, sign a note for $15,000,000 in
return for a loan of $750,000. Yet not once, even under these outrageous
burdens, have we ever advanced the idea of repudiation.

Throughout the Revolution we stated repeatedly that Mexico would

meet every just obligation without evasion. It is a promise that will be kept
to the letter. Even now we are planning the machinery that will settle all
claims in accordance with the principles laid down by international law.
An attempt to make satisfactory settlement of complicated problems and
claims growing out of the chaos of revolution is revealed in other divisions
of the deuda pública (public debt appropriation). There is a provision, for
instance, of 1,300,000 pesos for the redemption of bonds from Federal civil
employees, who, during the Carranza days, were forced to accept these secu-
rities for 25 percent of their monthly salaries. Last year 2,827,618 pesos were
paid to these bondholders, and this year’s payment will practically cancel
the debt.
Conforming to the law of January 1, 1920, 800,000 pesos have been
set aside as interest on the ‘‘Agrarian Debt.’’ The acknowledgement of in-
debtedness by the payment of interest to the former owners of these vast
nonproductive estates, which are now being divided among small farmers
or converted into cooperative colonies, answers the charge of ‘‘confiscation’’
raised against Mexico’s agrarian program, even though it be an admitted
impossibility to make immediate payment on the principal.
There is a provision of 4,000,000 pesos for interest on the ‘‘recognized’’
debt to the banks taken over during the period of the Carranza Revolution,
and just as significant in backing up President Obregón’s assurance that
‘‘Mexico does not mean to ignore established rights, but shall honestly and
justly act by others,’’ is the item of 50,000 pesos for the ‘‘full settlement with
the holders of the National Gold Certificates, which were placed against
274 Alma M. Reed

the deposits made in paper money,’’ in accordance with the decree of the
Carranza de facto Government in 1916.
In step with progressive legislation in the United States, 500,000 pesos
of the ‘‘public debt’’ appropriation is destined for teachers’ pensions. There
is a total of 4,000,000 pesos for the pensioning of retired civil Government
employees, military officers and soldiers, railway employees, and of the
dependents of those who died in any of these branches of the public service.
The 1923 budget strikingly demonstrates Mexico’s harmony with the
present world ideals, by its substantial decrease in army and navy appro-
priations. Independently, and without the pressure of participation in the
League of Nations or the Pan-American Union, Mexico is reducing her
armament. There will be 30,000,000 pesos less spent on her program of
national defense this year than last. Throughout the Obregón Administra-
tion, armed forces have been gradually eliminated as a continuation of the
policy initiated by Acting President de la Huerta in 1920. Between January 1,
1922, and January 1, 1923, about 10,000 men were discharged from the army
ranks. But the most drastic ‘‘dropping’’ of Generals and soldiers in Mexican
history was an event of the past ninety days.
Aside from the economy involved, and its evidence of forward vision,
the 15,000 (pesos) decrease in military funds tends to prove that the Mexi-
can Government is no longer sustained by the force of bayonets but by the
will of the people. It is the best test of internal security and order since the
overthrow of the Díaz autocracy.
The sum of 52,362,903 pesos, or about 15 percent of the entire budget
for 1923, is allotted to public education. Here is an increase over the 1922
amount of 2,436,187 pesos. The addition helps to provide for two important
movements—Indian education and the campaign against illiteracy. Since
the first of the year, 3,000 new resident rural teachers have been appointed.
The staff of maestros misioneros (missionary teachers) has been enlarged to
650. They speak the native dialects, and their work is to establish schools
and ‘‘agricultural’’ classes in the most isolated pueblos, in an effort to lift the
Indians from their centuries of ignorance and exploitation.
Eloquent of Mexico’s attempt at child welfare is the item of 320,000 pesos
for ‘‘breakfasts for children of the public schools.’’ The Government’s desire
to foster better international understanding through education appears in
the following appropriations: 300,000 pesos for ‘‘scholarships for Mexican
boys in foreign countries’’; 300,000 pesos for the ‘‘interchange of teachers
and pupils between Mexico and foreign countries, and to pay the salaries
of foreign teachers’’; and 120,000 pesos for ‘‘scholarships for sixty boys of
Central America in the Mexican schools.’’
peregrina 275

There is a decrease of 128,763 pesos in the amount to be expended this

year on Mexico’s archaeological program, but an analysis of the figures
shows important work accomplished for science and plans for new excava-
tions, which will add to the world’s knowledge of vanished peoples. There
are between 800 and 900 archaeological sections in the Republic, but the
larger part of the 1922 appropriation for the Department of Anthropology
was devoted to the exploration of the city of Teotihuacán, about twenty-
five miles from the capital. Last year saw the completion of an undertaking
that resulted in the uncovering of two distinct civilizations and the conser-
vation of the Pyramid of the Sun, as well as other structures of the region.
The 1923 budget provides 50,000 pesos for a ‘‘study of the ethnological zone
of Oaxaca,’’ with its famous ruins of Mitla and Monte Albán, and another
50,000 pesos for the preservation and investigation of the Maya architecture
of Yucatán and Chiapas.
Mexico will carry out these large projects ‘‘in the event that there is
money enough in the treasury.’’ Her present achievements and immediate
undertakings, as shown by her latest budget, suggest the performance of
a national miracle. For, contrary to all theories of government, Mexico is
existing today without national credit and under financial ‘‘boycott’’ at a
time when every established institution has been overturned and the old
order completely demolished. If figures talk, the 1923 budget tells its own
story of Mexico’s solution of her problems and of her placating of the impa-
tience of an impoverished people with a diminished armed force, and of her
willingness to take her place among the advanced nations of the world.

The Mexican press reacted to the editorial with gratified amazement. The
leading dailies of the capital commented on the hopeful outlook for recognition
created by the support of the powerful New York Times. The cabled report of El
Heraldo was headed: ‘‘An Eloquent Indicator of Mexico’s Progress,’’ while El Uni-
versal hailed the ‘‘extensive article as a study of the actual present Federal Budget,
clearly indicating a new era of order and prosperity.’’
On the day after its publication, I received a call from the editor of the New
York Journal, requesting an interview. When we met at his Gold Street offices, he
informed me that he was aware that I had obtained the advance Mexican budget
figures for the Times editorial, and stated that Mr. William Randolph Hearst was
also considering support for U.S. recognition of Mexico through its nationwide
chain of newspapers. He asked me if I would write a series of ten stories, high-
lighting different aspects of the constructive program of the Obregón regime. He
explained that since my own byline was associated with the Times, the articles
would have to be signed by what I understood was the fictitious name of ‘‘C. B.
276 Alma M. Reed

Travis’’ and bear a Mexico City dateline. Only too eager to help in bringing about
friendly relations between my own country and the land that had already won
my affection and esteem, I consented. The first of the syndicated series appeared
on May 11, 1923, in three columns with a boxed headline, ‘‘Mexico’s 1923 Bud-
get Proves Government Is Finally Stable.’’ An italicized introductory note read:
‘‘This is the first of a series of highly important articles on present conditions in
Mexico, with special reference to the question of the stability and the integrity
of the present government. The fact that the special envoys of the United States
government left Washington Sunday for Mexico City to reach an agreement is
evidence of the fact that recognition of Mexico is expected soon.’’
The cables filed from New York and Washington by the Mexican correspon-
dents bordered on disbelief. Most of them seemed at a loss to understand why the
hard-hitting Hearst syndicate suddenly, and without warning, had made so com-
plete a change in its obstructionist policy toward the Revolutionary Government.
One of the Mexico City dailies, trying to analyze the reversal of the traditional
Hearst attitude, asked with a note of skepticism: ‘‘What’s Behind it All?’’
Only a small group of Manhattan crusaders for Mexican recognition could be
quite sure that the motivating factor in the sensational journalistic development
was the ancient phenomenon of the ‘‘handwriting on the wall.’’
 20. Platonic Love

A
mong the social events that relieved my full-day concentration on the jour-
nalistic telling of the contemporary Mexican story, none gave me greater
pleasure and satisfaction than the Costume Ball held in early March by
the New York Actors’ Group—forerunner of Equity. It was inevitable that I ap-
pear on this very special occasion as a Mestiza of Yucatán, wearing the exqui-
sitely embroidered, heavily lace-trimmed fiesta dress Felipe had designed and
presented to me and which had become the most treasured ensemble of my ward-
robe. The one hundred or more guests at the glittering affair included such stage
celebrities as the Barrymores, Ruth Chatterton, Blanche Bates, and other distin-
guished characters of the theater world, all of them disguised as familiar charac-
ters of history or legend, ranging from the pirate Jean Laffite to Marco Polo and
Helen of Troy. When, to my amazement, the jury awarded me the first prize for
the ‘‘most beautiful, authentic, and original’’ costume, I felt that I was sharing
honors with Felipe, knowing his profound pride in the folk art of his beloved
Yucatecan tierra and recalling his admiration for the colorful native garments
worn by the señoritas we met at the pueblo celebrations.
In several of Felipe’s letters, which continued to arrive with each Ward Line
boat, he mentioned the Actors’ Ball. In one dated April 1, he writes: ‘‘You have
told me nothing about the fiesta in which you were to take part wearing your
Mestiza dress. Have you forgotten your promise? Are you so considerate that you
fear my ardor will be a torment? I beg of you, tell me something, tell me about
your triumphs that on one hand bring me joy and, on the other, cause me pain
never experienced.’’ But in a letter written later that day—in answer of my own,
which had been evidently delayed reaching him, he deplored that he could not
have been present at this ‘‘tribute to Pixan Halal and the Raza Maya 1 by the artists
of a great city.’’ In another, written the same week, he observed that it is ‘‘diffi-
cult to believe that what happened to me has not happened to your countrymen,
when they saw you in all your natural charm in your Mestiza dress. I am filled
with sadness, fearing that after this Fantasía Ball of the Actors’ Society, you may
278 Alma M. Reed

cease writing to me. But patience! Finally, I shall know from your own lips all
that you have offered to relate to me regarding the event.’’
Throughout April, May, and June, Felipe’s letters—frequently two or three at
a time—arrived weekly via the Mexico-Cuba mail. With rare exceptions, each
morning also found a cablegram waiting for me in Box 393 at the Waldorf-Astoria
reception desk. Among the cables, one dated April 17 announced the discovery
at Chichén Itzá by the artist Miguel Ángel Fernández of a ‘‘new chac-mool, differ-
ent in attitude from the well-known type and measuring one hundred and fifty
centimeters.’’
Almost invariably, Felipe’s messages conveyed his longing for my presence in
Yucatán. His letter dated April 7 stated:

As much as I would desire it, I do not presume now to ask you to spend
your life at my side. But I beg of you, come for some days—at least for
a month—and if you feel that you cannot remain longer, return to your
feverish Manhattan where no one knows his neighbor, where one passes un-
perceived, where humanity does not exist, yet where people live, where they
work and prosper and there they die. It is possible that I may go to New
York, but this cannot be as soon as I wish, a fact that causes me still greater
sorrow. My presence in this state is indispensable since if I were not here, we
might have to lament some incidents that could develop within the Partido
Socialista itself.

What visions of ‘‘joy, dim descried’’ were evoked by Felipe’s mere suggestion
of spending my life at his side! How eagerly I would have sailed back to Yuca-
tán and to him, if I could have been certain that our emotional tensions, nour-
ished through separation and affectionate and almost daily communication by
letter or wire, would permit the continuance of the Platonic relationship of the
brief Carnegie expeditionary period. Yet, whatever the situation, I realized that
in Mérida we would both be exposed to the insinuations and slander of the ever-
active political enemies. At the moment, the safeguarding of Felipe’s prestige and
the forward impact of his most cherished values—those goals, as he once as-
sured me, that gave him ‘‘no peace until they were won’’—seemed to lie in flight
from temptation. Falling back upon my disciplines, I decided to go abroad—to
put thousands of miles between myself and the alluring proximity of the Ward
Line pier. I even made serious efforts to do so, requesting Mr. Ochs to assign me
to Constantinople to cover the story of Kemal Pascha. At that time, the Revolu-
tionary leader was struggling to modernize Turkey. He had already succeeded in
abolishing the anachronistic Caliphate and in liberating the women of his coun-
try from feudal customs. The genial Times publisher promised to consider the
peregrina 279

matter and give me an early reply. In late May, I received his negative answer. But
significantly, instead of bitter disappointment, I secretly experienced a thrill of
exaltation when, in refusing my request, he announced: ‘‘We already have plenty
of good reporters in the Near Eastern sector, capable of handling Atatürk as well
as those veiled ladies along the Bosphorus. But we are depending upon you for
feature coverage of Mexico. You know everyone down there, and besides, you
were a party to committing the Times to Washington’s recognition of the Obre-
gón Government, an issue that may come up any day now.’’ He suggested that
I prepare to return to Mexico City at the end of June or early July. He would
give me a list, he said, of key officials whom he wished me to interview, among
them President Obregón, General Calles, and Licenciado José Vasconcelos. De-
spite my avowed rationalist views, I was not yet entirely liberated from esoteric
concepts that had lingered from my youthful Theosophist and Rosicrucian as-
sociation. The decision of Mr. Ochs was accepted, as a result, somewhat in the
nature of a call from well-disposed Destiny, drawing me back sooner or later to
Yucatán. I found a certain moral satisfaction, however, in the conviction that I
had sincerely tried to evade the mystic summons.
As the letters conveying his desperate desire to see me continued to arrive, I
kept asking myself: ‘‘Where will all this lead?’’ The answer eluded me, but of one
thing I was virtually certain. Despite my strong impulse to be near Felipe and
his own impassioned pleading, I felt that I would not, must not, return at once
to Yucatán, unless I were definitely sent there to fill some journalistic mission.
My resolve was based not only in an individual sense of the fitness of things but
in an even more compelling urge—my profound solicitude for the unhindered
progress of Felipe’s significant public service. The cause for which he struggled
and sacrificed for so many years—the cause of human well-being—was also of
deep personal concern to me. Almost as far back as I could remember, I had been
involved, emotionally at least, in ‘‘crusades.’’ Ever since grammar school days
when I would win the annual prize for ‘‘elocution,’’ I had been articulate in vari-
ous ‘‘uplift’’ and social betterment movements, following the example set by my
idealist father. Among those enlisting my spirited juvenile loyalty and occasional
‘‘speech making’’ were racial equality, single tax, minimum wage, Indian inde-
pendence, Irish freedom, abolition of capital punishment, and rights for women.
While my hair was still hanging in braids, I became known as the ‘‘Girl Cam-
paigner’’ to the members of the College Equal Suffrage League, headed by my
intimate friend and ‘‘Big Sister’’ guide, the courageous Charlotte Anita Whitney.2
A photograph of the period shows me in a street parade, crowned and robed as
the Goddess of Justice, enthroned upon an elaborate float and holding aloft the
scales that had tipped in favor of equal political and economic opportunity for
the women of all nations. My earliest envisioned career was that of social service,
280 Alma M. Reed

and up until the previous autumn when I left San Francisco for my first Mexican
visit, I had pursued welfare work through a daily newspaper column devoted ex-
clusively to obtaining aid for those in trouble or in want. In view of these girlhood
activities in congenital interests and a ‘‘reformist’’ temperament, it was natural
that I should instantly recognize in Felipe a most effective champion of the identi-
cal causes that claimed my youthful enthusiasm. I was convinced that the theater
of his compassionate action at the social, labor, and cultural levels was a universal
one and that Yucatán, as he once assured me, was only his ‘‘laboratory.’’
A few days before Mr. Ochs had sealed my fate—as I mentally referred to his
reassigning me to Mexico for the summer of 1923—I disclosed my travel plans
to Felipe. I felt it was more considerate to prepare him for the possibility of the
Near Eastern trip than suddenly to announce such unpleasant news. His reply
left me deeply disturbed, for I knew he could not penetrate my motives. In fact,
he had attributed them to indifference when he wrote:

I am plunged into melancholy since I see that instead of wishing to come

closer to me, you are each day going farther away. Now it appears that you
are not even thinking of coming back to Yucatán, but of going to Europe
to work there and send articles to the journals for which you are a corre-
spondent, while your poor Dragoncito remains here alone and, as I have
done until today, hoping for the return of the blue-eyed Dragoncita 3 who
cares only for her newspapers. I am truly very sad, Almita, because you have
left such a great emptiness in my heart. Never could I have imagined that I
would be so desperately in love with anyone as I am with you. In your letter
you say that love makes for happiness. But for me the contrary has resulted,
since the love I feel for you makes me an unhappy man, knowing that you
are so far away from me and that each day you wish to widen the distance
between us.

In the same letter, he asked: ‘‘Have you not also felt something of the great
love that I keep in my soul for you?’’ And he added: ‘‘Mine is not a sentiment of
carnal desire. What I feel for you is a sentiment of spiritual longing. Just to see
your eyes, to hear your voice, to look at your face, to feel you near me, to sense
the perfume of your breath. Together, all these things would convert existence
for me into a life of inexpressible delight.’’
It was with tremendous relief that I was able to tell him of the adverse direc-
tion of Mr. Ochs in regard to the proposed interviews with Kemal Pascha and
my acceptance of the counter proposal that I write feature articles for the Times
from July through September in Mexico. Assuming that the Mexican visits would
include Yucatán, Felipe wrote in reply:
peregrina 281

Eventually, with difficulty, we will succeed inaugurating, on the 14th and

15th of July, the Chichén Itzá Highway. With all my heart I invite you to this
event and I beg you to make every effort to attend and to stay some days
with us. Have no fears! I shall be just the same as I was the first time I saw
you. I’ll not do anything against your ideas, and you may be sure that you
will continue being for me the same little star I looked at from afar the night
I broke my arm. And when you are here, near to me, I will think of you as
that same little star, to which I dare not come closer because of sentimental
differences.

In this letter Felipe also commented on one of my observations concerning

the similarity of his Casa del Niño 4 program to the ideas of the Greek Plato who
advocated state responsibility for the care and education of children:

It is true that we have in mind some of Plato’s ideas, but we have not copied
them. Only by intuition are we implanting them. I have read Plato’s Repub-
lic, but it is also true that those ideas came to me not for having read this
classic work. They came independently because of the many mothers, di-
vorced and married, who have asked my help for their children. They are
the ones who have made me understand the urgent need for creating this
benefic institution. Here we aim to provide a real home for the neglected
or abandoned children of those men without courage or conscience, so that
these little ones may develop normally and receive an education instead of
facing a life of misery and uselessness.
Our program is based on simple justice because these children are not
the ones to be blamed for their situation. They did not come into life of
their own free will. Such are the considerations that have induced me to cre-
ate the Casa del Niño, and we are now working to build a fine establishment
and do whatever is necessary to instill a more humane if less orthodox code
of morals. In a few days I shall send you other new initiatives with which
we are now occupied on behalf of society in general, but especially for the
proletariat, who are in the greatest need. From these legislative proposals
you will understand that we are working not only at the material level but
with our best efforts for our ideals, in order to improve the condition of the
humble ones and the helpless children.
I have sent you all the photographs you requested in your little letter, and
I hope that you will never forget that your requests for me are commands
that I obey as if they came from my beloved mother.
I ask you, out of whatever affection you may have for me, that you write
me in Spanish. I shall then be happy in the certainty that nobody except
282 Alma M. Reed

myself will read your precious letters. I ask also that you do not fail to send
me a wire in case you are coming to Mexico. And now, I will say ‘‘good-
bye,’’ wishing you success in all your worthy undertakings and with all my
soul deeply wanting to see you and kiss you. (Signed, H’pil)
A cable published in the New York Times of April 4 announced that the State
Legislature of Yucatán had ratified an amendment granting divorce on the solici-
tude of ‘‘only one party, without cause.’’
The report sent from Mérida, dated the previous day and bearing the caption
‘‘Easy Divorce Easier in New Yucatán Law,’’ read:
Amendments which will ease further the easiest divorce law on the Ameri-
can continent went into effect today in the Mexican State of Yucatán. The
new legislation, ratified by the Socialist Governor, Felipe Carrillo, provides
that a decree of divorce may be demanded and obtained on the simple ap-
plication before a duly authorized Justice of the Peace, by both husband and
wife or by only one of them.
Rules governing the divorces of persons married outside the State and
outside the territory of the Mexican Republic are also fixed by the new legis-
lation. One month’s residence in the State is necessary for foreigners before
a divorce application will be heard. Proof of the validity of a marriage cele-
brated outside the territory of the nation among foreigners, in accordance
with the laws of the country in which it was celebrated, must be filed with
the office of the Registrar, together with proof of the required residence in
the State of Yucatán, before divorce will be granted.
In all cases where there are children, a certificate of marriage must be
accompanied by a ‘‘protest of trust’’ containing the age, names, and present
custody of the children of the union to be dissolved.
In the wording of Yucatán’s civil code, ‘‘divorce is of three classes—vol-
untary, or the mutual agreement of the parties; contested divorce, with
cause; and contested divorce without cause.’’
The last named class of divorce is granted upon the simple application of
the interested party to proper judicial authority but is obtained only after a
month’s trial at reconciliation.
If the applicant for a divorce with cause fails to establish the necessary
grounds, the action will in no way prejudice a second action which may be
made on an application ‘‘without cause.’’
Women who apply for divorce with cause and establish grounds are not
to pay court and attorney fees.
All children, legal and illegal, in Yucatán must be supported by their
fathers, although the custody belongs to the mother until the child is eight
years of age. The child may then choose between the parents.
peregrina 283

A few days later I received a printed copy of the amendment with the official
legislative record, enclosed in one of Felipe’s letters.
Obviously, the way was now clear for Felipe to terminate his own marriage. Yet
the fact did not suggest any valid reason for rejoicing. I was still haunted by the
hobgoblin of ‘‘what people would say’’ about him. Despite the documented se-
quence of events, proving that Felipe had contemplated the amendment months
before my arrival in Yucatán, there were many, I was aware, who, with reference
to myself, would suspect his motives in giving legal force to a ‘‘one party, without
cause,’’ divorce application. I fully realized that his influence as a pathfinder for
his generation would be weakened by such charges of personal interest, however
unfounded.
The fact that the amendment had been proposed before I appeared on the
Yucatecan scene was, opportunely for my peace of mind, confirmed by an article
in the Outlook Magazine of January 23, which I discovered by chance in my library
research. The author, Mary Turner Mason, after making an on-the-ground sur-
vey of Felipe’s new laws, had written: ‘‘Other Socialist Government reforms in
prospect are easier marriage and divorce laws and the legitimizing of all children,
a child born out of wedlock taking the father’s name and sharing in all inheri-
tance legally with the children of the man’s legal wife. It is said that at present
(1922) 30 percent of the children of all Yucatán and 45 percent of the children of
Mérida are illegitimate.’’
Further reassurance came from my ever-reliable diary in which I had recorded
that in the very first days of our acquaintance Felipe had informed me that he was
planning to make the word bastardo—illegitimate—when applied to any person
in Yucatán born of unmarried parents, an offense punishable by imprisonment.
Yet that I might become the unwitting cause of retarding or perhaps even
nullifying his rare contribution was my ever-present fear, almost to the point of
obsession. And I reasoned that in an immediate return to Yucatán, I would be
running just such a risk.
Certainly, it was common knowledge throughout Yucatán that for three years
before I even heard of Felipe’s existence, he had been completely separated from
Sra. Carrillo and that during all that period he had maintained a home for her in
Havana, where she was currently residing. All Yucatán knew also that throughout
his governorship Doña Adela, his distinguished mother, had acted as his official
hostess. But in the eyes of the Mexican law, Felipe was still a married man. And
it was doubtful if the moral truth about his marital status would reach that vast
‘‘outside’’ public to which his great regenerative and educational program was
ultimately aimed.
Meanwhile, until the position of everyone involved was clarified, the logical
if difficult course for me was to silence the voice of my heart and maintain what
must have appeared to Felipe to be an attitude of romantically detached admi-
284 Alma M. Reed

ration. For the first time I understood what the poets meant when they sang of
a love that was strong enough to leave love alone. Yet, an intuition of a destined
‘‘belonging’’ did not desert me. I continued to trust that our pale hope of mutual
happiness would one day be transmitted into radiant reality in an honest, un-
equivocal stand before the world on our right to be inseparably together.
Before saluting Wall Street’s sky-piercing towers in a less romantic farewell
than these symbols of centralized financial might have evoked from me four
months earlier, I cabled Felipe that I was about to sail—on that date, July 5—for
Mexico.
 21. Foreboding Moments

T
wo young Mexican officials—an economist of the Technical Committee
for the Adjudication of the National Debt and a member of the New York
Consular staff—who together had courteously filled the four-month in-
terim between my visits to their country with dinner and theater parties, diplo-
matic receptions, concerts, and other social functions, accompanied me aboard
the Ward liner Yucatán, when, on July 5, it sailed from Manhattan Pier, both
promising to greet me pronto in ‘‘ol’ Tenochtitlán.’’ The ship, which had a long
record of Cuban and Mexican service, looked as though it had weathered a severe
hurricane. Captain Blackadder, at whose right I was seated at luncheon, apolo-
gized for his vessel’s ‘‘battered condition,’’ explaining that there had not been
time between his New York arrival and departure schedule to repair the damage
caused by a ‘‘rampaging band of chicleros’’ while they were being transported
through Caribbean waters after their season’s work in the sapodilla forests of
Quintana Roo. The spirited Scotch veteran of tropical seas gave us a vivid picture
of how the ‘‘jungle men had run amuck, whacking off with sticks and machetes
virtually every object that protruded from wall or ceiling.’’ In order to provide
light during the dinner hour, a crew of electricians was feverishly working to
reinstall dangling fixtures.
The Yucatán was docked at Havana only between dawn and sunset, but I went
ashore in the early morning, escorted by a middle-aged New England bachelor
who for some years had been a banker in Manila and was visiting Latin America
for the first time. After collecting and sending our respective cables and letters
at the local Ward Line office, we made the rounds of the popular tourist attrac-
tions, many of which I had investigated on my recent longer stay in Havana, but
adding a tour of Morro Castle and Cabaña Fortress to the February itinerary.
From the moment we left New York Harbor, my new acquaintance, who in his
conservative outlook and his rigid regard for the ‘‘American way of life’’ and its
political status quo could have modeled for the original ‘‘Boston Brahmin,’’ had
singled me out for special deck-side attentions. We passed many hours in pleas-
286 Alma M. Reed

ant ‘‘bookish’’ conversation that revealed his alert, observing mind and, despite
his Puritanical code, a kindly, sympathetic spirit. His romantic interest and even
his serious intentions were disclosed quite unexpectedly, with a proposal of mar-
riage during our drive along the malecón to the Vedado and Marianao and back
again to port. He could assure me, he said, of his lifelong devotion and a worthy
home of my choosing ‘‘in our own country.’’ He was prepared, if I were to ac-
cept him, to sever his Philippine business connections so as to be free to travel, a
‘‘constructive diversion,’’ he noted, that I apparently enjoyed. In response to his
sincerity, I replied that while I was fully aware of the compliment he had paid me,
I had no desire at present to give up a mode of life that entirely satisfied me. The
poignant experience, however, more clearly than any other of the period, served
to highlight for me how radical a change my preference in male companionship
had undergone since my contact with Mexico. A year earlier, it occurred to me,
I might have considered the challenge of transforming into love my high esteem
for this refined, sensitive, personable, and obviously lonely suitor who shared my
Anglo-American traditions and whose moral standards and mental perspective
represented familiar ancestral patterns. I still continued to admire the stalwart
and stabilizing values of my inheritance, but now they held far less appeal for me
than the more profound emotional and spiritual motivations I had so recently
discovered in the impulsive and warmly human Latin temperament. I recognized
that Dr. Herbert J. Spinden had correctly if unknowingly analyzed the psycho-
logical change when, in presenting me with a copy of his book on Maya time
correlation, he had written above his autograph: ‘‘To my friend, Alma Reed, who
has tasted of the tropics and found the flavor good.’’
Upon my return to the ship, Captain Blackadder informed me that he had just
received orders from ‘‘Yucatán’s highest authority’’ to take ‘‘very special’’ care of
me, adding that he had already found this an easy and agreeable responsibility.
He had made the announcement in the presence of my visibly mystified escort,
but I did not feel it necessary to explain. That evening, the new British Consul in
Mérida and his two London friends who were on holiday for a Campeche jungle
safari gave a party in the captain’s quarters, inviting as their guests a young Mexi-
can couple, an attractive Los Angeles widow, and myself. The next morning, the
New England banker expressed his disapproval of the English hosts, describing
them as ‘‘rather frivolous companions for so serious a young lady.’’ Serene in
the blissful confidence that within twenty-four hours I would again look upon
Felipe’s face, I merely smiled in answer. But if I had spoken, I would have said that
no male fellow passenger—whether as frivolous as Punchinello or as solemn as
Jeremiah—could offer the most ephemeral rivalry to the noble masculine image
that dominated my consciousness, an image that completely fulfilled my dreams
of perfection.
peregrina 287

And now, as the long-anticipated moment neared, I found myself in a state

of delicious excitement. Attired for the occasion in an attractive costume—a
pale blue organdy gown and a picture hat of the same shade—I hurried through
breakfast and shortly after sunrise went out on deck, followed by my puzzled
admirer. Eager to watch the departure of the shore-to-ship tender from the Pro-
greso wharf, five miles distant, I had borrowed the captain’s binoculars. Soon I
imagined I saw Felipe’s tall athletic figure vaguely discerned against the cabin
of the little boat, as with ribbons of white foam it streaked the expanse of tur-
quoise water between us. But my elation vanished with the realization that it
was all illusion—a figment of my wishful thinking. Felipe was not aboard the
speeding tender, although he had wired me on June 28 that with Don Eduardo
Thompson he would meet me aboard the steamer at Progreso. I felt crushed and
even humiliated when none of his friends or assistants appeared in sight. But
disappointment gave way to anxiety as I continued to wonder what could have
prevented his coming. Both emotions, however, were of short duration. For as
soon as the cargador 1 Gómez, whom I had met on my previous trip, leaped over
the liner’s deck rail, he announced that Felipe was sending out his own launch
with a reception committee, headed by Manuel Cirerol and carrying a stringed
orchestra. As it approached, Felipe’s musicians, each wearing a bright silk scarf
and sash, were strumming their guitars and singing ‘‘Peregrina.’’ The orchestra-
tion of my lovely song had not yet been completed, but I remembered the open-
ing theme from that enchanted evening in Ricardo Palmerín’s little garden. And
now, hearing the words and the melody together for the first time, was almost
as thrilling an experience as the second time, when, a few months later—and
again at sea—the musical accompaniment reached me in its exquisite finished
form, at midnight, in my cabin aboard the storm-tossed cruiser Jalisco. In a few
minutes, Felipe’s motorboat drew up alongside the Yucatán, its gaily festooned
arches of bugambilia and tulipán daubing with a spot of radiance the Yucatán’s
tarnished white hull. After a cordial abrazo,2 Manuel presented me with a huge
bouquet of red roses. ‘‘These are from His Majesty,’’ he said, laughingly adding,
‘‘as though you had to be told.’’ Escorting the ‘‘Prime Minister’’—as Felipe and
I often referred to Manuel—was the lively red-haired Louis Crossette, personal
representative of the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Herbert Hoover. The affable
Californian had been sent to Mérida to work out a direct-bargaining arrange-
ment between the henequen cooperatives of the Partido Socialista del Sureste
and the Grange organizations of the United States. At the time, the vast majority
of North American farmers were dependent upon Yucatán’s sisal hemp for the
binding of their grain crops.
In his role of ‘‘Prime Minister,’’ Manuel, aided and abetted by the persua-
sive Crossette, kept urging me to ‘‘jump ship’’ and give Felipe the ‘‘infinite joy of
288 Alma M. Reed

seeing me at Chichén Itzá on the Maya day of days.’’ But when he realized that
arguments were futile, he handed me as ‘‘a token of defeat’’ a letter from Felipe
in which he expressed his ‘‘deep pain’’ at being unable to welcome me at Pro-
greso because of ‘‘moral commitments to the Inditos who were arriving hourly
by the hundreds from every part of Yucatán.’’ He knew I would understand his
position, as he would understand that I, too, had good reasons for not accom-
panying Manuel to Mérida. His letter closed with the exciting announcement
that he would arrive in Mexico City the following week, sailing Wednesday on the
Esperanza, and with the glowing promise to ‘‘spend a long time’’ with me there.
Manuel also delivered to me an envelope bulging with carefully handwritten
pages from the veteran explorer Edward H. Thompson and a bound volume gold-
engraved with my name, containing all the laws enacted by the Socialist Govern-
ment of Yucatán. Manuel’s vivid descriptions of the preparations for the historic
assembly at Chichén Itzá provided me with colorful material for cables, which
he sent for me from Mérida to the New York Times and the United Press. In my
radioed message to Felipe, I congratulated him on his epochal achievement and
assured him that I would eagerly await his arrival in the capital.
Captain Blackadder, whom the British Consul and his friends had toasted be-
fore disembarking as ‘‘that jolly old Scot off the Clyde,’’ took advantage of the
presence of the serenading guitarristas to declare a fiesta of his own in celebra-
tion of Felipe’s completion of the highway to the ancient Maya capital. Right up
until the anchor was lifted, he dispensed liquid hospitality while the musicians
charmed the passengers with their repertoire of tender Yucatecan songs.
To the delight and information of everyone on board, Manuel contributed, in
his perfectly good English, an outline of the meaning and objectives of the Chi-
chén Itzá celebration. He explained that in addition to dedicating the new high-
way, Governor Carrillo was using the occasion to make his people conscious—
and proudly conscious—of their noble cultural heritage and to bring together
from the most isolated pueblos Indians who had never before looked upon the
architectural magnificence created by their gifted forebears. The Maya—some
ninety thousand of them—Manuel said, would remain for several days in their
ancient ancestral capital as Governor Carrillo’s guests, during which period he
would try to impress them with their duty to build a new civilization upon the
solid foundations of their racial achievements over the past millennia.
Two restless, impatient days and three nights were occupied in the run be-
tween Progreso and Veracruz where, after brief port formalities, I boarded the
early Mexico-bound train. To the chagrin of the unfailingly attentive New En-
gland banker, I accepted a Pullman seat beside Sr. Tomás Castellanos Acevedo,
gerente 3 of the Reguladora Henequenera Exportadora de Yucatán, whom I had
met at Carnegie Expedition social affairs. His appointment as head of the hene-
peregrina 289

quen industry had been criticized by some of the Partido Socialista members on
the grounds that the hacendado belonged to the clase aristocrática. But Felipe
defended his choice with the answer that it would have been difficult in the entire
state to duplicate the experience of Castellanos, known as el financiero,4 in the
production and marketing of henequen. He pointed out that during the current
crisis period Yucatán’s most urgent need was for a man of proven ability to handle
efficiently the business upon which the economy of Yucatán was dependent.
On my previous Mexican visit, I had traveled to the heights beyond the Oa-
xaca Valley into Tehuantepec, and on several occasions I had joined the mis-
sionary teachers in their trips by truck and ambulance to the isolated pueblos
of Morelos hidden among the crags of the mil cumbres.5 But now, as we gradu-
ally ascended to higher levels, Mexico’s true scenic grandeur unfolded with dra-
matic impact. I was making the daylight train trip between the Gulf Coast and
the Altiplano 6 for the first time and it was only now that I could fully appreciate
the passion of the average Mexican for his native soil, as well as the country’s
magnetic appeal for the many foreigners who came as tourists and remained as
permanent residents.
Assuming the attitude of a host who proudly displays his treasured posses-
sions to a new guest, Don Tomás indicated the chief points of interest along the
route as we passed over miles of tropical luxuriance. But in less than an hour or
two later, in striking contrast to the radiant tierra caliente 7 with its rich coffee
plantations and gardens hailed as the ‘‘orchid collector’s paradise,’’ we entered
a temperate zone where the railroad tracks were bordered by dark pine forests.
About midway on the journey appeared the flourishing industrial cities of Cór-
doba and Orizaba, the latter near the base of the towering peak of the same name.
Dominating the landscape from almost every angle, the stark white of its sym-
metric bulk was silhouetted against an azure sky, like a Japanese painter’s concept
of the Sacred Fujiyama.
But throughout all our rapturous gazing from train windows, I did not lose
sight of the more personal implications of my chance encounter with Don Tomás.
I was conscious that the shrewd success-minded financier had not invited me to
sit beside him during the twelve-hour ride for the purpose of exchanging im-
pressions on the grandiose Mexican landscape. He was far more interested, as I
soon gathered, in learning my views on immediate ways and means of spreading,
in the United States and Europe, information on Yucatán, its natural resources,
business opportunities, and unique tourist attractions. In discussing the pub-
licity outlook, I suggested a Yucatecan celebration of Washington’s recognition
of Mexico, which now seemed imminent. He urged me to call this and other
forms of promotion that occurred to me to Felipe’s attention, and I promised
him that I would do so. I rather suspected that in view of all the gossip and the
290 Alma M. Reed

rumors then current in Mérida, he might easily believe I could exert an influence
upon Felipe’s future thought and action. At least it might be useful for his own
political purposes merely to know my opinions on various controversial public
issues.
Unlike my first arrival in the capital seven months earlier, there was no re-
ception committee bearing huge bouquets and birdcages on hand to greet me,
when at sunset, the train pulled into the Buenavista railroad station. However,
Don Tomás and the New England banker together handled the baggage details,
and both escorted me to the Hotel Regis. When I entered the lobby, the room
clerk, the elevator operator, and the bellboys gave me a warm welcome, and evi-
dently someone notified the press. Reporters from the leading dailies were soon
asking for interviews, and on the following day a very flattering article carry-
ing my photograph appeared in El Universal. The announcement brought sev-
eral visitors—the distinguished Sr. Don Elías de Lima, who had been the Con-
sulate for the Technical Committee for the National Debt Adjustment; his son,
Clarence, with his lovely young wife, Carlota, daughter of the former Minister of
Foreign Relations Ignacio Mariscal; and her blonde sister, Mrs. Arthur Constan-
tine, whose husband, the Hearst syndicate representative, was the most promi-
nent North American newspaperman in Mexico. Bon and Aimee Rovzar, with
their usual heartwarming responsiveness, and Dr. Jorge Enciso, director of res-
torations and preservation of the nation’s artistic and historic monuments, were
among friends who welcomed me and made me feel that my return was a real
‘‘homecoming.’’
But as I soon discovered, the Regis management was strangely lacking in cor-
diality in contrast to the very friendly attitude displayed the previous Decem-
ber when an assistant manager had been sent to the station with flowers to see
me off for San Francisco. I was at a loss to understand the reason for the com-
pletely different attitude. It was somewhat of a shock, as my diary records, to be
greeted by Manager Montes at our first meeting after my arrival with the curious
question: ‘‘Returning to Yucatán?’’ especially when his voice carried vaguely un-
pleasant inflections and supercilious undertones. There were other disagreeable
changes. The atmosphere of the lobby that had formerly seemed a proper place
to receive callers now repelled me. The armchairs and the cushioned benches
were occupied day and night by unmistakable adventurers and confidence men,
mostly Americans. They were often in conversation with the uniformed Mexi-
can Army officers, while a frequent participant in the international huddles was
Joe de Courcy, ex–lightweight pugilist from Chicago and the present staff re-
porter for the New York Times in Mexico. I sensed something so unwholesome
in the air that I even noted my dismal impressions of the ‘‘change’’ in my diary.
Yet I could not have guessed that this same group of lobby loungers was plotting
peregrina 291

treason that would so vitally affect my own life, under the pay and direction of
Rodolfo Montes, owner and manager of the Hotel Regis and chief publicity agent
for Adolfo de la Huerta.

When the de la Huerta revolution broke out in the early part of December 1923,
Felipe was giving enthusiastic attention to the details of his program. He was in
high spirits. Things were going well; there was no interference on the part of the
Chief Executive with the ever-broadening measures that were being taken for
the people’s welfare. Hostility of the dispossessed hacendados could not be over-
looked, but they were held in check and did not dare move against the new way
of life, where the slave of former years was now a proud citizen, participating in
government and enjoying the fruits of his labors.
Rumors of unrest throughout the country had reached the southeastern states
but, for the most part, were not taken very seriously. After years of active war-
fare, Obregón now seemed well entrenched in political office, and it appeared
that he was supported by the populace. Still, 1923 had been a time of endless
disagreements, perhaps only natural among men who were seeking to stabilize
the government after thirty years of dictatorship and the subsequent upheaval.
Several quickly formed parties were struggling for power, and now that Obre-
gón’s term was drawing to a close, ambitious individuals were casting sidelong
glances at the presidency. The main reason, eventually, for disaffection of some of
his former supporters was Obregón’s backing of Plutarco Elías Calles, formerly
Governor of Sonora, as the next presidential candidate.
Adolfo de la Huerta, an ex–café singer, former Governor of Sonora, and in that
crucial year of 1923 Secretary of Hacienda 8 in the cabinet of Obregón, had been
interim president after the assassination of Carranza, and the taste for supreme
office remained in his blood. Under Obregón he had been diplomatic representa-
tive of Mexico in the United States and had wrestled with a tough and relentless
policy that threatened to make a nervous wreck of him. He was especially upset
by the Bucareli Agreement, whereby, for the price of recognition, Mexico was
forced to concede certain economic rights to its powerful neighbor. When he
entered Obregón’s cabinet, he was in such a state of doubts and fears that he be-
came easy prey to politicians who felt they could use him for their own ends.
Among these were Jorge Prieto Laurens and Rafael Zubarán Capmany.
These men had at first been vociferous advocates of Calles, enfolding his image
with brotherly love. Prieto Laurens had said: ‘‘Calles is the symbol of revolu-
tion.’’ And in the summer of 1923, de la Huerta spoke at a big meeting of the
Cooperative Party to this effect: ‘‘For no reason will I betray the brother of my
soul, General Calles.’’
But the situation changed when Calles took no steps to uphold Prieto Lau-
292 Alma M. Reed

rens in a dispute over the governorship of San Luis Potosí, to which the latter
contended he was duly elected. De la Huerta supported the Prieto Laurens claim
and took it up with Obregón, who said it was a matter for that state to decide.
De la Huerta flew into a rage and threatened to resign as Secretary of Hacienda.
Obregón did not try to stop him. On September 24 he did resign and openly
declared himself an enemy of Calles. At the Cooperative Party Convention on
November 23 he accepted the candidacy for President.
By the end of November de la Huerta was sure, rightly or wrongly, that on two
occasions he had escaped assassination. He felt that certain death lay ahead if he
remained in Mexico City. According to Alfonso Taracena, in La verdadera revo-
lución mexicana (1923–24),9 on December 4 he was told his residence was to be
ransacked for arms. He hid in the house of a friend. At two o’clock in the morning
a spokesman for General Guadalupe Sánchez, in command at Veracruz, invited
him urgently to go to that port, as he had learned of a plot to assassinate him
that day in Mexico City. He hid in a house in Villa Guadalupe, waiting for the
night train to Veracruz. With him were Zubarán Capmany and Prieto Laurens to
bolster up the spirits of the panic-stricken Sonoran.
On December 5 the train arrived in Veracruz, the crew having torn up the rails
behind them. De la Huerta and his friends were welcomed by General Guada-
lupe Sánchez, and by evening the rebellion was installed. From his hotel in Vera-
cruz, de la Huerta praised President Obregón as a man of talent who, if he would
curb his hatreds and his passions, ‘‘could be considered as a true superman.’’ His
friends were appalled by these words. Prieto Laurens said: ‘‘We are in Veracruz
because we have no security in Mexico.’’ A call was immediately sent out to the
five southeastern states to join the revolution. The navy, stationed in the harbor
of Veracruz, submitted to the rebel commander, Guadalupe Sánchez, as did the
army in that area.
On December 7 de la Huerta issued a manifesto in which the government of
General Álvaro Obregón was no longer recognized. The President was accused of
tyrannical acts, among them the violation of states’ rights and of enforcing sup-
port for the candidacy of Plutarco Elías Calles. Obregón answered with a strong
statement on behalf of the Constitution and called attention to the loyalty and
discipline of the national army. De la Huerta shrank from the thought of blood-
shed. When Xalapa was taken, he ordered that no prisoners should be killed.
High-ranking military men were to be allowed to walk about freely. Zubarán,
Prieto Laurens, and others believed him to be absolutely crazy.
During this time many generals, eventually more than a hundred, were rising
throughout the country. De la Huerta was named as supreme chief of the revolu-
tion. He went into a panic and claimed he didn’t know anything about a revolu-
tion. Alonzo Capetillo, in Rebellion without a Head,10 says that de la Huerta had
none of the qualities of a leader but would fly into emotional rages in a crisis.
peregrina 293

His suspicion of others—especially of General Antonio Villarreal, who was of

presidential timber and was also a rebel because of his hatred of Calles, respon-
sible for the death in 1918 of his very good friend, Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara—
created one split after another. But Puebla was temporarily taken by Villarreal,
and through urgent necessity, agents were sent to the United States to buy arms,
a move that was quickly frustrated by Samuel Gompers and the labor unions.
Through the Pan-American Federation of Labor, American workers upheld the
legal government in Mexico, and along the docks they refused to load arms and
supplies for the de la Huerta uprising.
When Felipe, as Governor of Yucatán, received the invitation that was prac-
tically an order to rebel, he acted both in his role as Chief Executive of the State
and as head of the Socialist Party of the Southeast. Declaring his allegiance to the
legal federal government, he ordered the organization of all military forces. He
sent Manuel Cirerol Sansores to the United States to buy arms. The Comisión
Exportadora supplied 200,000 pesos. His plan was for every man to have a rifle
so that the Leagues of Resistance might defend themselves against the greed and
brutality of reaction. Later, in a letter he wrote to me:

. . . and in the midst of this bloody and desperate activity, you were always
in my imagination, adored of my soul. If you knew how much I wish that
you were at my side! Only because I love this country so much, with all my
heart, I will not abandon it. It is an injustice to involve men in war for per-
sonal and egoistic concerns, such as I now have. I feel that I was not born
for these times, nor for this land full of ambitious and inhuman people . . .

Eulalio Gutiérrez, former interim President, launched from Saltillo a mani-

festo condemning Guadalupe Sánchez and Enrique Estrada, a leading rebel. He
called on all soldiers of the Republic to remain loyal to General Obregón.
On December 12, at eight o’clock in the morning, the presidents of the Leagues
of Resistance in Mérida and nearby pueblos held a meeting. Felipe had govern-
ment funds moved from the Bank of Lacaud to the General Treasury. He had an
inventory made of powder, dynamite, etc., in the stores and gave instructions
that they should not be sold without an order from top authorities. At eleven
a.m. he and some of his friends went to the railway station to dispatch troops to
aid Campeche under Colonel Robinson, in whom he had complete confidence.
Robinson was chief of the garrison in Mérida; like Felipe, he refused to support
the rebels. In another letter to me, Felipe explained:

Your house is like a barracks; a group of friends are with me here, and a
small force of police is on guard in case anything happens; at this moment
we do not have confidence in anyone, because even the least of men may
294 Alma M. Reed

have a friend who is a traitor parading as a socialist, who is only with us to

spy on us, especially the so-called military men, so that we don’t know from
one minute to the next who is going to stab us in the back . . .

Colonel Robinson had taken the place of Lieutenant Valle, who was now on
the side of the rebels. As the Colonel and his contingent left for the Campeche
train, there were many ¡vivas! for Felipe and Obregón. But what lay ahead was
uncertain. For one thing, the attitude of Colonel Durazo, chief of military opera-
tions in Campeche, was ambiguous. Xavier Marín Alfaro, who was with Felipe,
tells what happened in an Excélsior article, published on December 20, 1962:

The train left and we were all convinced of the loyalty of the soldiers to the
federal government. Accompanying Felipe Carrillo Puerto, we went to the
offices of the Socialist Party, where a telegraph office was installed, in order
to learn the news and find out what progress the military advance troops
were making in Campeche, as the security of the government depended
on them.
In the pueblo of Uman, eight kilometers from the city of Mérida, we
learned that the train had been detained and that the troops got off in order
to buy aguardiente.11 That was where treason started.

Colonel Robinson could not control the situation. The soldiers started shout-
ing ¡vivas! for Guadalupe Sánchez and Adolfo de la Huerta. Felipe and his friends
were at lunch in Felipe’s house when a telegram arrived from Robinson, telling
what had happened. Again Robinson telegraphed, advising that Felipe should
go by ship to buy arms. Then Robinson was taken prisoner. The men did not
finish their lunch. They went at once to the center, where they found out that
merchants were robbing the Lacaud Bank. Then they went to the railway station,
where Felipe ordered a train to be made ready. At the station they met a large
group of peasants carrying shotguns. They were from the pueblo of Kanasín and
were led by the president of the League, Entimio Ek, who addressed the Gover-
nor in the indigenous language: ‘‘Don’t go, Felipe. Stay with us. We’ll fight those
wicked men. We’ll make them turn their backs.’’
Felipe answered him in the same idiom. He and his friends were merely going
to hide, he said, as the wicked men had good arms and much blood would be
spilled. And he promised to come back with arms and defeat them. In his mind
his plans were developing. First he would go to his native village of Motul. He and
his brothers would arrange to get the ship that was on its way to the east coast to
pick up supplies. Once in the United States, he knew he could count on the labor
unions there. At the very moment that he talked to Entimio Ek, his enemies were
peregrina 295

robbing the offices of the Socialist Party. Alfredo Ponce, one of the proprietors
of the Yucatán Brewery, who was nicknamed ‘‘Little Rabbit,’’ organized a dem-
onstration with automobiles; on one of them was fastened the triangular banner
of the Socialist Party of the Southeast. It was being dragged derisively through
the streets of the city until it fell into rags.
Felipe knew beyond any doubt that the Church and the once powerful hacen-
dados of the henequen plantations were backing the Guadalupe Sánchez–de la
Huerta rebellion in Yucatán. It was their opportunity to repossess the lands and
again establish conditions of actual slavery. They had moved with great speed,
taking advantage of the surprise element. The garrison in Mérida, notably the
18th Battalion, had been taken over by General Hermenegildo Rodríguez; Juan
Ricárdez Broca had usurped the governorship. The revolt was spreading rapidly.
The army of Guadalupe Sánchez took Orizaba, Córdoba, and Xalapa. Maycotte,
Zone Commander in Oaxaca, rushed to the capital and received 200,000 pesos
from Obregón to defend the government. He then joined the rebels.
At three o’clock that day, December 12, the train left for Motul, where it ar-
rived an hour later. At the station were three hundred men under Felipe’s brother
Edesio, who was municipal president. They were armed with shotguns and rifles.
A train carrying Constitutional police under Benjamín Carrillo followed. Most
of the men seemed very much upset, but Felipe maintained his usual serenity.
He conferred with Edesio, who said he could raise five thousand men, but they
needed ammunition to go into action.
By telephone Felipe was informed that a military train was in pursuit. He
ordered a ‘‘wild’’ locomotive sent toward Mérida. Being loaded with dynamite, it
blew up between Motul and Chacabal, thereby cutting off means of communica-
tion. It was about five in the afternoon when the two trains went on to Cansahcab.
There was no excitement at this place, only the usual peddlers of food. The agent
of the Hacienda of Temax delivered some funds to Benjamín Carrillo. Then the
two trains went on toward Tunkas. In Temax Felipe had advised anyone who
wanted to leave the train to mingle with the populace for greater security. But
only two or three did this; the others chose to stay with Felipe.
The two trains arrived in Tunkas a little after six that evening. Here the Gov-
ernor asked for municipal funds, obtaining the grand total of nine pesos and
a few centavos. Benjamín Carrillo and Captain Rafael Urquía explained to the
police that they should stay in Tunkas, as it was not possible for everyone to go
to Cuyo. They were well armed. But the body of police threatened to kill Felipe
if he did not pay them, so he had to use the funds gathered in the little towns,
along with what Xavier Marín supplied. The police train was ordered back to
Mérida, while Felipe’s train went on to Dzitas. There they were fed by the au-
thorities, after which they proceeded toward Tizimín. Felipe told his group that
296 Alma M. Reed

in a month they would return. In Espita they halted, not knowing which road to
take or just what to do in their critical economic situation.
Finally their train arrived in Tizimín with the following persons:12

Felipe Carrillo Puerto

Benjamín Carrillo Puerto
Edesio Carrillo Puerto
Wilfrido Carrillo Puerto
Licenciado Manuel Berzunza
Capitán Rafael Urquía
Officer Marciano Barrientos
Officer Fernando Mendoza
Officer Julián Ramírez
Adjutant Antonio Cortés
Cecilio Lázaro
Daniel Valerio
Pedro Ruiz

At the station in Tizimín the travelers were met by a delegation of Socialists,

with horses for the journey to Cuyo. Edesio went on foot to Sucopó, not waiting
for horses; he made the trip alone. Valerio, Lázaro, and Cortés decided to stay
in Tizimín and go into hiding. Later these men, with guarantees promised by
Ricárdez Broca, rebel military commander of the state, handed themselves over
to Manuel Bates. Antonio Cortés was not detained and took passage to Mérida.
The goal was now El Cuyo, eighty kilometers from Tizimín. José Duarte, a
schoolteacher and writer, transcribed the events that followed less than a month
after they happened. On the morning of the 13th he was teaching in his little
school when Eligio Rosado Alonzo came to see him. He was general contractor
for the extraction of chicle and the cutting of wood for the Cuyo Company. He
asked Duarte to give a group of strangers some breakfast. Duarte ordered the
breakfast prepared immediately. No one in the district knew of the de la Huerta
revolution.
‘‘Chato,’’ 13 as Duarte was called, and his friend carried the half-cooked break-
fast to a place called Moctezuma. In Canimuc they were overcome with surprise
on recognizing Felipe Carrillo Puerto and his friends—nine in number, all well
armed. Felipe asked Chato and Eligio to step aside a moment and inquired if any-
one had come from Cuyo, explaining that they wanted to leave the country and
peregrina 297

return with arms and ammunition. He said they had destroyed telephone lines
and railroad tracks. ‘‘But,’’ he added, ‘‘my government is one of construction,
not destruction. I hope you will not put obstacles in our way.’’
Felipe asked that Chato and Eligio go with them through the chicle country
so as not to excite suspicion.
Duarte, realizing the tensity of the situation, extended himself to be merry in
an effort to put them in a lighter mood. He was touched to see how avidly they
ate the poor breakfast. He kept up his bantering while Felipe struggled with a
tough chicken leg. He writes: ‘‘If he had fought with it an instant longer, I would
have torn it apart with my pistol.’’ It was second nature to express himself in
verse, and he made lively impromptu poems about the breakfast. Even Wilfrido
and Berzunza, both in low spirits, applauded him.
With Duarte and Rosado, they started out at noon to Solferino and San Euse-
bio. From Canimuc to El Crucero the distance was sixteen kilometers. The latter
was the territorial dividing point between Yucatán and Quintana Roo. During
the ride a branch caught Chato in the right eye and on the ear, so that both organs
swelled up. They all teased him, even the serious Berzunza.
In this way—laughing, joking, and reciting verses—they arrived at El Cru-
cero. They stopped at a small hut and were invited to have coffee. Felipe displayed
his genuine love for the natives and explained to Berzunza why he had to protect
and defend these people.
‘‘Look,’’ he exclaimed, ‘‘how happy these comrades are here in the mountains!
They have their shotguns to get food and to defend themselves against fierce ani-
mals. And at this moment,’’ looking at his watch, which indicated 4:00 p.m.,
‘‘they are through working and are resting to be ready for tomorrow’s labors. No,
there is no race more worthy of protection than the Indian. In him there is no
falsehood; he does not know the perfidy of what is called civilization. I could live
happily among them, far from the ingratitude of the men of society.’’ Berzunza,
who was used to city life, said: ‘‘Not I, Felipe.’’
When it was time to go on, Felipe thanked and embraced the workers. At five
o’clock they arrived in Solferino, where they stayed for half an hour. While the
others rested, Felipe, his brothers, and Berzunza had a consultation. Felipe said:
‘‘I think we should go directly to Havana. There we can get funds and develop
our plans more freely for our prompt return.’’ Berzunza thought they should go
to Belize: ‘‘There we’ll have fewer stumbling blocks than in Havana.’’
Edesio was for hiding in the mountains. Benjamín favored Sayo Obispo or a
safe place near there. They could send an emissary to the Governor of Quintana
Roo, who was loyal to Obregón.
‘‘Let’s go to Ingenio 14 San Eusebio,’’ said Felipe, ‘‘and then we’ll come to a
decision. It’s safer there.’’
298 Alma M. Reed

At half past five, they started off. The distance was only twelve kilometers,
but the road was up and down. They arrived at half past six. Through Eligio Ro-
sada, an evening meal was served, and they ate like wolves. The tortillas were like
leather, but Edesio said: ‘‘When one is hungry, there isn’t any bad bread.’’
Then they went to bed, some in hammocks and some on the ground. Wilfrido
and Capitán Urquía stood guard. Immediately there was a plague of gnats and
mosquitoes. The only one who slept was Berzunza, who for three nights had had
no sleep.
Chato gave up and got behind some sacks of maize, but the situation was no
better. His right eye was swollen shut. Before long Felipe, unable to sleep because
of the plague of insects, joined him and burst out laughing. ‘‘Chato, you look
like Cyclops! No, you look like a Maya idol. You should be in a museum.’’
Then, apparently familiar with Chato’s poetry and plays, Felipe asked him to
recite some of his verse. Benjamín joined them, and soon the others came. In
this manner, with poetry and conversation, they passed several hours.
One of the officers had gone to Chikila to find out about a boat. When he
returned, they all sat at a table and had coffee. Someone called out: ‘‘They’re
coming!’’ Every man ran for his gun. But it was a false alarm.
At two o’clock that morning Felipe gave orders to prepare to go to Chikila.
Eligio furnished two canvas coverings, quilts, and some food supplies.
On that day, December 14, at 12:30 p.m., they arrived at Chikila, which was
not far from Ingenio San Eusebio and was on the seashore in the neighborhood
of the port of Holbox. At the wharf was the motorboat Manuelita, property of
the Cuyo Company. They found this boat to have motor trouble. It could not
be used without being repaired by a mechanic. The only mechanic was Pepé Pa-
drón, and he was in Río Lagarto getting drunk. Pedro Ruiz, who knew something
about machinery and was also a seaman, began tinkering with the boat while
the others sat on the wharf, waiting. Finally Ruíz said it was impossible to make
it go.
There was another motorboat tied up at the wharf. After saying good-bye to
Chato and Eligio, Felipe and his friends took their departure, along with two
boatmen. Felipe gave all the money he had left, also his gold watch, to pay these
boatmen. They went toward the Río Turbio, which the boatmen said was a safe
place. But these two men had somehow been contacted by persons hostile to
Felipe and slipped away. It was very likely that they had been hired to damage
the machinery of the Manuelita. The refugees were left on a beach in a strong,
bitter wind, without funds, without any resources whatsoever.
It was hard to decide what to do next. Finally Felipe sent Berzunza on his way
to see a certain harbor pilot who would hide them in the mountains, from whence
they would go to Santa Cruz or Guatemala. When Berzunza passed through the
peregrina 299

finca of Chikila, he was seen by an old caretaker, who telegraphed about him
to Solferino. When the lawyer arrived at the hacienda, he was arrested by the
commissary, who had previously armed chicle workers and solicited aid from the
agent of El Cuyo to capture him. Four dayworkers, armed, conducted Berzunza
to Tizimín, which he entered on foot at three o’clock in the morning. He was
taken to the house of Manuel Bates, military commander, who turned him over
to Ricárdez Broca.
Felipe and his companions remained in Río Turbio, waiting for Berzunza.
Finally they decided to return to Chikila and try to find out what had happened.
A gale was blowing, delaying the arrival of the C. C. Wehrum, the ship from
Tampa, Florida, that was expected to call at Chikila to pick up lumber. The cir-
cumstance of violent weather was to prove fatal to the fugitives. In order to get
to Chikila they made use of a motorboat, El Salvamento. But the wind, lack of
skill on the part of the navigators, and possibly impaired machinery on the part
of the enemy hirelings swung them toward Holbox, where they ran aground on
a sandbank.
It was apparent that the enemy was keeping track of every move they made.
Captain José Cortés was sent with twenty-eight soldiers to El Cuyo. On Decem-
ber 21 they were finally captured and lodged in the public jail of Tizimín.
At ten o’clock that night a military train arrived. Fernando Mendoza, Daniel
Valerio, and Cecilio Lázaro were taken to Mérida. At 10:45 a train under Captain
Cortés left with the other prisoners. On December 23, two days before Christmas,
they were taken to Juárez Penitentiary and placed under lock and key.
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 22. Martyrdom and Infamy

T
he train that bore the captives to prison had stopped en route in Felipe’s
hometown of Motul. Here his brothers Acrelio and Audomaro were seized
and taken along with the others. It was obvious that the rebel leaders,
backed by the henequen planters and the Church, intended to immobilize the
entire Carrillo family. But when the train was unloaded in the rear of the O’Horan
Hospital, both young men managed to escape. They were later recaptured and
placed in cells.
Hermenegildo Rodríguez, in control of the army barracks in Mérida, and
Ricárdez Broca, who was now political dictator, were conducting themselves with
the cynical insolence of easy victory. The Socialist State had not been geared for
war and hatred, but for peace and brotherhood. The indigenous masses were
loyal and ready to fight to the death with machetes and whatever guns they could
muster, but there was definitely a shortage of ammunition. On the other hand,
scores of shopkeepers, clerks, and civil servants were crawling before the traitors,
who had the arms. In the federal capital, more than one deputy who represented
Yucatán in the Congress showed open delight over the counterrevolution. Secret
meetings were held and plans laid for remunerative posts in the government now
led once more by the old ruling classes.
In this month of December the forces of rebellion were winning several mili-
tary engagements. Although jealousy and suspicion had penetrated the leader-
ship of the rebel forces, dissension had not visibly sprouted. With stolen gov-
ernment funds in their possession, the insurgents were hopefully expecting the
country to rise against Obregón and were confidently awaiting shipments of
arms from the United States and Europe. If they were aware of Roberto Haber-
man’s mission from CROM to Samuel Gompers, to prevent military supplies
from being loaded by North American dockworkers for the de la Huerta armies,
they did not measure this circumstance as one of the factors that proved a power-
ful weapon against them.
On December 24, the day after the incarcerations, Cristóbal Carrillo prepared
302 Alma M. Reed

to go to the penitentiary with a satchel that Doña Adela Puerto had sent to
her sons. A man named Barbosa hurried to some rebel officers, saying that the
satchel probably contained documents. Three officials went to the house of Pastor
Campos, where they found Cristóbal. They examined the contents of the satchel
and discovered only clothing.
When he learned of the arrests, the journalist Carlos R. Menéndez, an intimate
friend of Felipe, immediately telegraphed Adolfo de la Huerta in Veracruz, ask-
ing him to take action at once to protect the lives of these men. Roque Armando
Sosa Ferreyro (Excélsior, January 4, 1954) has said that the telegram of Menén-
dez was the only plea made to de la Huerta to save Felipe’s life. The rebel leader
sent word to Ricárdez Broca to grant garantías 1 to his prisoners and dispatch
them to the Port of Veracruz. Ricárdez Broca promised to comply but claimed
there was no means of transport. De la Huerta sent Licenciado Arce Correa from
Veracruz, and the lawyer arrived in Mérida on December 26, having been a pas-
senger on the Norwegian ship Fritzoe to Progreso. He conferred without delay
with Ricárdez Broca, who promised to carry out the instructions of de la Huerta,
asking only that the Fritzoe be placed under his orders as Governor and military
commander of the state. He told Arce Correa that he could talk with Felipe if
one of his own officials were present. The conversation was brief. Arce said later
that Felipe was in a melancholy mood, although he listened with interest when
assured that he and his friends would soon be in Veracruz.
The historian John W. F. Dulles, in Yesterday in Mexico,2 states that Felipe
called a lawyer to his cell, saying that he was willing to pay 100,000 pesos for
freedom. The lawyer wanted a check on a United States bank for his services and
then went to see Ricárdez Broca. To quote Dulles: ‘‘In the Government Palace
Ricárdez Broca stipulated that the 100,000 pesos be turned over precisely when
the liberating papers were signed, adding that this amount was applicable to
Felipe Carrillo Puerto alone and that an additional ten thousand pesos would be
required for each of his jailed companions.’’
Gustavo Arce Correa, an emissary of de la Huerta, interviewed Ricárdez Broca
in an effort to forestall criminal action. The other lawyer, says Dulles, ‘‘decided
to depart at once for the United States to collect his legal fee before his client
might meet his death.’’ Arce saw Felipe again, and this time found him ‘‘confident,
optimistic, without fear of the future.’’
Eligio Erosa, secretary of Felipe, had been locked up in the penitentiary sev-
eral days before the others had been captured. When Felipe saw his friend, he
told him in the Mayan language: ‘‘Send a message to Mrs. James, telling her to
write a letter to Alma, to my Alma.’’
Erosa wrote a letter to Mrs. James and gave it to Major Palomo, but his office
was accused of connivance with the prisoners and he was dismissed. His superiors
took the letter, and it was never mailed.
peregrina 303

In the meantime, soldiers would gather outside Felipe’s cell, mocking and in-
sulting him. The sadistic command sent mariachis to stand in front of his cell
and play ‘‘Peregrina’’ over and over, reveling in the acute anguish of their victim.
The last time Arce was in Felipe’s cell was on the day Felipe asked Erosa to
send the letter to Mrs. James. The official aide of Ricárdez Broca was present.
Ricárdez Broca had asked Arce to arrange for the money to be paid. There was
the sum of 80,000 pesos in care of the Henequen Commission in New York, but
they would not release this sum without a written order from Felipe Carrillo
Puerto. Felipe said these funds belonged to the Henequen Commission, operat-
ing under his legal government. He said that he had never soiled his hands with
another’s money.
Ricárdez Broca promised Arce that Felipe would be sent to Veracruz in the
Fritzoe on January 2.
On December 29 Felipe was walking down the corridor with soldiers escort-
ing him, on his way to take a bath. As he approached Erosa’s cell, Erosa gave the
soldiers some cigars, and the men allowed Felipe to talk very briefly with him.
Felipe said: ‘‘I know my brothers and I are going to be taken to Veracruz. After
that I am sure you will have more freedom, so when that happens, send this letter
to Alma. As soon as I am free, I will go to San Francisco, California, and marry
her immediately. I’ll tell you when I’m ready to go, so you can go too. In the
meantime, send this letter as soon as possible.’’ Then Felipe put his arms through
the bars, embraced Erosa, and kissed him on the forehead.
The letter, in an ordinary envelope, was in a book, La venta de Indios,3 which
the author, Carlos R. Menéndez, had given Felipe as a present. Erosa took the
letter out of the book, and afraid to be searched, he nailed it under his bed. Then
he was obliged to move to another cell and had no chance to retrieve the let-
ter. Sometime later, when he returned to the cell, the letter was missing, and he
found out that Major Fernández had taken it.
When Licenciado Arce Correa made a final attempt to have another interview
with Ricárdez Broca, the latter was not to be found either at the Grand Hotel,
where he was living, or in the Governor’s Palace or in the chief ’s office in the
garrison. It was clear that he was hiding from the commissioner of de la Huerta
while the plans of the reactionaries of Yucatán were being worked out in detail.
It soon became evident, as reported by José R. Juanes, intimate friend of both
Felipe and Arce Correa, that a Council of War was being held in Juárez Peni-
tentiary. This was confirmed by Licenciado Salazar Arjona, whose brother was
being held in the prison. It was also learned that Felipe’s offices had been rifled,
and various telegrams, documents, and circulars were seized. This material was
used by Hermenegildo Rodríguez, Ricárdez Broca, and other conspirators in a
dismal effort to build up a case against the legitimate government of Yucatán.
On the order of Rodríguez, at ten o’clock in the morning of January 2, Felipe
304 Alma M. Reed

and his companions were taken from their cells and brought into a large room
south of the rotunda, where the members of the so-called Council of War were
gathered. This Council was made up as follows: President, Lieutenant Colonel
Juan Israel Aguirre; First Vocal, Lieutenant Colonel Rafael P. Zamorano; Second
Vocal, Lieutenant Colonel Vicente Fontana, who functioned as secretary; Sub-
stitutes, Colonel Ángel González, Lieutenant Colonel Álvaro C. Hernández, and
Major Luis Ramírez; Military Instructing Judge, Hernán López Trujillo; Agent of
the Public Ministry, Licenciado Domingo Berny Diego; Secretary of the Tribunal,
Samuel Jiménez.
Later, Acrelio Carrillo wrote an account of what he could learn on that tragic
day as to what went on in the corridor of his cell block. At various intervals there
passed by, one by one, Felipe, his three brothers, and their companions. Acrelio
noted with surprise that during the day they did not return to their cells, and he
spoke of this to his brother Audomaro through the wall that separated them.
What happened in that sinister chamber before the Council of War is the clear-
est evidence that with Felipe in their clutches his enemies had no intention of
letting him go to Veracruz or of conducting a fair trial. Hernán López Trujillo,
who as Juez Instructor 4 was forced to be present, has left a moving account of
the day’s proceedings. He says that Rodríguez was at the prison the whole day,
and Ricárdez Broca was present much of the time. No one was allowed to leave,
not even the waiters who served the midday meal.
The Council was installed, with Lieutenant Colonel Israel Aguirre in the
lectern. The prosecution displayed a circular, without proven identity. Trujillo
stated that it was the only document placed in evidence. It read: ‘‘This Govern-
ment (purportedly Felipe’s) knows today that enemies of the present general gov-
ernment of the Nation are laboring with intrigues, declarations, etc., in favor of
the rebels de la Huerta and Sánchez. Any person, in whatever condition he may
be found, is to be shot immediately, since enemies are to be treated that way.’’
Trujillo and some other officials, who had only a feeling of great friendship
toward Felipe, tried to excuse themselves and get away, but were sharply warned
that they ran the risk of meeting the same fate as those who were being judged.
Recalling what went on that day, Trujillo wrote in a state of intense emotion:

When Lieutenant Colonel Aguirre sent for Felipe Carrillo Puerto to exam-
ine him, the shock was extreme, and I felt my strength fail me. If I had been
ordered to speak I could not have said a word.
Felipe Carrillo Puerto was conducted into the presence of the Council
and was questioned by Aguirre. Before any question was asked, Don Felipe
commenced to protest with complete integrity against the Council that was
trying him. He said that if he had committed any crime, there were legis-
lative bodies that should judge him and not a Council of War, which was
peregrina 305

only for military personnel, and he was a civilian. President Aguirre said he
should reply to the questions.

Felipe denied all the charges. When Secretary Fontana read the telegram in
which he purportedly answered the municipal presidents of the state, ordering
them to shoot anyone who was not a friend of the Socialist Government, he de-
nied these also.
Other questions were asked him. Among them were these:
‘‘On what authority did you order the director of the Banco Nacional to hand
over the funds to that institution? (It seems that they were referring to the funds
of the Banque Française.)
Felipe answered that this was done on the advice of Enrique Manero, who
believed that the funds should be placed for safety in the General Treasury.
‘‘Why were the same orders given to the director of the post office?’’
Felipe answered that he had given no such orders.
‘‘Why was the shooting of Muna ordered?’’
He had ordered no shooting.
‘‘What duties did you discharge in the state?’’
‘‘I did not discharge any except that of Constitutional Governor of the State.’’
‘‘What political activity did you carry out at the same time?’’
‘‘I carried out nothing except that of president of the Central League of
Resistance.’’
One by one the others were examined. All denied the charges with the excep-
tion of Lázaro and Valerio. According to Trujillo, they admitted the crimes but
claimed they were ordered by the Inspector of Police, Wilfrido Carrillo. Wilfrido
denied this.
The gruesome performance that was called a trial went on all day and most of
the night. Licenciado Hermilio Guzmán, agent of the Public Ministry of the rebel
government, formulated conclusions against the accused, making an exception
in the case of Licenciado Berzunza, who he said was his friend. But Berzunza re-
jected the exception. He said that whatever the decision was against Felipe and
his comrades, he was equally involved.
Vicente Coy 5 was given the privilege of an exception, to which he agreed.
After the hypocrisy of the ‘‘trial,’’ the Council pretended to deliberate a ver-
dict. Finally by a unanimous vote, a vote of terrorized men, capital punishment
was decreed for Felipe, Benjamín, Edesio, and Wilfrido Carrillo Puerto and for
Licenciado Manuel Berzunza, Mariano Barrientos, Rafael Urquía, Pedro Ruiz,
Francisco Tejeda, and also Julián Ramírez, judged for complicity with the twelve
men and with the Governor for the crimes that had been imputed.
Edmundo Bolio, a friend and close associate of Felipe, has written about this
criminally tragic episode of Mexican history. He says that Lieutenant Colonel
306 Alma M. Reed

Israel Aguirre, President of the Council of War, and Major Ignacio L. Zamorano
and Lieutenant Colonel Vicente Fontana dictated the sentences.
During the time the confrontations were going on, Ricárdez Broca, now Gov-
ernor in Felipe’s place, noted that neither the lawyer López Vales nor Hernán
López Trujillo were to be found in their places. He located them and said that if
they wanted to hide their faces, they should say so. This was an outright threat.
They returned to their designated chairs.
After the death sentence was passed, Major Zamorano warned Trujillo against
any defense of the condemned men. The Assessor, the Defender, and the Pub-
lic Minister were likewise warned. Said Trujillo: ‘‘We tried to communicate with
someone in the street as to what was happening, but they watched us so closely
that it was impossible to do so . . . There were so many threats made against us that
the Defense, which is always very full and covers a wide range, was threatened
and obliged to adhere to the petition of the Public Minister.’’
When the men were returned to their cells, Felipe’s two brothers Acrelio and
Audomaro were still awake and listening, not knowing what had taken place. At
about four o’clock in the morning (they guessed the time), they heard soldiers
call out names one by one, after each name using a string of curses and insolent
words. The two boys somehow managed to cling to the belief that Felipe and the
others were being taken out to be placed on board a ship for Veracruz.
It was at exactly 4:30 a.m., January 3, that the thirteen condemned men were
summoned by armed guards. On their arrival at Cell No. 13 a mistake was made,
and Fernando Mendoza was taken out of No. 14, Cell No. 13 being empty. Men-
doza was recognized by one of the guards, who cried out: ‘‘Not this one! The
other man has escaped!’’
Ruiz, in Cell No. 13, had broken the lock and was hiding in another cell. He
was soon discovered and brutally dragged into the corridor.
The account by Trujillo of what followed is vivid and extremely harrowing:

When I thought that everything was ended (at the trial) and that I might
go to my home, Colonel Hermenegildo Rodríguez,6 who was the person
most involved in all that happened, ordered me to be present at the execu-
tions. All the entreaties and pleas I made to this man were not enough to
convince him that I should not be present at the shooting. I tried to make
him see that these were my friends . . . it was all useless. Taking me by the
arm, he put me in one of the automobiles of the garrison. The same thing
happened to Dr. Guzmán Jr., who was told that he had to certify the death
of the culprits.

The prisoners were taken out of the penitentiary, bound together two by two
and forced into two waiting trucks. The automobiles led the way. When they had
peregrina 307

left the cells, Felipe saw that his brother Benjamín was on the verge of collapse.
He turned to the unhappy soldiers and said: ‘‘Men, don’t grieve for me, but for
my little brothers.’’
The trucks halted before the east entrance to the cemetery. The iron doors
were found locked. A chauffeur leaped over the wall to advise the caretaker. There
was a delay of a quarter of an hour; then the gates were flung open, and the trucks
entered, followed by the automobiles.
They halted before the wall where the men were to be executed. The terribly
overwrought Trujillo moved a little distance away. ‘‘I did not want to be present
at that savagery,’’ he wrote. ‘‘From where I was I could hear Antonio Cortés and
Pedro Ruiz saying that they were innocent. One discharge silenced their voices.’’
Felipe was in the first group of seven men. The others were in three groups,
two men in each one. The lawyer Berzunza asked to be shot alone. The request
was not granted. Captain Urquía protested that he died innocent of any crime.
Benjamín Carrillo embraced his brother Wilfrido and asked the guard to shoot
him through his heart. Wilfrido said: ‘‘How will they tell this to our mother?’’
Felipe remained silent. He had passed beyond any show of emotion into a
tremendous quietude.
Benjamín Carrillo spoke to the firing squad, begging them not to shoot him
in the face, but in the chest.
‘‘Wilfrido Carrillo and Francisco Tejeda were the two last,’’ wrote Trujillo.
‘‘When they were brought to the square where the bodies lay, Wilfrido begged
to speak to me. I was called. Wilfrido stretched out his hand with great feeling.
On his face, wasted by suffering, I could tell he wanted to say something to me
privately.’’
But there were officers listening, and he said only: ‘‘I beg you to go to my
house and take leave in my name of my mother and brothers.’’ He and Trujillo
shook hands.
After the murders, the corpse of Felipe rested against the wall. On his left was
Rafael Urquía, and on his right Mariano Barrientos, who was disfigured by a bul-
let that tore his face. The corpse of Wilfrido Carrillo fell across that of his brother
Benjamín.
Back in the penitentiary, Acrelio Carrillo heard many sounds of men coming
and going. These were the troops who had returned from fulfilling their bloody
mission. Acrelio in his cell heard one soldier say: ‘‘This is the end of Socialism!’’
Another said: ‘‘Poor, poor little Don Felipe!’’ He was crying as he said this, and
he fired his rifle. Another exclaimed: ‘‘Oh, this has been barbarous!’’ Because of
this remark the soldier was killed. It was immediately published in the papers
that he had been accidentally shot by one of his fellows at the penitentiary.
One soldier, seeing another weep for Felipe, told him roughly: ‘‘What are you
crying for? You are not his widow!’’
308 Alma M. Reed

Finally an officer, seeing so many soldiers overcome by grief, shouted: ‘‘Go

to the kitchen or far away from here to cry or whatever you want to do! Don’t
create a scandal. Don’t you see that here in prison are members of the family of
Don Felipe? You are only making more bitter the hours of their imprisonment
and their grief.’’
That morning the mother of the Carrillo Puerto brothers went to the Director
General of the Civil Register and asked for permission to place the bodies of her
sons in their coffins so that they might be seen in the depository. With her were
relatives and friends. The Director refused to give his consent, saying that the
bodies were at the disposition of Ricárdez Broca. The men who had accompanied
Doña Adela interviewed Ricárdez Broca, and he refused to give permission, say-
ing that the bodies were at the disposition of General Hermenegildo Rodríguez.
So the men went to him, and he also refused.
All the petitioners resolved to wait in the cemetery until the interment was
ordered. Rodríguez decreed this to be at three o’clock that afternoon. Friends
and relatives of the assassinated men placed shrouds on their bodies. The burial
took place at six o’clock.7
 23. Never Forgotten

R
icárdez Broca had been present in the cemetery from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m.
when the corpses were in the depository. He entered to look at them and
gave instructions to administrator Alfonso Baqueño to place names on
each body and to turn them over to Rodríguez. Inside the depository was sta-
tioned Lieutenant Colonel Zamorano,1 who played the watchdog all day, observ-
ing and noting down every person who entered the place. From time to time he
communicated with the headquarters of the garrison. Close to the telephone in
the office of the depository a lieutenant was stationed. When Zamorano spoke,
he made everyone leave the room.
On January 4, Enrique Manero, head of the Finance Commission in the legal
government of Yucatán, who was in New York as an emissary of Felipe for the
purchase of arms, sent the following message to President Obregón:

After having exhausted, as Don Santana Almada knows, as many recourses

and arguments as is humanly possible to obtain the liberation of Felipe
Carrillo Puerto, I was finally informed that he had been villainously assas-
sinated along with his companions. It is strongly recommended that in the
name of the nation an anathema of opprobrium be launched against the
greatest assassins and traitors who have ever brought shame to our country.
Respectfully,
Enrique Manero

On January 5, the following appeared on the first page of every daily in Mexico:

The assassination of Felipe Carrillo Puerto brings grief to the homes of the
proletariat and many thousands of humble beings, who on receiving the
news will feel the sincere tears of sorrow rolling down their cheeks.
Don Adolfo de la Huerta will realize the enormity of his crime when he
receives the furious protests that the workers of the whole world will launch
at him for the assassination of Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
310 Alma M. Reed

The generous blood of Felipe Carrillo Puerto is the testimony of the

apostasy of de la Huerta. From now on, neither he nor his followers may
succeed in any way whatever in falsifying the truth through denying the
origin and purpose of his movement.
A. Obregón

Ramon P. de Negri, sub-secretary of Agriculture and Fomento, published a

statement in the press: ‘‘The assassination of Felipe Carrillo, apart from the crime
itself, is a grave injury to the cause of the proletariat. . . . Carrillo Puerto united
a powerful dynamic and an overflowing sincerity with conversion into reality
of the luminous doctrine of emancipation that today sustains and will sustain
to the very last the workers of Yucatán.’’ He said the day was at hand when the
infamous rule of the hacendados would be gone forever, due to the stupendous
force of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Reaction had intervened, but, he said, the immo-
lation of Felipe would cost his assassins dearly. Just now there was black crepe
on every banner of the laboring classes in the world.
There were many other written protests, including one from Calles, who later,
on visiting Yucatán, showed a cynical indifference to the fate of the Carrillo
Puerto family. One of the finest tributes to Felipe was made by Ernest Gruen-
ing, today a United States Senator from Alaska. In an article in The Nation, he
said: ‘‘Thus perished the most enlightened, the most courageous, the most lov-
able man in Mexico. Her tragic history of blood and tears has offered no nobler,
no sweeter figure as a sacrifice to human freedom.’’
Workers in Mexico held a convention and proposed reprisals against the mur-
derers. Hostility at home and abroad against the assassins was so outspoken that
the arrogant Ricárdez Broca became frightened and wanted to place the blame
on someone else. He wrote to Adolfo de la Huerta that one of the intellectual
instigators was Dr. Adolfo Ferrer.
Adolfo de la Huerta disclaimed any responsibility for what happened. Hadn’t
he sent his emissary, Gustavo Arce Correa, to Mérida to arrange for transport of
the captives in safety to Veracruz? But he insisted that Ricárdez Broca was inno-
cent of any complication in the murders, and at his instigation Ricárdez Broca
was promoted to a generalship and made Provisional Governor of Yucatán, a
position he had already usurped. De la Huerta put all the blame on Rodríguez.
It is to be noted, however, that Trujillo, who was present during all the so-
called trials, had heard Ricárdez Broca demand the death penalty in the case of
Licenciado Berzunza, and he certainly did not show by word or deed that he was
against the execution of the others. After the debacle of the revolution, Ricárdez
Broca fled from Yucatán, some say to Honduras, where he committed suicide,
although others claimed that he was killed for his involvement in Felipe’s death,
peregrina 311

and from still another source it is said (without proof ) that he went into hiding
and years later was among the living.
Till the end of the chaotic rebellion, a state of terrorism existed in Yucatán.
Dora Carrillo, Felipe’s sister, arrived in New Orleans on April 5. She had traveled
in disguise on the steamer Elena Valdez. She said: ‘‘My mother, my two brothers,
and my sisters are still hiding in Mérida. Of course we could not hide together
with the soldiers looking for us.’’
The early months of 1924 saw the ‘‘rebellion without a head’’ on the down-
grade, in spite of a few military victories. The incentives that led to the uprising
of so many generals and political figures were for the most part personal griev-
ances and were not of a nature to stir the masses into insurrection. The trade
union movement in Mexico, young and spirited, had been deeply agitated by the
events in Yucatán. With the support of the Pan-American Federation of Labor,
the unions of Mexico and the United States played a leading role in bringing
about the defeat of the de la Huerta revolution.
In his carefully documented treatise, Samuel Gompers and the Pan-American
Federation of Labor,2 published by Duke University Press, Sinclair Snow, Ph.D.,
has reviewed the activities of labor at this critical time. Two days after the revolt
began, CROM Secretary Ricardo Treviño appealed to Gompers as Chairman of
the PAFL 3 for aid in preventing shipment of the arms to the rebels. A similar
appeal was made by Luis Morones.
To quote Sinclair Snow: ‘‘The reply of the leaders of the PAFL was prompt
and unequivocal. . . . They declared that the Obregón government was the best
government Mexico had ever had.’’
Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, was friendly
toward Mexican wage earners; when a young man he had worked beside Mexi-
cans in cigar factories. He had watched the development of the revolution against
Porfirio Díaz with interest and had protested to the United States government
against the persecution of the dictator’s enemies. Through contact with the writer
and trade unionist John Murray, he had become one of the chief architects in
building the PAFL and was now forthright in his condemnation of de la Huerta
and his friends.
Morones, as stated previously, had sent Roberto Haberman to the United
States as his personal agent and general representative of Mexican labor. Haber-
man conferred with Gompers, who wrote to Secretary of State Hughes that he
had been reliably informed about de la Huerta receiving arms from some ille-
gal source in the Unites States. Gompers then set about enlisting the support
of American labor for Obregón. He appealed especially to workers in the trans-
portation and freight-hauling industries. He said that the purpose of the re-
bellion in Mexico was to set that country back a decade or more into dark-
312 Alma M. Reed

ness. An emissary was sent to Texas ports to investigate the possibility of arms
being smuggled through to the rebels. Gompers also appealed to European
labor through the International Federation of Trade Unions, which promised
cooperation.
Ironically, two of the most ardent members of the PAFL in former months,
both with excellent progressive reputations, were now fighting on the side of de
la Huerta. These men were Salvador Alvarado and Antonio Villarreal. Once a
political prisoner in the United States and a friend of Samuel Gompers, Villarreal
now wrote an emotional letter to the labor chief, attacking Calles and attempting
to win sympathy for de la Huerta. His efforts were in vain.
Late in February, Gompers asked Secretary of State Hughes to look into the
case of the family and political associates of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who were
in danger of losing their lives at the hands of delahuertistas. The persons about
whom Gompers was concerned included three members of the Yucatán Legis-
lature who had supported Obregón. They were all women: Elvia Carrillo, sis-
ter of Felipe; Betty Paniche de Ponce; Raquel Dzib y Cirerol. Undersecretary of
State William Phillips replied for Hughes that inasmuch as the persons named
by Gompers were ‘‘naturals’’ of Yucatán, the United States could not intervene.
The vigilance of the transportation and waterfront unions was effective. The
action of these North American workers was a deadly setback to the revolution.
The International Federation reported that there had been no arms shipments
to the rebels from Europe. However, this was not entirely accurate, as the state-
ment of Howard S. Phillips, quoted below, reveals. For many years Mr. Phillips
has been editor and publisher of Mexican Life. In 1923 he had gone to Mexico as a
journalist. He covered the de la Huerta uprising for the Chicago Daily News. His
comments on what he saw in the Port of Progreso, Yucatán, are now being pub-
lished for the first time. He has kept silent all these years because, as an English-
man, he did not wish to involve his native land in such a conspiracy. This is his
statement:

When I came to Mexico in May of 1923, President Álvaro Obregón was

menaced by a counter rebellion, inspired by the Church and the hacenda-
dos, the former opposing the enforcement of the 1917 Federal Constitution
regulations regarding legal ownership of Church property and elimination
of non-Mexican clergy. At that time Calles was the leader of the agrarian
movement and of the CROM labor organization. In Yucatán, Calles’ orga-
nization was the Socialist Party of the Southeast. His antagonism toward
clericalism and the hacendados won him a host of enemies.
The chosen leader of the counterrevolution was Adolfo de la Huerta, a
would-be opera singer who had been rewarded for his aid in overthrow-
peregrina 313

ing V. Carranza by a brief period as Provisional President. He was backed

by the reaction for presidency following Obregón’s term. But Obregón was
backing Calles.
The Bucareli Conferences, carried out by Obregón’s suggestion and
aimed at a resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico,
served as a pretext for de la Huerta’s rebellion. The agreement which en-
sued from these conferences was essentially a tacit horse trade, whereby U.S.
recognition and support of the Obregón-Calles regime was given quid pro
quo in return for a settlement of the claims of U.S. landowners and a ver-
bal understanding that Mexico would not apply the 1917 Constitution as a
means of curtailing the activities of American-owned oil companies.
Regarded by reactionary Mexicans as a sacrifice of national sovereignty,
the Bucareli Agreement served as a casus belli. Jorge Prieto Laurens, a leader
of such Mexicans and a corrupt politician, offered Calles the support of his
party in return for the governorship of San Luis Potosí. Calles refused.
In December of the same year, Prieto Laurens persuaded de la Huerta to
leave secretly for Veracruz and launch an armed rebellion with the backing
of General Guadalupe Sánchez, the Veracruz Zone Commander. Two days
later, General Enrique Estrada, Zone Commander of Jalisco, joined the re-
bellion. The rebels had 23,000 troops on the line, as against 34,000 under
loyalist officers. In the following days, of the 508 generals in the Mexican
Army, 102 joined the rebellion. De la Huerta, who had been Secretary of the
Treasury, looted the treasury of all its cash before he left.
The revolt, which began in Veracruz and Jalisco, spread rapidly. Guada-
lupe Sánchez’s men marched up from the Veracruz coast all the way to
Puebla, occupying Xalapa, Córdoba, and Orizaba. He was defeated by forces
commanded by Juan Andreu Almazán at Esperanza and retreated to Vera-
cruz. After three months of hard fighting, the rebellion was crushed, and
most of its leaders were caught and shot. De la Huerta, Enrique Estrada,
Prieto Laurens, and other instigators had found sanctuary in the United
States and, during the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas, were permitted
to return to Mexico.
Having eyewitnessed some aspects of this rebellion, I recall some details
of certain significance. When de la Huerta looted the treasury and went to
Veracruz, the Huasteca Petroleum Company (subsidiary of Standard Oil)
immediately offered to advance 50 million pesos to Obregón’s government
against future taxes. A man by the name of Rodolfo Montes, owner of the
Regis Hotel and high official for the El Águila Petroleum Company (sub-
sidiary of Royal Dutch Shell), on the other hand, was involved with de la
Huerta’s conspiracy, apparently backing up the rebellion. This was because
314 Alma M. Reed

El Águila represented the prerogatives extended in the Bucareli Agreement

to the American oil companies, contrary to the interests of the British-
owned. (Montes left Mexico when the rebellion collapsed, sold the Hotel
Regis, and built an office structure in Los Angeles, California, known as the
Montes Building.)
The U.S. government helped the Obregón government with arms and
ammunition, establishing an embargo on such shipments to the rebels. De
la Huerta, however, received some arms by way of Belize, British Honduras.
It was therefore imperative for him to keep the route—Belize, Mérida, Yuca-
tán, Veracruz—open. This, I believe, was the reason why the governor of
Yucatán, who remained loyal to Obregón, was killed.
In the local barrios alambre 4 set up by Guadalupe Sánchez’s men, witness
saw men handle brand-new Vickers machine guns that had never been fired.
J. de Courcy filed a phony story about Mexico City being bombarded by
rebel planes. He was detained and expelled from Mexico by the government.

By the end of February there was no longer any great danger from the rebels.
Two months after the start of the uprising the Port of Veracruz was evacuated.
Some of the generals joined the federals. De la Huerta and his contingent in Vera-
cruz went to Frontera, Tabasco. On February 15, Veracruz was open to interna-
tional traffic. In an effort to raise money, the rebels were trying to export chicle
and drugs.
Alonzo Capetillo, in Rebellion without a Head, reports that de la Huerta felt
he was going insane and, in a state of great excitement, said as much to General
Cándido Aguilar. He confessed to Aguilar that he intended to go to the United
States. When Aguilar tried to dissuade him, he screamed: ‘‘I can’t do anything
more! So much intrigue! I’ll be more useful there than here.’’ He left Mexico on
the 11th or 12th of March. In New York he named two supreme chiefs, Alvarado
and Aguilar. Demoralization was making great inroads through betrayal and fear.
Desertions were continuous, and there was very little to eat.
Alvarado, who had gone to the United States to purchase arms, returned in
April. At the end of May, he was shot by rebels while encamped in Tabasco.
De la Huerta went to Hollywood, where for many years he taught singing to
motion picture stars.
No one who was connected with the murder of Felipe Carrillo Puerto and his
companions was ever able to live the infamy down.5
 notes

foreword pilgrim of the red lips

and radiant hair like the sun.
1. The newspaper’s social section.

introduction Pilgrim who left your own land,

the pine trees and the virginal snow,
All translations of original Spanish texts and came to find refuge in my palm
are my own unless otherwise indicated. groves,
under the sky of my land, my tropical
1. For more information about Elvia land . . .
Carrillo Puerto and her feminist organiza-
tion, see Monique J. Lemaître’s biography 5. Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press: The
entitled Elvia Carrillo Puerto: La monja Story of Women in Journalism by an In-
roja del Mayab (Mexico City: Ediciones sider (New York: Harper and Brothers,
Castillo, 1998). 1936), 26. See Ross’s book for more in-
2. His Mayan-speaking countrymen formation about female journalists of
called him by his indigenous name, H’pil this time.
Zutilché, or simply yaax ich, meaning 6. ‘‘The House of the People.’’
‘‘green eyes.’’ 7. ‘‘Idolized Alma.’’
3. ‘‘La Peregrina’’ was originally a danza 8. Although documentary evidence is
(also known as a habanera), the name of a scarce, it is quite probable that this para-
traditional Cuban dance and the rhythm mour was none other than Katherine
that accompanies it. Today ‘‘La Peregrina’’ Anne Porter. According to her biogra-
is regularly performed as a bolero, a genre pher Joan Givner, Porter met Carrillo
of Mexican popular music developed in Puerto soon after arriving in Mexico in
the 1930’s and 1940’s. 1920, and he ‘‘took her rowing on the lake
4. Although several versions of ‘‘La in Chapultepec Park and to the Salón
Peregrina’’ are in circulation, the follow- México, where he taught her all the latest
ing is my transcription of Luis Rosado dance steps.’’ Joan Givner, Katherine Anne
Vega’s handwritten original published Porter: A Life (New York: Simon and
in the Mexico City magazine Impacto, Schuster, 1982), 151.
no. 1359: 9. ‘‘Girl reporter.’’
10. This is a literal translation of her
The Pilgrim
name into Mayan: ‘‘Alma’’ (soul) as
Pilgrim of clear and divine eyes ‘‘Pixan,’’ and ‘‘Reed’’ as ‘‘Halal.’’
and cheeks aflame with a rosy tinge, 11. ‘‘Lovely little girl.’’
316 notes to pages 14–21

12. Quoted in Thomas F. Walsh, Kath- ‘‘When Mrs. Reed believed, with good
erine Anne Porter and Mexico: The Illusion reason, that the dealers would be inter-
of Eden (Austin: University of Texas Press, ested in what was for them the exotic, in
1992), 147. this case the Mexican Revolution, her cri-
13. Some of the information pertaining teria were more commercial than artistic.
to Alma Reed’s New York residence was A painting of Pancho Villa would fetch
taken from Antoinette May’s informative more money than a reproduction of the
biography entitled Passionate Pilgrim: The Queens Bridge. . . . [Orozco] hadn’t gone
Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed (New to Manhattan to create long-distance
York: Paragon House, 1993), 211–243. folklore. Because of this, he preferred to
14. Alma Reed, Orozco (New York: request that I send him his works of the
Oxford University Press, 1956), 10. type that were requested for his first ex-
15. Cited in Delpar, 35. hibitions in Delphic Studios’’ (in Orozco,
16. Here it should be pointed out that Autobiografía, 112).
Orozco’s widow, Margarita Valladares, 19. Orozco, Cartas, 122.
strongly opposed the idea that Reed— 20. Reed, Orozco, 5.
to whom she curiously refers as an an- 21. Orozco, Cartas, 122.
thropologist—might have helped her 22. Orozco, Autobiografía, 88. For her
husband as much as she apparently did. part, his widow points out: ‘‘[Orozco] ac-
In an appendix to the second edition of cepted the invitations made by Mrs. Reed
Orozco’s Autobiografía (Mexico City: to come into contact with a strange and
Ediciones Era, 1970), Valladares states: heterogeneous society, and later would
‘‘The material solitude, not spiritual soli- paint portraits of Eva Sikelianos and Julia
tude, in which Orozco lived, and his lack Peterkin. . . . Only in this way should one
of dissimulation regarding an unfavor- interpret the fact that he accompanied the
able economic situation were elements American writer at Delphic Studios or
that, in her book, Mrs. Reed interpreted any similar event’’ (in ibid., 112).
erroneously, thus creating an almost 23. Quoted in Orozco, Cartas, 130.
pitiful image in which modesty signi- 24. May, Passionate Pilgrim, 223.
fies something more than a simple lack 25. Alejandro Anreus, The Years in
of possessions and where solitude rep- New York (Albuquerque: University of
resents despair. It is a known style of New Mexico Press, 2001). Here I should
certain writers who, by employing taste- point out that while his is an engaging
less devices, thus attempt to manipulate story of Orozco’s formative years in New
the sensibility of the reader who is least York, Anreus rather cavalierly attacks
given to easy emotions. If she had found Antoinette May’s biography of Reed be-
Orozco in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue, cause it is ‘‘filled with inconsistencies
Mrs. Reed’s book wouldn’t have a basis, and errors and too reliant on Reed’s own
as her object was to suggest, without ever 1956 biography of Orozco’’ (149 n. 14).
saying so, that Orozco let himself be led Unfortunately the author of Orozco in
by the hand in a most docile manner in Gringoland commits two fundamental
order to achieve success’’ (111). errors in chapter two, entitled ‘‘Gringo-
17. José Clemente Orozco, Cartas a Mar- land.’’ He states: ‘‘Alma Reed died in
garita, 1921–1949, with introduction and Mexico in 1961’’ (36), but she passed away
notes by Tatiana Herrero Orozco (Mexico on November 20, 1966. Anreus also con-
City: Ediciones Era, 1987), 117. fuses Frances Toor, creator and editor of
18. Valladares comments on this matter: the bilingual journal Mexican Folkways,
notes to pages 21–23 317

with Frances Flynn Paine, a promoter committed suicide in 1931 in the Cathe-
of Mexican art in New York during this dral of Notre Dame in Paris with a pistol
period (28). belonging to José Vasconcelos, whom
26. Anreus, Orozco in Gringoland, 30. she had supported during his presiden-
Curiously, Orozco’s wife received a very tial campaign and with whom she was
different version: ‘‘The exhibitions in romantically involved.
that gallery confounded the critics. The 31. In another letter to Rodríguez
scenes of the executed by firing squad, Lozano dated Wednesday, November 30,
those killed by hanging, had nothing 1929, Rivas Mercado develops the same
to do next to less tormenting New York theme: ‘‘Alma has goodwill but no brains;
prints. Which was the true Orozco? The a North American vice, sentimental and
confusion is the natural consequence of false, and Clemente is dreadful and be-
the fact that Mrs. Reed unsuccessfully lieves he has a right to opine because he
tried to ‘lead’ Orozco towards a show is a genius.’’ Antonieta Rivas Mercado,
window in which the tragedy of our revo- Obras completas de Antonieta Rivas Mer-
lution was reduced to ‘Mexican curios’ cado, ed. Schneider, Lecturas Mexicanas
and that Orozco, on his part, nobly and 93 (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación
tenaciously pursued other desires’’ (in Pública, 1987), 406.
Orozco, Autobiografía, 112). 32. Ibid., 391.
27. Orozco, Cartas, 136. 33. In a letter dated November 17, 1929,
28. Quoted in ibid., 137. Antonieta Rivas Mercado makes her
29. Regarding this aspect of Alma’s con- own—albeit unkind—assessment of
tribution to her husband’s U.S. career, Alma’s physical and mental attributes:
Valladares de Orozco is more generous: ‘‘Alma Reed, fair, blonde, with pretty rose-
‘‘Doubtless the North American anthro- colored skin, voluminous blonde hair, a
pologist [sic] could rightly document melancholic smile (memory of Carrillo
objectively that part which in all justice Puerto) that slides down the edge of her
corresponded to Orozco’s activities in that lips, endlessly approves with her head like
epoch. Essentially, the gallery she estab- those Chinese porcelain dolls that say:
lished under the name Delphic Studios yes, yes, yes’’ (ibid., 396).
was very useful for Orozco, as it gave him 34. Thomas Hart Benton, An American
a place to exhibit and, of course, to sell in Art: A Professional and Technical Auto-
and ameliorate his economic situation. biography (Lawrence: University Press of
At the beginning there was a rift between Kansas, 1969), 61.
the two, because Mrs. Reed hoped that 35. Ione Robinson, A Wall to Paint On
Orozco would produce works of the same (New York: A. P. Dutton and Co., 1946),
kind as those he had realized in Mexico, 150–151.
that is, revolutionary scenes, Mexican 36. According to Orozco’s widow, ‘‘The
landscapes, etc., but he felt the urgency to initiative for Orozco to decorate the refec-
renovate through the stimuli of his [new] tory of Pomona College, in Claremont,
environment’’ (in Orozco, Autobiografía, California, came from José Pijoan, at the
111–112). time professor of art history in that in-
30. Antonieta Rivas Mercado was the stitution, and from Jorge Juan Crespo de
daughter of Antonio Rivas Mercado, chief la Serna. Both were perfectly aware of
architect during Porfirio Diaz’s three- my husband’s prior work. For Mrs. Reed,
decade ‘‘reign’’ as President of Mexico. the Pomona mural became a new and
Overcome by personal problems, she unexpected promotion for sales. She had
318 notes to pages 24–39

completely assumed the gallery’s financial 41. Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary,
administration, which Orozco viewed be- was officially known as Mary I (1516–
nevolently, because from his perspective 1558). The daughter of Henry VIII and
it simply relieved him of something for Katherine of Aragon, Mary I was queen of
which he had never been prepared’’ (in England from 1553 to 1558.
Orozco, Autobiografía, 112). In a letter to 42. Richard Posner, interview with the
Guatemalan art historian Luis Cardoza y editor, October 2001.
Aragón, Orozco complains about Reed’s 43. Rosa Lie Johansson, interview with
questionable administration of his work: the editor, May 2004. Ms. Johansson died
‘‘I have tried in every conceivable way to in August 2004, and many objects once
get Mrs. Reed to return my works, but belonging to Alma Reed were left in her
I have never been able to. She does with Mexico City apartment upon her death. I
them what she pleases; she exhibits them immediately contacted officials from the
without my consent and with no right. Swedish Embassy and formally requested
What kind of control can I have under that they be donated to a local museum.
these circumstances?’’ (ibid., 113). Happily, in March 2005, I was notified by
37. Benton, An American in Art, 62. officials from Mexico’s Museo Nacional
38. Alma M. Reed, José Clemente Orozco de Historia that Johansson’s nieces had
(New York: Delphic Studios, 1932), i. donated a large quantity of their aunt’s
39. According to biographer Antoinette estate to the museum. Consequently, mu-
May, Reed divorced her husband when seum officials are planning to organize
she discovered that he was having an af- an exhibition of this fascinating collec-
fair with her best friend (17). However, tion, which includes clothing—Reed’s
in a Mexican travelogue, curiously titled signature hats, veils, and other accoutre-
The Pig in the Barber Shop (Boston: Little, ments—as well as paintings, photos, and
Brown, 1958), H. Allen Smith claims to files once belonging to her.
have interviewed Reed in the mid-1950’s 44. ‘‘The Aquatic Sports and Exploration
and documents her version of the events Club of Mexico.’’
that led to the couple’s separation, in- 45. Quoted from Joe Nash’s unpublished
cluding those mentioned in my text (93). memoirs, which he kindly let me borrow.
Whatever the truth may be, it does seem 46. In a revealing FBI office memoran-
odd that Reed would abandon her ail- dum dated February 3, 1956, sent to the
ing husband if not for some overriding director of the organization by the special
circumstance. agent in charge (SAC) in Houston, Texas,
40. In her fascinating biography en- his informant, a Mrs. De Puy, reported
titled Anita Brenner: A Mind of Her Own under the category of ‘‘Peculiarities’’ re-
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), garding the subject in question that ‘‘in
Susannah J. Glusker states: ‘‘Anita showed some instances Reed will appear wearing
[Orozco’s] work to many people, among a long black dress, gilded shoes and big
them, Alma Reed, John Reed’s sister. At cocktail hat at 9:00 a.m.’’
that time, Alma Reed was prominent in a 47. I deduce this date from the informa-
salon sponsored by Madame Siquilianos tion provided by Antoinette May in her
[sic], a wealthy patron of the arts’’ (50). biography of Reed (241–242).
Given the circumstances of her own life as 48. May, Passionate Pilgrim, 243.
detailed in this introduction, Alma Reed 49. The obituary that appeared in the
is in no way related to John Reed, the New York Times on November 21, 1966,
author of Insurgent Mexico. states that Reed died of a heart ailment.
notes to pages 40–90 319

I have not been able to confirm this re- functionary of the Díaz dictatorship also
port and thus rely on firsthand testimony referred to as ‘‘municipal president.’’
provided by Richard Posner and Joe Nash. 7. All ellipsis points are reproduced
50. Joe Nash, unpublished memoirs. as they appear in Reed’s original manu-
51. Orozco, Cartas, 141. script and do not indicate an omission of
material by me.
outline of book
1. The systems of debt-peonage em- chapter one
ployed by owners of the great sisal plan- 1. ‘‘Fatherland.’’
tations of Yucatán, in which laborers were 2. The científicos, a group of political
paid not in cash but in vouchers that advisers to Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz
could be redeemed only on the premises. (1830–1915), practiced the philosophy de-
The Spanish term enganchado (meaning veloped by Auguste Comte (1798–1857),
‘‘hooked’’ or ‘‘snagged’’) refers to the fact founder of the positivist school and con-
that any debts incurred by laborers with sidered the father of modern sociology.
the local store or cantina prohibited them According to Comte, the only form of
from abandoning the plantation. These knowledge comes from the study of facts
debts were also inheritable, thus creating and the relationships between different
a de facto slavery, which could span gen- phenomena.
erations. One of Carrillo Puerto’s main 3. Henequén, or henequen, is the Span-
goals was the revocation of this inhumane ish equivalent of sisal (hemp), the most
practice. important cash crop of the Yucatán Penin-
2. An individual of mixed European sula. Its importance diminished only with
and indigenous ancestry. Mestizos make the introduction of synthetic fibers in the
up the majority of Mexico’s population. mid-twentieth century.
3. Carrillo Puerto employs this term
consistently to define those who through chapter two
lack of education and social mobility were 1. ‘‘Patria chica’’ refers to Yucatán, their
unable to express their opinions or raise ‘‘small homeland.’’
complaints. Literally, inarticulado means 2. John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous
‘‘inarticulate.’’ Mexico (Chicago: C. H. Kerr and Co.,
4. The Alliance for Resistance estab- 1911).
lished local alliances (or leagues) in even 3. According to the ancient Greeks,
the smallest hamlets throughout the Yuca- Ultima Thule was the most distant un-
tán Peninsula. Representatives from the known land. Última tule is also the title
Liga Central (Central Alliance) and the of a collection of essays written by Mexi-
Socialist Party in Mérida maintained close can writer and intellectual Alfonso Reyes
contacts with all of these leagues. They (1889–1959) and published in 1942.
were utilized, among other things, for
conducting local and state elections. The chapter three
Liga Central was located in the Casa del 1. ‘‘Boardwalk.’’
Pueblo in Mérida, and delegates from 2. ‘‘The girl journalist.’’
distant Ligas would arrive to present 3. Venustiano Carranza (1859–1920),
complaints and petitions. a Mexican general, was senator during
5. The monetary units here are assumed the administration of Porfirio Díaz and
to be pesos. later governor of the state of Coahuila.
6. Literally, ‘‘political boss’’; a local After the assassination of the constitu-
320 notes to pages 90–95

tional president Francisco I. Madero in bestia del oro y otros poemas (1941). Reed
1913, he organized and directed a revo- takes certain liberties when she translates
lution, acting as the first commander of the title of this work, which should be
the Constitutional Army and defeating ‘‘The Golden Beast.’’ In referring to López
Victoriano Huerta in 1914. Carranza be- as ‘‘Jaliscience’’ (from the state of Jalisco),
came president of Mexico in 1917, and she also errs regarding López’s birthplace.
that same year he promulgated the Mexi- 10. Cronistas were the chroniclers, or
can Constitution, which is still in use historians, who documented Mexico’s
today. He was assassinated in 1920 during history from pre-Columbian and colo-
a counterrevolution headed by Álvaro nial times to the present. Here Reed is
Obregón. referring to the Spanish chroniclers in
4. ‘‘CROM’’ is the acronym of the particular, whose works were well known
Comité Revolucionario de Obreros Mexi- during the colonial period of New Spain.
canos (Revolutionary Committee of 11. ‘‘Comrades.’’
Mexican Laborers), founded at the Third 12. The Population of the Valley of
National Workers Congress in Saltillo, in Teotihuacán.
which Luis N. Morones was elected gen- 13. The pseudonym of Gerardo Murillo,
eral secretary. The organization adopted respected Mexican painter, writer, and
various anarchist tendencies, among them authority on volcanoes. He changed his
a call for ‘‘direct action.’’ name to ‘‘Atl’’ (Nahuatl for ‘‘water’’) as
5. The Renovators were supporters of a gesture to pre-Hispanic civilization,
Venustiano Carranza, leader of the Con- which he most admired.
stitutionalist Army, who in December 14. The former monastery La Merced.
1916 convoked the Mexican Congress 15. In Mexican Spanish, a peladito or
and instituted a series of reforms to the pelado is a person of the lower socioeco-
Constitution of 1857. The changes were nomic classes who often demonstrates his
promulgated on February 5, 1917, and or her misery by begging or dramatizing
responded to the new social reality of their wretchedness in public. A metate is
Mexico. Among other things, the new a stone for grinding corn into cornmeal,
Constitution ratified a system of direct which are normally made of tezontle, a
elections and prohibited reelection. It volcanic stone common in and around
also guaranteed freedom of religion and the Valley of Mexico.
free nonreligious education as well as an 16. Pulque is an alcoholic beverage ex-
eight-hour workday. tracted from the maguey cactus and
6. Tracts of communal land owned in popular—especially with the lower
common by local villagers and consid- classes—from pre-Hispanic times well
ered to be a hallmark of the Mexican into the twentieth century. A pulquería is
Revolution. a tavern that serves pulque.
7. Reed is referring to the ‘‘brigadas 17. In Mexico, a licenciado is a lawyer,
rurales’’ (rural brigades) set up by Mex- but the term can also designate someone
ico’s secretary of education under Obre- with a university degree.
gón, José Vasconsuelos. The latter orga- 18. Francisco I. Madero (1873–1913)
nized the first literacy campaign in founded the National Anti-Reelectionist
Mexico’s history. Party in 1910, opposed to the thirty-
8. ‘‘Development and Agriculture.’’ year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. At
9. Rafael López (1873–1943), born in the beginning of the Mexican Revolu-
the state of Guanajuato, was the author of tion, Madero was named provisional
several volumes of poetry, including La president, and in November 1911 he tri-
notes to pages 95–103 321

umphed in the national elections. In 1913 took advantage of resurgent nationalism

he was deposed and assassinated by an of the era. Machado’s campaign for na-
antirevolutionary movement headed by tional regeneration initially received wide
Victoriano Huerta. support, but he was ultimately ousted
19. The Partido Liberal Mexicano was from the presidency after a period of
the major political organization of those violence against demonstrators, which
who supported the Mexican Revolution, eventually led to a military takeover.
calling for the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz. 2. A ñáñigo is an adept of the Abakuá
This party was organized during the secret society, which has its origins in
Congreso Liberal, which met in San Luis the Ngbe and Ekpe secret societies of the
Potosí in February 1901. Calabar region of Nigeria (their names
20. On the Noche Triste (literally ‘‘Sad mean ‘‘leopard man’’). The first lodge,
Night’’) of June 30, 1520, the Spanish Efik Butón, was founded in 1836.
invaders, led by Hernán Cortés, were 3. ‘‘Tuntún de pasa y grifería’’ is also the
forced to evacuate the Aztec capital of title of a book of poetry by Puerto Rican
Tenochtitlán. The retreat occurred after author Luis Palés Matos and published
the slaughter of many Aztecs during a in 1937. Palés was one of the founders of
religious ceremony, which provoked a the negrista movement in Latin American
local uprising. Because many Spanish sol- poetry, particularly that of the Caribbean.
diers were also killed, they christened it 4. Son is a form of Cuban music that
the ‘‘Sad Night.’’ originated in the second half of the nine-
21. The ‘‘Plan of San Luis Potosí’’ was teenth century, probably in the eastern
the document that would eventually province of Oriente. The son combines the
trigger the beginning of the Mexican structure of a Spanish canción with Afri-
Revolution and the collapse of Porfirio can rhythms brought by slaves, especially
Díaz’s long dictatorship. It was drafted those of Yoruba origins. Reed appears to
by Francisco I. Madero in 1910 and called refer to the lyrics of such songs, which
for a national uprising against Díaz on were first published in these journals.
November 20, 1910. She is probably thinking of the work of
22. Reed is probably recalling this state- celebrated Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén,
ment of Jefferson’s: ‘‘Who would vol- whose poems were often published in
untarily choose not to have the right to magazines and literary reviews. However,
vote, decide to purchase government such poems were not available in En-
propaganda handouts instead of inde- glish translation until after her initial visit
pendent newspapers, prefer government to Cuba.
to worker-controlled unions, opt for 5. A finca is an estate or rural property,
land to be owned by the state instead of much smaller in acreage than a typical
those who till it, want government repres- hacienda of the time and often located in
sion of religious liberty, a single political regions where tobacco, sugar, and coffee
party instead of a free choice, a rigid cul- are produced.
tural orthodoxy instead of democratic 6. The name given by Bartolomé de
tolerance and diversity?’’ las Casas (who transcribed Columbus’s
diary) to the ancestors of the Taino Indi-
chapter four ans who originally met Columbus. They
1. Reed is referring to Gerardo Machado were located in the eastern part of Cuba,
(1871–1939), president of Cuba from 1925 now known as Oriente Province.
to 1933. Originally a businessman, he be- 7. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas was
came a presidential candidate in 1924 and probably the first priest ordained in the
322 notes to pages 103–117

New World, and he dedicated his entire nationalized Church property. In 1861 he
life to the protection of native communi- suspended payment on Mexico’s national
ties in the Caribbean and other parts of debt, which led to the intervention of
the Spanish colonies. Besides the Brief Ac- France and the imposition of Maximilian
count, las Casas is the author of a number of Hapsburg as emperor, while Juárez
of other works, including the volumi- directed national resistance from the U.S.
nous Historia de las Indias (History of the border. Under pressure from the United
Indies). States, Napoleon III of France withdrew
8. The encomienda was a colonial Span- his troops from Mexico, whereby Maxi-
ish system whereby conquistadors were milian was summarily captured, judged,
awarded large tracts of land and their and executed (1867). Juárez then re-
local inhabitants in return for service entered Mexico City and was reelected to
provided to the Crown. The inhabitants the presidency from 1867 to 1871. Melchor
were enslaved on their own lands, and the Ocampo (1814–1861) was a Mexican writer
conquistadors’ only responsibility was to and politician who served as governor to
Christianize them. Needless to say, this Michoacán and, after the Ayutla Revolu-
system led to endless abuse of the native tion (1855), was named minister of foreign
population. relations. He presided over the Constitu-
9. ‘‘Welcome.’’ tional Congress in 1856 and under Juárez
10. ‘‘The Socialist Party of the South- was secretary of the treasury. After the
east’’ was the official name adopted by the victory of the liberals in Calpulalpan, he
Yucatecan Socialist Party at the beginning was apprehended by a conservative group
of 1921. In April of that same year, this and executed.
party elected Felipe Carrillo Puerto as its 10. ‘‘Benemérito’’ (literally ‘‘worthy or
gubernatorial candidate. deserving’’) is the sobriquet of Benito
11. ‘‘Palace of Government.’’ Juárez.
12. Literally, ‘‘little Indians’’; the affec- 11. ‘‘Enemies.’’
tionate way Carrillo Puerto would refer to 12. Camisas are shirts, and paja is straw.
the native inhabitants. 13. Milpa, the Nahuatl word for a cul-
tivated field (normally a cornfield),
chapter five is employed commonly throughout
1. ‘‘Personal assistant.’’ Mexico today.
2. ‘‘The White City,’’ as Mérida is still 14. A cenote is a deep, circular sink-
known today. hole found in the Yucatán, a product
3. Naa is the Mayan word for the tradi- of numerous underground rivers that
tional thatched-roof hut still used by the undercut what is essentially a limestone
inhabitants of Yucatán. shelf. For the ancient Maya the cenotes
4. ‘‘Melancholic verses.’’ were sacred wells where human sacrifices
5. ‘‘Little old lady.’’ were at times performed and offerings
6. ‘‘Dreamer.’’ made.
7. ‘‘Poor little things.’’ 15. The flamboyant, or flamboyán, is a
8. The mayordomo was the principal tropical tree with dazzling red blossoms,
steward of the hacienda. widespread in the Yucatán.
9. Benito Juárez (1806–1872) was elected 16. ‘‘Commission of Exportation.’’
president of Mexico in 1858. At that time 17. ‘‘Teacher.’’
he enacted the Laws of Reform (Leyes de 18. Literally, ‘‘de-fanaticizing.’’ This
la Reforma), which, among other things, educational process was developed by
notes to pages 124–141 323

Carrillo Puerto’s government in order to ing to San Francisco several years later
extirpate long-standing beliefs and even to open a photo studio. He then traveled
superstitions that were a detriment to the to Lima, Peru, where he set up another
development of a modern enlightened studio. In 1873 he married Alice Dixon,
society. and the couple sailed for Yucatán, where
they remained for twelve years. He was
chapter six the first to excavate the ruins of Chichén
1. ‘‘It’s getting late.’’ Itzá and applied his photographic talents
2. Oswald Spengler, author of the im- to the documentation of said ruins, taking
portant and influential work The Decline more than five hundred pictures of them.
of the West, viewed cultures as ‘‘organic’’ His magnum opus—synoptically entitled
in the sense that they normally follow a Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the
life pattern, one he compares by analogy Quiches, 11,500 Years Ago: Their Relation
to seasons. to the Sacred Mysteries of Egypt, Greece,
3. The Mayab is the ancient and mod- Chaldea, and India; Freemasonry in Times
ern region of the Maya, extending from Anterior to the Temple of Solomon—was
the Yucatán Peninsula well into Central first published in New York by R. Macoy
America. in 1886.
4. Reed is referring to the Comisión 3. A Chac-Mool is a reclining male
Reguladora Henequenera Exportadora de figure sculpted in stone, with a hole
Yucatán (Henequen Market Regulating carved in his chest, which apparently
Commission), founded on January 10, was used to hold the hearts of sacrificial
1912, to ensure the value of this important victims. Indeed, the discovery of these
cash crop and to regularize its market figures in Tula and Chichén suggests a
price. According to the Enciclopedia yuca- close relationship between the two sites,
tanense, ‘‘its founding constituted the possibly indicating a Toltec invasion of
first socialist stone laid in the henequen the Yucatán Peninsula during the classical
industry.’’ period.
5. ‘‘Ink shops.’’ 4. ‘‘Tlaloc’’ is the Mesoamerican name
6. ‘‘Struggles.’’ of an ancient fertility god associated with
7. ‘‘Vulture.’’ water and rain. His name is Chac in the
8. ‘‘Pure Maya legends and poetry.’’ Maya region.
5. ‘‘Kukulcán’’ is the name of the
chapter seven plumed serpent, the Maya god of cre-
1. Originally published in London by ation, whose name is Quetzalcóatl in the
R. H. Porter (1896–1902), this was the first Mesoamerican pantheon.
comprehensive survey of Maya archae- 6. Alfred Marston Tozzer (1877–1954)
ology and appeared in six volumes with was a groundbreaking anthropologist
many illustrations, some in color. who first studied the Maya in 1902 as a
2. Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908) Traveling Fellow of the Archaeological
was born on the island of Jersey, one of Institution of America. For the following
the Channel Islands, and later studied in three years he worked as an ethnological
Paris. He was a true renaissance man of student among the Maya in the jungles of
his time, having worked as a surveyor in Chiapas and Campeche. In 1905 Tozzer
San Francisco during the California gold began teaching anthropology at Harvard.
rush. In 1851 he moved back to England, Among other works, he is the author of A
where he studied photography, return- Comparative Study of the Mayas and the
324 notes to pages 142–154

Lacandones, published in 1907 by Macmil- as chicle, from which chewing gum was
lan. He also translated and edited Diego originally made.
de Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yuca-
tán. For his part, Charles Etienne, Abbé chapter eight
Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814–1874), first 1. The camisa and calzones consti-
traveled to Mexico in 1848 as chaplain tuted—up to the mid-twentieth cen-
of the French Legation. He later visited tury—the traditional dress of indigenous
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec as well as Mexicans, normally made of a white cot-
Chiapas, and in 1864 he became attached ton cloth called manta. The presidente
to the French scientific mission to Mexico, municipal is the jefe político, or local
but due to Maximilian’s execution, he political boss.
was forced to return to France. Above 2. The ‘‘War of the Castes’’ lasted fifty-
all, Brasseur de Bourbourg was a tireless four years and reached its peak of vio-
student of Indian culture and civilization, lence between 1847 and 1851. It began as
whose controversial theories attempted an Indian uprising, caused by the ter-
to trace the relationships between Ameri- rible conditions endured on the sisal
cans and Asians, as well as to establish a haciendas, but soon became widespread.
connection between the Old World and It was during this period that Yucatán
the New in pre-Columbian times. His offered its sovereignty to Spain, England,
publications include Histoire des nations and the United States in exchange for
civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amérique- arms and resources in order to defeat the
Centrale (Paris, 1857–1859, 4 vols.), as well rebelling Maya.
as that of the ‘‘Manuscrit Troano’’ (Paris, 3. A huipil is the embroidered blouse
1869–1870). still worn by many indigenous women of
7. ‘‘The agreeable Barry couple.’’ Mexico.
8. ‘‘Chenes’’ is the name of an archi- 4. The Spanish equivalent of ‘‘town
tectural style developed by the Maya of councilwoman.’’
the Yucatán in the late classical period, 5. The Cámara Agrícola (Chamber
characterized by large masks that serve of Agriculture) was founded in 1906 to
as doorways to temples. The Maya of defend the price of henequen and to
the western Yucatán Peninsula devel- promote improvements of this industry.
oped the Puuc style during the classical 6. In reality, the author is referring to
period (sixth through tenth centuries), Article 2, Section 2, of the Mexican Con-
and its crowning achievement was the city stitution of 1857. Article 1 states: ‘‘The
of Uxmal. Mexican nation recognizes that the rights
9. In his work entitled Incidents of of man are the basis and objective of
Travel in Yucatán (New York: Harper and social institutions. Consequently, it is
Brothers, 1868), John L. Stephens men- declared that all laws and authorities of
tions this lintel and how it was removed the nation must respect and sustain the
from its original structure. However, I can guarantees provided by the constitution.’’
find no mention of its tragic fate upon 7. The monetary units here are assumed
arrival in New York City. to be pesos.
10. Chicozapote is the name of a tree 8. Again, it is assumed that the mone-
native to Mexico and Central America tary units are pesos.
and bearing sweet yellow fruits. The sap 9. The Ministro de Gobernación is
of this tree, also known as the sapo- Mexico’s equivalent to the secretary of the
dilla tree, produces a latex gum known interior.
notes to pages 156–184 325

10. ‘‘Business.’’ 9. A polite form of address; literally,

11. The owner of a large tract of land, ‘‘Mrs. Mother of Felipe.’’
known in Latin America as a latifundio. 10. The Civil Registry, where births,
12. The Revista de Yucatán, directed by deaths, marriages, and baptisms were
Carlos R. Menéndez, was an independent documented.
newspaper published in 1912–1915 and 11. Literally, ‘‘wheat-colored.’’ Here
1918–1926. trigueño refers to the color of Felipe’s
13. Baldíos are uncultivated lands and, grandfather’s hair, which was black
according to Mexican law, may be con- or brown.
fiscated by the government and sold to 12. ‘‘Good, boys. My valiant soldiers.’’
another party who promises to culti- 13. ‘‘Sweet breads, rolls, or buns.’’
vate them. 14. Possibly a reference to achiote, the
14. ‘‘Liberal Party.’’ Nahuatl term for k’uxub, a shiny seed that,
15. Colonel Lucio Blanco Fuentes, who when ground, produces a reddish paste
had supported Madero for election and used for coloring in Yucatecan dishes, as
later Carranza, took the town of Mata- the Spanish would use saffron.
moros, Tamaulipas, in June 1913 after 15. ‘‘My poor father.’’
defeating federal troops. On August 30 of 16. Eduardo Bolio Ontiveros, De la cuna
that year he expropriated lands belonging al paredón: Anecdotario de la vida, muerte,
to Félix Díaz, nephew of Porfirio Díaz, y gloria de Felipe Carrillo Puerto (From
and distributed it to local peasants. the Cradle to the Execution Wall: Anec-
16. Over the years, Yucatán has at- dotes of the Life, Death, and Glory of Felipe
tempted to cede from Mexico on several Carrillo Puerto) (Mérida: Talleres Gráficos
occasions. This first occurred during the y Editoral Zamná, 1973).
Caste War and has been a topic of politi- 17. Here jefe, or chief, refers to Felipe, for
cal debate well into the twentieth century. he was these men’s boss. Don Justiniano’s
Because of its unique history, the region is answer is ‘‘Who knows?’’
often referred to as the Sister Republic of 18. ‘‘Maize.’’
Yucatán. 19. ‘‘Story of the little birds.’’
17. Ayuntamientos are the municipal 20. ‘‘Recollections and stories.’’
governments of towns and villages in
Mexico. chapter ten
1. Charles Callan Tansill, America
chapter nine Goes to War (Boston: Little Brown and
1. ‘‘The Peón Contreras Theater.’’ Co., 1938).
2. The ‘‘Valley of Anáhuac’’ refers to the 2. Isidro Fabela, Historia diplomática
geological setting from which the Aztecs de la revolución mexicana, 2 vols. (Mexico
ruled during the time of their empire City: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
and comprises the plateau between the 1958–1959).
Eastern and Western Sierras Madres. 3. The Teapot Dome was an oil reserve
3. A carreta is a narrow cart or wagon. scandal that began during the administra-
4. ‘‘Priest.’’ tion of President Warren G. Harding. In
5. In this case, ‘‘Rectoría’’ refers to the 1922, Albert B. Fall, U.S. secretary of the
home of the parish priest. interior, leased the Teapot Dome oil fields
6. ‘‘Eyes of jade.’’ to Harry F. Sinclair without competitive
7. ‘‘Living room.’’ bidding. These operations became the
8. ‘‘Meals.’’ subject of a Senate investigation led by
326 notes to pages 185–219

Thomas Walsh. Fall was later indicted for in numerous pre-Columbian sites: Monte
conspiracy and for accepting bribes. The Albán, Chichén Itzá, El Tajín, and others.
oil fields were restored to the U.S. govern- 3. Augustus Le Plongeon, Queen Moo
ment through a Supreme Court decision and the Egyptian Sphinx (New York, 1896).
in 1927. 4. Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de
4. The Pan-American Federation of Antropología e Historia was founded in
Labor (PAFL) was an organization con- 1939 during the presidency of Lázaro Cár-
ceived by Samuel Gompers, head of the denas. Evidently, Reed is referring to a
AFL during WWI, as an instrument for prior governmental bureau.
dominating the Latin American labor 5. Tamales prepared in the style of
movement. Motul.
5. T’Ho was the original name of the 6. James G. Fraser, The Golden Bough: A
pre-Hispanic Maya city renamed Mérida Study in Comparative Religion (New York
by the Spanish. and London: Macmillan, 1894).
6. ‘‘Adelantado Montejo’’ was the title of
Spanish conquistador Francisco Montejo chapter twelve
(1479–1553), who took part in the Cortés The chapter’s title means ‘‘Rhythms of
expedition and was later captain general the Mayab.’’
of Yucatán and the island of Cozumel.
7. The pre-Hispanic (Aztec) name for 1. ‘‘The Third Order’’ refers to a branch
modern-day Mexico City. of the Franciscans that encompasses
8. Tepic is now the capital of the west- people from all walks of life.
ern Mexican state of Nayarit. 2. A zacatán is a drum made from a
hollowed-tree trunk covered with jaguar
chapter eleven skin and is played with one’s fingers. A
1. ‘‘El Castillo,’’ or ‘‘the Castle,’’ is the tunkul is essentially a dual-toned xylo-
name given to the largest pyramidal com- phone. It is played with two sticks that
plex of Chichén Itzá. Some experts believe have one end covered with rubber.
that it could be the burial place of the 3. Reed is apparently mistranslating the
mythical leader Quetzalcóatl Topiltzin, meaning of ‘‘Así será,’’ which is ‘‘Thus it
who, after being exiled from his native will be.’’
Tula, traveled with a band of followers 4. Literally, ‘‘a good-looking mixed-race
to Yucatán. There he was worshipped as woman of Yucatán.’’
Kukulkán before sailing east on a raft 5. ‘‘Eatery.’’
of fire-serpents, promising to return in 6. ‘‘Affection.’’
the year Ce Acatl, which coincided with 7. ‘‘Comradeship.’’
the year the Spanish arrived on the Gulf 8. ‘‘Clear and divine.’’
coast (1519). It has been argued that the
native inhabitants considered Cortés chapter thirteen
himself as the returning Quetzalcóatl, 1. Balché is the name of a pre-Hispanic
thus undermining any defense of their beverage composed of water, honey, and
lands. the roots or bark of a tree (Lonchocarpus
2. Juego de pelota and tlachtli refer to a longistylus). Its consumption was prohib-
ritualistic pre-Hispanic ball game, a prac- ited by royal decree during the colonial
tice that links all cultures of Mesoamerica. period.
Many theories exist as to exactly how it 2. Literally, ‘‘humble ones.’’
was played, but its importance may be
gleaned from the presence of ball courts
notes to pages 223–254 327

chapter fourteen chapter sixteen

1. ‘‘Independent Electoral Center.’’ 1. ‘‘Pamphlets.’’
2. ‘‘Democratic Party.’’ 2. ‘‘Esteemed comrade.’’
3. ‘‘Workers’ Center of Motul.’’ 3. La huelga de junio [The June Strike]
4. The Morenista program was the po- (Mérida, 1922). This is evidently a pam-
litical program espoused by Delio Moreno phlet published by Carrillo’s Socialist
Cantón. Party.
5. La Gaceta de la Costa was a weekly 4. In the Yucatán, a mecate—literally,
review published in Motul by Julián ‘‘cord’’—is a square plot of land measur-
Alcalá Sabido between 1896 and 1897. ing 20 × 20 meters.
6. ‘‘Juárez Penitentiary.’’ 5. A British legal reformer and Socialist
7. Followers of Francisco I. Madero. See elected to Parliament in 1922.
chapter 3, note 18. 6. The Palmer Raids were a number
8. Félix Palavicini, Mi vida revolucio- of attacks on Socialists and Commu-
naria (Mexico City: Ed. Botas, 1937). nists in the United States from 1918 to
9. Mexico’s oldest existing newspaper, 1921 and were named after Alexander
founded in Mexico City in 1916. Mitchell Palmer, U.S. attorney general
10. Sobriquet of Francisco I. Madero. during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
11. ‘‘Press Journalists of the States.’’ Essentially, Palmer believed that Commu-
12. Carlos R. Menéndez, Noventa años nist activity was at the heart of America’s
de historia de Yucatán: 1821–1910 (Mérida: economic problems.
Cia. Tipográfica Yucateca, 1937). 7. See chapter 6, note 4.
13. ‘‘Farmers and workers.’’
14. Robert Ross. Francisco I. Madero: chapter seventeen
Apostle of Mexican Democracy (New York: 1. ‘‘Porfiriana’’ is an adjective referring
Columbia University Press, 1955). to the styles and customs of the times of
15. ‘‘Poppies.’’ Dictator Porfirio Díaz.
16. ‘‘Porfirista’’ refers to aspects of the 2. The Labor Code of the State of Yuca-
thirty-one-year dictatorship of Porfirio tán was promulgated on October 14, 1926,
Díaz. and had been decreed by an act of Con-
17. The Spanish word for ‘‘chewing gress on September 16 of the same year.
gum.’’ Chicle was formerly obtained from Its purpose was to defend worker’s inter-
the sap of the chicozapote tree, before the ests, as well as those of capital, and sought
introduction of a synthetic version. to find a just means between these two
18. ‘‘Jungle.’’ factors of production.
19. ‘‘Arms Square.’’ 3. ‘‘Labor Code.’’
4. Official Daily.
chapter fifteen 5. ‘‘Honorable Chamber.’’
1. Edward H. Thompson, Archaeological 6. ‘‘Social Security.’’
Researches in Yucatan, Memoirs of the 7. ‘‘Committee Room. Chamber of
Peabody Museum of American Arche- Deputies.’’
ology and Ethnology, vol. 3, no. 1 (Cam- 8. ‘‘Labor Party.’’
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1904). 9. Obregonistas were supporters of
2. Those who harvest the latex (chicle) Mexican general and later president of the
of the chicozapote, or sapodilla, tree. Republic, Álvaro Obregón.
3. ‘‘A good collaborator.’’ 10. Here señores (sirs or lords) refers to
4. ‘‘Labor union.’’ the landed gentry who had ruled Yuca-
328 notes to pages 256–288

tán with an iron fist until the Mexican macehualli, meaning ‘‘peasant’’ or ‘‘com-
Revolution. moner.’’ In pre-Hispanic Mexico, the
11. Carrillo Puerto is possibly referring macehualli normally lived outside the
to Don Clemente de Jesús Munguía (1810– cities and were vassals and tributaries to
1868), the first archbishop of Morelia and their leaders.
contemporary of Melchor Ocampo.
12. Carrillo Puerto is referring to Mel- chapter nineteen
chor Ocampo. 1. As I pointed out in my introduction,
13. ‘‘Agrarian Party of Campeche.’’ ‘‘Pixan Halal’’ is the Mayan name given to
14. The Toltecs were a highly influential Alma Reed by Felipe Carrillo Puerto. It is
Mesoamerican culture situated in To- the translation of ‘‘Alma’’ (soul) and ‘‘Reed.’’
llán, today’s Tula, in the Mexican state 2. For many years Chapultepec Castle
of Hidalgo. They developed an advanced served as official residence for Mexico’s
civilization between the tenth and twelfth presidents, until the construction of Los
centuries a.d. and were much revered by Pinos, the actual official presidential
the latecomer Aztecs, who traced their residence, located nearby.
lineage back to them.
15. All are names of Spanish conquista- chapter twenty
dors known for their brave—if cruel— 1. ‘‘The Maya Race.’’
conquest of different parts of Mesoamerica. 2. Whitney was a suffragist and political
16. The acronym for the National Revo- radical who was prominent in the found-
lutionary Party, founded by Plutarco Elías ing and early activities of the Communist
Calles in 1929. In Spanish, it was called the Party in the United States.
Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) 3. ‘‘Dragoncito’’ is the Spanish diminu-
and in 1946 became the PRI (Partido tive of ‘‘Dragon,’’ and Carrillo Puerto was
Revolucionario Institucional, or Party of known as the Red Dragon with Eyes of
the Institutionalized Revolution). Jade. ‘‘Dragoncita’’ is the feminine equiva-
17. ‘‘Confederation of Unions.’’ lent, which he apparently adopted as yet
18. The PRI, or the Party of the Institu- another pet name for Reed.
tionalized Revolution (not the Party of 4. Literally, ‘‘House of the Child.’’
Revolutionary Institutions, as Reed calls
it), governed Mexico for nearly sixty years chapter twenty-one
until being defeated in 2000 by the PAN Besides assigning my own title to this chap-
(Partido Acción Nacional, or National ter, I should point out that it is also the
Action Party) and its presidential can- spliced version of two fragmentary chapters,
didate, Vicente Fox. Needless to say, the one included in the typescript I uncovered
concept of an institutionalized revolution in Richard Posner’s apartment and the
is curious if not paradoxical. other given to me by Rosa Lie Johansson.
19. ‘‘Embrace.’’ After comparing these documents, it be-
came clear to me that Reed had yet to put
chapter eighteen the final touches on these final sections, and
1. This picturesque sobriquet of Yuca- I have reconstructed them to the best of my
tán is still used to describe the region ability, while respecting what I believe were
today, although the pheasant and deer her original intentions.
have all but disappeared, due to human
development. 1. ‘‘Porter.’’
2. Apparently, Reed is referring to 2. ‘‘Embrace.’’
an adaptation of the Nahuatl term 3. ‘‘Manager.’’
notes to pages 289–314 329

4. ‘‘The financier.’’ Vicente Coy’s name appears in Reed’s

5. ‘‘Thousand summits.’’ text. Therefore, whether he was one of
6. ‘‘High plateau.’’ Carrillo Puerto’s confidants and why he
7. Literally, ‘‘hot land.’’ was not condemned to die are unknown.
8. ‘‘Secretary of the Treasury.’’ The same situation occurs later on with
9. Alfonso Taracena, La verdadera revo- Francisco Tejeda, who is mentioned
lución mexicana (Mexico City: Ed. Jus, among the men sentenced to death but
1960), with prologue by José Vasconcelos. who had never been mentioned before.
10. Alonso Capetillo, La rebelión sin It is also the case with Fernando Men-
cabeza: Génesis y desarrollo del mo- doza; although he was apprehended with
vimiento delahuertista (Mexico City: Carrillo Puerto, as Reed mentioned in
Imprenta Botas, 1925). chapter 21, he was not judged by the War
11. An inexpensive alcoholic drink Council nor condemned. This occurs with
usually distilled from sugarcane. several other people mentioned only once
12. Beginning with this chapter, in which by Reed.
Reed narrates events she did not witness, 6. Note that although Reed refers to
certain inconsistencies appear with re- Hermenegildo Rodríguez as a colonel
gard to the names of the individuals who here, elsewhere in this chapter and in
accompanied Carrillo Puerto. Because of chapter 21, she describes him as a general.
this, I have corroborated this information 7. Ethel Turner, widow of John Kenneth
with that included in the death sentence Turner and a close friend of Alma Reed’s
composed by the War Council and have who was helping Reed proofread her
corrected names that Reed either spelled book, made this suggestion regarding
incorrectly or failed to include. the conclusion of this chapter: ‘‘Alma:
13. ‘‘Chato,’’ or ‘‘flat-face,’’ is a term of Add here or above what Doña Adela said
endearment in Mexico and other parts of about the mangled bodies, and so end the
Latin America for a snub-nosed person. chapter.’’
14. In Mexico an ingenio is a sugar
plantation and refinery. chapter twenty-three
1. As on other occasions when Reed
chapter twenty-two spelled a person’s name more than one
1. ‘‘Guarantees’’; in this case, guaran- way, she used the spelling ‘‘Sumurano’’ in
tees related to the physical care of the this paragraph for what is assumed to be
prisoners. ‘‘Zamorano.’’
2. John W. F. Dulles, Yesterday in 2. Sinclair Snow, The Pan-American
Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, Federation of Labor (Durham, NC: Duke
1919–1936 (Austin: University of Texas University Press, 1964).
Press, 1961). 3. Samuel Gompers of the Pan-
3. Carlos R. Menéndez, Historia del American Federation of Labor. See chap-
infame y vergonzoso comercio de indios, ter 10, note 4.
vendidos a los esclavistas de Cuba por los 4. Literally, ‘‘barbed-wire neighbor-
políticos yucatecos, desde 1848 hasta 1861: hoods.’’ This term was evidently used to
Justificación de la revolución indígena de refer to a wartime arrangement whose
1847; Documentos irrefutables que lo com- exact definition has eluded this editor.
prueban (Mérida: Talleres Gráficos de la 5. In another note written to Reed,
Revista de Yucatán, 1923). Ethel Turner made this suggestion: ‘‘Alma:
4. ‘‘Presiding Judge.’’ Tell about the procession every year to the
5. This is the first and only time that graves.’’
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
 index

Page numbers in italics refer to photographs.

Abakuá secret society, 321n.2 Amor, Pita, 44

Acapulco’s International Film Festival, 50 Anatomy of a Murder, 50
Achiote, 325n.14 The Ancient Past of Mexico (Reed), ix–x
Acosta, Jorge, 197 Ancona, Juan de, 167
Adams, Ansel, x, 23 Andrade, Esteban, 244
Agave, 88 Anguiano, Raúl, 47
Agrarian Commission, 160 Anreus, Alejandro, 20–21, 316–317n.25
Agrarian Law (1915), 160 Anti-communism. See McCarthyism
Agrarian reform, 159–163 Antilles, 98, 111, 263
Agriculture, 114, 116, 156, 187, 243, 287, 322n.13 Antonio (Carrillo Puerto’s personal assistant):
Aguilar, Cándido, 314 automobile driven by, 107; at Chichén Itzá,
Aguilar, Franco, 243 205, 218; collection of materials for Alma
Aguirre, Juan Israel, 304–306 Reed by, 250; delivery of fiesta dress to
Albertos, Atilano, 225 Alma Reed by, 210; in Kanasín, 123, 124, 130;
Alcalde (municipal president), 173, 175 in Motul, 165, 166, 170; and Rosa Torre, 148,
Alcocer, Claudio, 225 166; trip to Chichén Itzá by, 189, 192
Alcohol use, 117, 150–151, 175–176. See also Appleseed, Johnny, 169–170
Temperance Arce Correa, Gustavo, 302–303, 310
Alliance for Resistance, 319n.4 Archaeological Museum (Mérida), 210–212
Alva de la Canal, Ramón, 92 Archaeology: and Carrillo Puerto, 63, 75, 125–
Alva Guadarrama, Ramón, 92 126, 133, 134–135, 186–188; in Carthage, 14;
Alvarado, Pedro de, 257 Cuauhtémoc remains, 42; dating of Maya
Alvarado, Salvador, 160, 162, 163, 312 monument, 75–76; funding for, in Mexico,
Álvarez Bravo, Manuel, xi 275; New York Times coverage of Yucatán
Álvaro Regil, Señor Don, 188 archaeological sites, x, 10, 11, 63, 66, 73, 80,
Alzate, Padre, 171 131–137, 201, 202, 215, 266; newspaper cover-
Amapolas (poppies), 228–229 age of, in 1920s, 73–74; in Oaxaca, 91–92;
American Antiquarian Society, 66 Tut-Ankh-Amen tomb, 65, 74, 238. See also
American Birth Control League, 120 Carnegie Institution/Expedition; Chichén
American Continental Press Conference, 67–68 Itzá; Uxmal
Amero, Emilio, xi Architecture of Maya, 138, 140, 143, 324n.8
Amézquita, Manuel, 223 Arjona, Salazar, 303
332 Index

Arjonilla, Néstor, 229–231 Birth control, 2, 64, 120, 246

Arreola, Juan José, 44 Blackadder, Captain, 155, 285, 286, 288
Atl, Dr. (Gerardo Murillo), 70, 92–93, 320n.13 Blake, William, 26
Atlantis, 204 Blanco Fuentes, Lucio, 160, 325n.15
Attlee, Clement, 245 Bly, Nellie, 7
Autobiography of Alma Reed: film adaptation Bohorques, Senator, 46
of, 47–49; and Johansson, 46–47, 53; outline Bojórquez, Juan de Dios, 70, 154–156
of, 63–70; and Posner, xii, 40, 46–47, 53; Bolio Ontiveros, Edmundo, 178, 226, 305–306
proofreading and revision of, xi–xii, 47, Bonilla, Maximiliano R., 225
329n.5, 329n.7; reasons for writing, 59–61; Bonillas, Ignacio, 252
Schuessler’s discovery of, xi, xii, 13, 29–31; Braceros (migrant workers), x
Schuessler’s editorial approach to, 52–53 Bracho, Julio, 49
Automobiles, 107, 189–191, 190, 191, 214, 218 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Charles Etienne, Abbé,
Ávila Castillo, Florencio, 244 74, 141, 324n.6
Ayuntamientos (municipal governments), 162, Brenner, Anita, xi, 15–17, 318n.40
325n.17 Brigadas rurales (rural brigades), 320n.7
Ayutla Revolution, 322n.9 Brinton, D. G., 76
Aztecs, 328n.14 Broca, Ricardo, 69
Bruehl, Anton, 25
Badia (photographer), 210 Bucareli Conference/Agreement, 186, 291, 313,
Bahamas, 97–98 314
Balché (beverage), 216, 326n.1 Bush Romero, Pablo, 27–29
Baldíos (uncultivated lands), 159, 325n.1 Bustillos Carrillo, Antonio, 226, 257
Ball courts and ball game, 198, 326n.2
Baqueño, Alfonso, 309 Caciques (chiefs), 168, 225, 230, 231
Barbachano, Miguel, 264 Cajeme, Chief, 153–154
Barrientos, Marciano, 296, 305, 307 Calcehtok caves, 270
Barry, John F., 99, 104, 142, 143, 156, 188, 199, Calderón, Cura Martín, 171–172, 180–181
261 Calderón de la Barca, Fanny, xi
Barry, Vera (Mrs. John F.), 99, 142–145, 148, 188, California capital punishment law, 6, 10, 82–85,
189, 199, 239, 261 89
Barrymore family, 72, 277 Calles, General, 67, 243, 279, 291–293, 310, 312,
Bates, Blanche, 72, 277 313
Bates, Manuel, 296 Las Calles de México (González Obregón), 91
Beals, Carleton, xii Cámara Agrícola (Chamber of Agriculture),
Becker, Maurice, 80 151, 324n.5
Belize, 231–232, 262, 297, 314 ‘‘Caminante del Mayab’’ (Cárdenas), x
Benítez, Fernando, ix Campesinos (farmers), 227
Benton, Thomas Hart, x, 21–24 Cantinas, 49–50, 124
Berman, Patsy, 42 Cantón, Felipe G., 64, 75, 106, 131, 151
Berny Diego, Domingo, 304 Cantón, Francisco G., 169
Bertram, Luis, 104 Cantón Rosado, Licenciado F., 169
Berzunza, Manuel, 4, 296–299, 305, 307, 310 Capetillo, Alonzo, 292, 314
Best-Maugard, Adolfo (Fito), xi, 47, 92 Capistrán, Miguel, xii
La bestia del oro y otros poemas/‘‘The Golden Capital punishment law, 6, 10, 82–85, 89
Beast’’ (López), 91, 320n.9 Capullis (clans), 158
Birds, 181, 182 Cárdenas, Guty, x, 208
index 333

Cárdenas, Lázaro, 313, 326n.4 father of, 69, 124, 127, 167–168, 174–181, 222,
Cardoza y Aragón, Luis, 318n.36 230; first meeting between Alma Reed and,
Carlyle, Thomas, 118 11–13, 64–65, 105–108; funerary bust of, 4;
Carnarvon, Lord, 74 funerary monument of, 27, 43; gifts to Alma
Carnegie Institution/Expedition, 10, 64, 133– Reed from, 33, 34, 36, 157, 163–164, 210, 211,
135, 186–188, 250, 261–266. See also Archae- 212, 266; grave and tombstone of, 26, 29,
ology; Chichén Itzá; Uxmal; and specific 69; as journalist, 222–223; kidnapping of,
scientists by Maya Indians, 231–232; killing in self-
Carnival, 100, 168 defense by, 229–231; letters and telegrams
Carranza, Venustiano: and Agrarian Law (1915), to Alma Reed from, 13, 40, 66, 267–271,
160; and Constitution of 1917, 320n.3, 277–284, 302–303; marriage of, 170, 179–
320n.5; assassination of, 291, 320n.3; Boni- 181; and Mayan language, 133, 168, 170, 172,
llas as successor of, 252–253; government 208–210, 231, 232, 236, 254; Mayan name
officials under, 154, 161, 184; and labor of, 271; mother of, 68, 69, 114, 127, 165, 166–
organizations, 90; overthrow of, 312–313; 167, 173–182; and music, 171; in Orozco’s
peonage abolished by, 155; political career mural, 24; personality of, 108, 138–139, 239;
of, 319–320n.3; and Separatista movement, photographs of, 2, 12, 25, 194, 195, 201, 203;
162; support for, 325n.15 physical appearance of, 4, 105, 130, 138,
Carrillo, Cristóbal, 301–302 150, 165–166; and Katherine Anne Porter,
Carrillo, Dora, 311 xi, 14, 315n.8; reading by, 171–172, 180–181;
Carrillo, Felipe Santiago, 174 and Alma Reed’s reasons for writing auto-
Carrillo, Justiniano, 167, 174–181, 222, 230 biography, 59–61; and relationships with
Carrillo Puerto, Acrelio, 162–163, 168, 224, 301, women, 13; romance between Alma Reed
304, 306, 307 and, x, xi, 1, 10–13, 64–68, 139, 169–171, 219–
Carrillo Puerto, Audomaro, 301, 304, 306 220, 228–229, 232–233, 259, 267, 269–271,
Carrillo Puerto, Benjamín, 4, 69, 161, 189–190, 277–284; separation of, from wife, 127, 283;
192, 193, 295–298, 305, 307 siblings of, 127, 161–162; travels of, 126, 205;
Carrillo Puerto, Edesio, 4, 69, 172–173, 295–298, in United States, 161–162, 245–248
305 —political life: as Chief Executive of State of
Carrillo Puerto, Elvia: assassinations of Yucatán, 245, 250–251; as Federal Chamber
brothers of, 312; on Felipe’s childhood and of Deputies member, 252; and impris-
youth, 69, 167, 181, 182; on Felipe’s mar- onment, 63, 222, 223–224, 226, 230, 299,
riage, 170; and Feminist Leagues, 2, 24, 120, 301–304; and Labor Code, 251–252; May
127, 148, 165, 173, 181 Day (1923) address to workers by, 149–
Carrillo Puerto, Eraclio, 167 151; and Mexican Revolution, 2, 160–163;
Carrillo Puerto, Felipe: ancestry of, 4, 63, 110, political activism of, 222–229; ‘‘red dragon’’
133, 186; assassination of, xii, 1, 4, 13–14, as nickname, x, 1, 12, 64, 78, 106, 107, 133,
47, 67, 69, 306–310; and ballad ‘‘La Pere- 328n.3; and revitalization of Maya culture,
grina’’ dedicated to Alma Reed, 5–6, 67, 125–126, 145; translation of Mexican Consti-
69, 213–214, 250, 258–259, 287, 303; bird tution into Mayan language, 170, 231; and
story about, 181, 182; brothers of, 4, 69; Workers Congresses, 242–244, 254, 256–257
childhood and youth of, 4, 63, 166–182; —as Governor of the Yucatán: and archae-
children of, 13, 127–128, 261; divorce for, 13, ology, 63, 75, 125–126, 133, 134–135, 186–188,
26, 68, 283; education of, 167; employment 261; at Calcehtok caves, 270; at Chichén
of, as youth, 169, 170, 225; engagement and Itzá, 193–205, 195, 201, 203, 218–219; daily
planned wedding between Alma Reed and, duties of, 241–242, 249; and Delahuerista
1, 13, 68; family background of, 124, 174; rebellion, 4–5, 68–69, 219–299, 301; elec-
334 Index

tion of, 253–256; interviews by Alma Reed, Cenotes (sinkholes), 114, 138, 168, 196, 322n.14
107–109, 126–127, 165–172, 221–232, 241; Centro Electoral Independiente, 222–223, 227
in Kanasín, 123–130; leadership style and Centro Obrero Motuleño, 223
vision of, 108–112, 116, 119, 138–139, 150, 220, Chac-Mool, 137, 197, 210, 278, 323n.3
254–255; at Loltún Cave, 235–240; and Maya Charlot, Jean, 92
Festival, 66–67; at Mérida Opera House Charnay, Désiré, 74
dinner, 124, 130, 131–133; in Motul, 127, 165– Chatterton, Ruth, 72, 277
182; at Oxkintok ruins, 270; reforms of, Chicago Arts Club, 34
2–4, 59, 60–61, 63–64, 73, 109, 113–121, 124– Chicago Daily News, 312–314
126, 322–323n.18; as savior of Maya, 63, 104, Chichén Itzá: Akab-Dzib at, 203–205; archaeo-
109–121, 123, 125–126, 133, 196, 218–219, 224– logical expedition to, x, 10, 11, 63, 135, 136;
225, 250; in Suma, 147–149, 151, 156–158; at arrangements with Carnegie archaeologists
Teatro Peón Contreras dinner, 183, 186–188; on, 250; Astronomical Observatory (El
trial of, by Council War, 304–306; and trip Caracol) at, 202–203; ball court in, 198,
to Kanasín, 109–121; and trips to Chichén 326n.2; ‘‘El Castillo’’ (‘‘the Castle’’) in, 188,
Itzá, 189–192, 214; at Uxmal, 138–145 193, 194, 195, 198–200, 215, 326n.1; celebra-
Carrillo Puerto, Gualberto, 167 tion at, 288; Cenote Sagrado (Sacred Well)
Carrillo Puerto, Wilfrido, 4, 69, 296–298, 305, at, x, 65–66, 114, 200, 202, 214, 214–219, 217,
307 266, 323n.2; Chac-Mool at, 197, 278, 323n.3;
Carter, Howard, 74 Chichán-Chob (Red House), 15, 203; cul-
Carthage archaeological expeditions, 14 ture of, 136; history of, 140, 188–189; human
La Casa de los Montejo, 188–189 sacrifice at, 215–219; Igelsia (Church) at,
Casa del Niño program, 281 203; lecture on, 163; library of, 144; Nun-
Casas Alatriste, Roberto, 70, 77, 87, 88, 90, 99, nery and Annex at, 203; in Orozco’s mural,
100–101, 266, 267, 271–272 24; Pórtico de los Tigres at, 195; pyramids
Caste War (1847), 124, 147, 262, 263–264, of, 133, 188, 193, 194, 195, 195; Alma Reed at,
324n.2, 325n.16 65, 193–205, 195, 201, 203, 215–219; removal
Castellanos, Gabriel, ix of treasures from, to U.S., x, 10, 64, 65–66,
Castellanos, Rosario, ix 75, 133, 144, 218, 266, 267–268; roads to, 63,
Castellanos Acevedo, Tomás, 288–289 126, 191, 191, 193, 194, 214, 281, 288; Rosado
Castellanos Cárdenas, Ariosto, 253–254 Vega’s ode to, 205; Savilleon, 136; Temple
Castro, Fidel, 1 of the Warrior at, 197, 198; travel to, 188,
Castro, Rafael, 183 189–192, 214
Castro Morales, Carlos, 245, 250, 253 Chicle (chewing gum), 231, 314, 324n.10, 327n.17
Catholic Church: Constitution’s anti-clerical Chicleros (harvesters of latex), 236–237, 285
provisions, 90; and de la Huerta revolt, Chicozapote trees, 144, 324n.10
295, 301, 312; and Delahuertistas, 4; and Chilam Balam de Chumayel, 136, 139–140
education of children, 176; and Francis- Children: and Casa del Niño program, 281; and
cans, 326n.1; and hacendados, 112; and Alma divorce, 121, 282, 283; illegitimate children
Reed, 26, 118; Elena Torres on religious in Yucatán, 283; infant mortality, 94; rights
ceremonies of, 244–245 of, 121. See also Education
Cave of Loltún, 65, 235–241 Científicos, 78, 319n.2
Cecilio Chi, 124, 263, 264 Cirerol Sansores, Manuel, 105
CEDAM, 27 Circus, 178–179
Cenote Sagrado (Sacred Well) at Chichén Itzá, Cirerol Sansores, Manuel, 66–67, 68, 69, 131,
65–66, 114, 200, 202, 214–219, 217, 266, 149, 193, 200, 287–288, 293
323n.2 Classical studies, 14, 34, 118–119
index 335

Clay, Henry, 72 Cronistas (chroniclers, historians), 91, 320n.10

Clothing: fiesta dresses, 156–157, 163–164, 210, Crossette, Louis, 68, 287
211, 212, 277; of Maya, 113, 147, 156–157, 225, Crown Publishers, 47, 49, 53
235–236, 249, 324n.1, 324n.3; of Alma Reed, Cruz, Francisco B., 154
ix, 9, 22, 31–34, 157, 163–164, 187, 210, 211, Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de al, ix, xi
212, 277, 287, 318n.43, 318n.46; of Zapatistas, Cruzob (cross) cult, 264–265
161 Cuba, 98, 99–104, 116, 127, 264, 266, 285–286,
Cocay/luciérnagas, 126, 128–129 321n.1, 321n.4, 321n.6
Codex Maya-Tzental-Pérez, 209 Cubeños, 102–104, 321n.6
Código de Trabajo (Labor Code), 251–252, Cueva del Río, Roberto, 33, 35
327n.2 Curtis, George William, 73
Cogolludo, Diego López de, 140
Collier’s Magazine, 73, 118, 130 Dance, 156–157. See also Music
Columbia Lecture Bureau, 42 Dartmouth College mural, 24, 95
Columbus, Christopher, 100, 102–103, 321n.6 Darwin, Charles, 119
Columbus, Diego, 100 De Kooning, Willem, 42–43
Comisión Reguladora Henequenera Expor- De la Barra, Francisco Léon, 227, 228
tadora de Yucatán (Henequen Market De la Huerta, Adolfo, 4–5, 34, 67–69, 274,
Regulating Commission), 323n.4 291–299, 301, 302, 309–314
Comité Revolucionario de Obreros Mexicanos De la Huerta–Lamont Agreement, 271, 272
(CROM), 90, 252, 301, 311, 312, 320n.4 De Landa, Fray Diego, 74, 135–136, 139–140, 144,
Commercial Mexico, 99 199, 200, 209, 216
Communism, 36–37, 118, 257–258, 327n.6, De Negri, Ramón P., 91, 310
328n.2 De Puy, Mrs., 318n.46
Comte, Auguste, 319n.2 Debt peonage, 3, 63, 264, 319n.1
Confederación Sindical, 258 Decena Trágica (Ten Tragic Days), 183
Constantine, Mrs. Arthur, 290 The Dedication (Sikelianos), 14, 20
Constitution (1822), 88 Del Río, Dolores, 42
Constitution (1857), 152–153, 170, 320n.5, 324n.6 Delahuertista rebellion, 4–5, 68–70, 219–314
Constitution (1917), Mexican, 90, 118, 184, 244, Delphic Society, x, 14, 15, 18, 22–23, 24, 51
253–254, 312, 313, 320n.3, 320n.5 Delphic Studios Gallery, x–xi, 14, 18, 21–23,
Contreras Torres, Miguel, 49 316n.18, 317n.29
Cooperativas de consumo, 243 Delphic Studios press, 25–26
Córdoba, Hernández de, 104, 137 The Delphic Word . . . The Dedication (Sikelia-
Corral, Ramón, 153, 224, 228 nos), 14, 20
Cortés, Antonio, 296, 307 Democratics Abroad, 37
Cortés, Hernan, 104, 188, 321n.20, 326n.1, Deportation of Yaquis, 153–156, 224
326n.6 ‘‘Día de Los Muertos’’ (All Souls’ Day), 94
Cortés, José, 299 Díaz, Félix, 325n.15
Courcy, J. de, 314 Díaz, Porfirio: architect during administration
Covarrubias, Miguel, xi of, 317n.30; Carranza in administration of,
Coy, Mr. and Mrs. Harold, 46 319n.3; Carrillo Puerto’s imprisonment dur-
Coy, Vicente, 305, 329n.5 ing dictatorship of, 63, 222, 223–224, 226;
Creel, George, 72 and cientificos, 319n.2; and enslavement of
Creelman, James, 224 Maya and Yaqui Indians, 79, 153, 246; exile
Crespo de la Serna, Jorge Juan, 317–318n.36 of, 227; failure of, to relinquish presidency,
CROM, 90, 252, 301, 311, 312, 320n.4 224; and jefes políticos, 69, 181, 226, 230, 264,
336 Index

319n.6; and land problems of Indians, 158– Evolution, 119

159; opposition to, 320n.18; overthrow of Excélsior, 16, 43, 294
dictatorship of, 26, 183, 185, 311, 321n.21; and Executions. See Capital punishment law
political prisoners, 226–227; resignation of,
as president, 227, 228; Turner on, 79; and Fabela, Isidro, 184
wealthy Mexican exiles in U.S., 81 Fairbanks, Douglas, Sr., 1
Díaz Bolio, Pilar, 189, 192, 193 Fajardo, Diego Saavedra de, 61
Díaz de Solís, Juan, 166 Falces, Marqués de, 158
Dictionary of Motul, 209 Fall, Albert B., 184, 325–326n.3
Divorce, 13, 26, 68, 73, 120–121, 246, 249, Family planning, 2, 64, 120, 246
282–283 Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), 35–37,
Dixon, Alice, 323n.2 318n.46
Duarte, José ‘‘Chato,’’ 296–298 Federation of Central American States, 257
Dulles, John Foster, 37 Felipe II, 158
Dulles, John W. F., 302 Fellom, Roy, 84
Durazo, Colonel, 294 Feminist Leagues, 2, 3, 24, 120, 148, 165, 173, 181,
Dzib y Cirerol, Raquel, 312 235–236, 256
Fenley, Lindajoy, 26
Editorial Diana, 47, 49 Fernández, Miguel Ángel, 278, 303
Education: of Carrillo Puerto family, 167, 176, Ferrer, Adolfo, 310
190; and defanatización process, 117, 322– Fiego, G. Consoli, 14
323n.18; funding for, 274; and hacienda Fiestas, 91, 100, 126, 156–157, 163, 168, 177, 270
system, 112; higher education in Yucatán, Films, 47–50
117; Lunes culturales (cultural Mondays) for Finca (estate or rural property), 102, 167–168,
adults, 117; of Maya, 3, 64, 91, 112, 116–117, 176–177, 224, 225, 231, 321n.5
320n.7; night schools for workers, 243–244; Flamboyán trees, 115, 322n.15
and Rationalist Schools, 162–163 Flores Magón, Ricardo, 95–96, 159, 243
Edwards, Emily, xi Fontana, Vicente, 304, 305, 306
Efik Butón, 321n.2 Food and drinks, 124, 132, 137, 141, 156, 173, 176,
Egypt, 65, 74, 137, 204 187, 189, 201, 213, 232, 249, 326n.5
Eisenstein, Sergei, 1 Fordinga automobiles, 189–191, 190, 191, 214,
Ejidos (communal villages), 3, 65, 91, 115, 218
147–151, 158, 160, 214, 320n.6 Fox, Vicente, 328n.18
Ek, Entimio, 294 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 92, 103, 182
El Tajín, 326n.2 Franciscans, 326n.1
Elías Calles, Plutarco, 91, 184, 291, 292, 328n.16 Franco, Agustín, 244
Ellis, Havelock, 118 Franklin, Benjamin, 171
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 118 Fraser, Sir James, 204
Employment. See headings beginning with Fundo real, 158
Labor Furuseth, Andrew, 185
Enciso, Jorge, 70, 290
Encomienda, 103–104, 322n.8 Gamboa, Rafael, 249–250
Enganchado systems (debt peonage), 3, 63, 222, Gamio, Manuel F., 70, 91–92, 134–135
319n.1 Gandhi, Mahatma, 14, 20, 24
Erosa, Eligio, 117, 150–151, 302–303 Garay, Francisco de, 257
Estrada, Enrique, 252, 293, 313 García, Bartolomé, 242
Euripides, 219 García, General, 161
index 337

García Lorca, Federico, 42 Haciendas. See Henequen (hemp) haciendas

García Márquez, Gabriel, 44 and henequen industry
Garro, Elena, ix Halliburton, Richard, 218
Garza, Jesús M., 252 Hamblen, Emily S., 26
Gasque, Rafael, 114 Harding, Warren G., 185, 325n.3
Gates, William E., 209 Hart, A. G. B., 79–80, 104, 108, 109, 112, 115, 116,
George, Henry, 118 219
Gibran, Kahlil, x, 18, 18, 19 Harvard University. See Peabody Museum,
Givner, Joan, 315n.8 Harvard University
Glenn, John, 185 Havana, Cuba, 99–104
Glusker, Susannah J., 318n.40 Hearst, William Randolph, 275
La Golondrina/The Swallow, 49 Hemp. See Henequen (hemp) haciendas and
‘‘Las golondrinas,’’ 142, 208, 213 henequen industry
Gompers, Samuel, 70, 185, 226, 293, 301, 311– Henequen (hemp) haciendas and henequen
312, 326n.4 industry: and Carrillo Puerto, 68, 116, 133;
González, Ángel, 304 economic importance of, 105, 263, 287,
González Obregón, Luis, 91 319n.3; exploitation of Maya on, 3, 47, 63,
Goodman, J. T., 74, 135 79, 111–112, 151–153, 172, 231, 246, 264; gov-
Gorky, Maxim, 14 ernment agencies and officials for, 116,
Gorostiza, Celestino, 42 288–289, 323n.4, 324n.5; newspaper cover-
Gough, Emil, 83–84 age of, 151; ruins of haciendas, 26; shipment
Graham, John D., 26 of henequen to Canada, 249; and suspen-
Great Britain, 262 sion of cargo service by Ward Line, 5. See
Greece, 14, 18, 34, 51 also Hacendados
Greenwood, Grace, xi Henry, Patrick, 72
Greenwood, Marion, xi El Heraldo de Motul, 222, 223, 275
Grijalva, Juan de, 104 Hernández, Álvaro C., 304
Gruening, Ernest, 60–61, 150, 205, 220, 253, 310 Herron, Stella Wynne, 26
Guacamole, 137, 189 Heye Foundation, 133, 136, 262
Guanábana (fruit), 123, 156 Hidalgo, Miguel, 171
Guatemala, 166, 187 Hillquit, Morris, 247
Guerrero, Praxedis G., 96 Holmes, W. H., 217
Guerrero, Xavier, 92 Hoover, Herbert, 68, 287
Guillén, Nicolás, 321n.4 Hrdlicka, Ales, 76
Gutiérrez, Eulalio, 161, 293 Huerta, Victoriano, 183, 184, 271, 321n.18
Gutiérrez de Lara, Lázaro, 293 Hughes, Charles E., 185, 311, 312
Guzmán, Eulalia, 42 Human sacrifice, 215–219
Guzmán, Hermilio, 305 Hunac Ceel, 218

Haberman, Roberto, 243, 301, 311 Ibsen, Henrik, 118

Hacendados: and agrarian reform, 115–116; and El Imparcial, 154
Carrillo Puerto, 109, 115–116, 253, 291, 310; En busca de un muro/In Search of a Wall, 49
and de la Huerta revolt, 68, 301; exploita- Inarticulados, 64, 319n.3
tion of Maya by, 79, 111–112, 151–153, 172, Independence of Mexico, 88, 158
231, 246, 264; and Molina, 78, 109; and Independent Electoral Center (Mérida), 222–
Separatista movement, 161–162; wealth and 223, 227
luxurious lifestyle of, 106, 168 Indian Prometheus (Orozco), 24
338 Index

Infant mortality, 94 Kisch, Egon Erwin, xii

Ingenio (sugar plantation and refinery), 329n.13 Kukulcán, 140, 141, 196, 199, 323n.5, 326n.1
Inman, John N., 84 K’uxub, 325n.14
International Federation of Trade Unions, 312
International Film Festival, 50 Labná, 65
Isabella, Queen, 103 Labor Code (1926), 251–252, 327n.2
Italy, 34 Labor movement, 90, 94, 185, 222, 225, 252, 293,
Itsamatul (Kabul), 141 311–312, 320n.4, 326n.4
Izábal, Rafael, 153, 154 Ladd, E. F., 185–186
Laffite, Jean, 99
Jacinto Pat, 124, 263 Land reform. See Agrarian reform
Jamaica, 262 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 77, 103–104, 321–
James, Mrs. William, 75, 188, 302–303 322nn.6–7
Jarana (folk dance), 157 Latifundio (large tract of land), 159, 223, 265,
Jefes políticos, 69, 168, 181, 226, 230, 264, 319n.6 325n.11
Jefferson, Thomas, 96, 118, 321n.22 Lázaro, Cecilio, 296, 299, 305
Jiménez, Enrique, 242 Le Plongeon, Augustus, 137, 144, 198–199, 204,
Jiménez, Samuel, 304 205, 323n.2
Johansson, Rosa Lie: and burial of Alma Reed’s League of Nations, 274
ashes, 27; death of, 43, 318n.43; home of, Leal, Francisco, 92
in Mexico City, 42–43, 44; as painter, 42– Legends of Maya, 129–130, 142, 215–219
44; photograph of, 39; and photographs Lenin, V. I., 24, 37
of Alma Reed, 53; portrait of Reed by, Leyes de la Reforma (Laws of Reform), 112,
45; and Alma Reed’s autobiography, 46– 322n.9
47, 53; Alma Reed’s belongings donated Librado Montesinos, Luis, 223
to museum by nieces of, 34, 318n.43; and Licenciado (lawyer), 320n.17
Alma Reed’s final illness, 39; Schuessler’s Liga de Resistencia (League of Resistance), 172,
meetings with, xii, 43–47 237, 242, 246, 293
Johnson, Alvin, 23–24 Ligas Feministas, 2, 3, 24, 120, 148, 165, 173, 181,
Johnston, William H., 185 235–236, 256
Jones, Mother, 110 Lima, Elías G. de, 90, 271, 290
Joyce, James, 93 Lincoln, Abraham, 60
Juana, Doña, 67 Lindbergh, Charles, 1
Juanes, José R., 303 Literacy. See Education
Juárez, Benito, 60, 112, 322nn.9–10 Loltún Cave, 65, 235–241
Juárez Penitentiary, 117–118, 223, 299, 301–304 López, Pablo, 183
Juego de pelota (ball game), 198, 326n.2 López, Rafael, 91, 320n.9
‘‘Lost Atlantis’’ theories, 204
Kabah, 65 Lowry, Malcolm, xii
Kabul (Itsamatul), 141 Lubbert, Alejandro, 68, 85
Kahlo, Frida, ix Luciérnagas/cocay, 126, 128–129
Kalimacos, Doctor, 18, 20 Lupercio, José María, 25
Kanasín, 109, 114, 123–130
Kantún, José, 225 Machado, Gerardo, 99, 321n.1
Kayyam, Omar, 119 Madero, Francisco I.: assassination of, 183, 184,
Kemal Pascha, 66, 278, 280 320n.3, 321n.18; and interim presidency
Kennedy, Anne, 120 of de la Barra, 227; and Moreno Cantón,
index 339

227–228; and Pino Suárez, 228; and Plan of 193, 196, 208–209, 235, 236; name of Alma
San Luis Potosí, 159, 321n.21; as president, Reed in Mayan language, 13, 70, 128, 218–
87, 95, 228, 320–321n.18; as presidential 219, 315n.10, 328n.1; origin of, 65, 75–76,
contender, 224; on Social Revolution in 135; poverty of, 224–225; religion of, 138,
Mexico, 225–226; supporters of, 227, 325n.15 323nn.4–5; revitalization of culture of, 125–
Mai, General, 231, 232 126, 145; as ‘‘sad race,’’ 123–124, 126, 210;
Manero, Enrique, 305, 309 and sports, 126, 198; translation of Mexican
Manzanilla Medina, José Isabel, 167 Constitution into Mayan language, 170, 231;
Mariachi music, 86 and War of the Castas (1847), 124, 147, 262,
Marijuana, 244 263–264, 324n.2, 325n.16; writing of, 74, 136,
Marín Alfaro, Xavier, 294, 295 137. See also Archaeology; Chichén Itzá;
Mariscal, Ignacio, 290 Ejidos (communal villages); Uxmal
Martí, José, xii, 98 Maya Festival, 66–67, 191–192
Martínez Alomja, Salvador, 223 Mayab, 126, 192, 323n.3. See also Maya
Marx, Karl, 118 Mayapán League, 140, 145, 257
Mary I, Queen of England, 26, 318n.41 Mayordomo, 112, 246, 322n.8
Mason, Mary Turner, 283 McCarthyism, 24, 37, 245
Maudslay, A. P., 74, 135 Méndez, Santiago, 262–263
Maximilian, Emperor, 322n.9 Mendiburu, Domingo, 174
May, Antoinette, 44, 316n.25, 318n.39 Mendoza, Fernando, 296, 299, 306
May Day (1923), 149–151 Menéndez, Carlos R., 224, 227, 302, 303, 325n.12
Maya: alcohol use by, 117; alphabet of, 74; and Mérida, Carlos, 92
archaeological expedition in Yucatán, x, Mérida, Yucatán: Archaeological Museum in,
10, 11, 63, 64, 66, 73; architecture of, 138, 210–212; history of, 187–188, 326n.5; hotels
140, 143, 324n.8; arts of, 140; and assas- in, 207; La Casa de los Montejo in, 188–189;
sination of Carrillo Puerto, 70; calendar May Day (1923) observation in, 149–151;
of, 199; Carrillo Puerto as descendant of Old World charm of, 107; Opera House
Nachi Cocom, 4, 63, 124, 132–133, 186; dinner in, 124, 130, 131–133; Alma Reed’s
Carrillo Puerto as savior of, 63, 104, 109– arrivals in, 105–106, 287–288; shopping in,
121, 123, 125–126, 133, 196, 218–219, 224–225, 241; sightseeing in, 163, 207; Teatro Peón
250; clothing of, 113, 147, 156–157, 225, 249, Contreras dinner in, 183, 186–188. See also
324n.1, 324n.3; in Colonial era, 158; com- Carrillo Puerto, Felipe; Reed, Alma
mentaries and books on, 74–75, 135–136; Merriam, John C., 64, 105, 133–135, 145, 204,
dating of Maya monument, 75–76; and 239, 262
Delahuertista rebellion, 69; education of, Mestizos, 63, 77, 319n.2
3, 64, 91, 112, 116–117, 320n.7; exploitation Metate, 93, 320n.15
of, 3, 47, 63, 79, 111–113, 151–153, 172, 231, Mexican Agrarian Law, 160
246, 264; Festival of, 66–67, 191–192; habits Mexican-American War (1847–1848), 262, 263
and customs of, 124; history of, 74, 77, 103– Mexican Cultural Renaissance, 16, 70, 89
104, 135–136, 139–140, 144, 158, 204, 235, Mexican Folkways, 16, 316n.25
257, 321–322nn.6–7; kidnapping of Carrillo Mexican Life, 47, 312
Puerto by, 231–232; language of, 133, 168, The Mexican Muralists (Reed), x
172, 208–210, 232, 236, 254; legends of, Mexican Revolution: and agrarian reform, 159–
129–130, 142, 215–219; library of, 144–145; 161; and Blanca Flor battle, 162; and Carrillo
May Day (1923) speech by Carrillo Puerto Puerto, 2, 160–163; changes following, 9–10;
to, 149–151; and monument in Kanasín, and Delahuertistas, 4; and Partido Liberal
123–124; and music, 105, 126, 133, 142, 147, Mexicano, 321n.19; and Plan of San Luis
340 Index

Potosí, 96, 159, 321n.21; and Yucatán, 2–3; document, 75–76, 135; on Mayan history,
and Zapata, 2, 160–161, 163. See also Ejidos 140; and travel to Chichén Itzá, 189; on
(communal villages) Tzakol stage of Maya, 235; on Uxmal Palace,
Mexicans in United States, 6, 10, 81–86, 90 144
Mexico. See Carrillo Puerto, Felipe; Maya; Morones, Luis, 90, 252, 311, 320n.4
Mexico City; Constitution headings; and Motul, 127, 165–182
specific presidents Movies. See Films
Mexico City: Bohemia of, 93–94; hotel in, 290– Mújica, Francisco J., 255–256
291; Rosa Lie Johansson’s home in, 42–43, El Mundo, 90
44; museums in, 34, 210, 318n.43; Posner’s Munger, Caroline, 119
home in, 30–31; Alma Reed’s first trip to, 8– Munguía, Clemente de Jesús, 328n.11
9, 71, 80, 85–86, 88–93; Alma Reed’s home Muñoz Aristegui, Enrique, 224, 226–227
in, 40, 42; Alma Reed’s second trip to, Mural movement, 10, 16, 92–94. See also
290–291 Orozco, José Clemente; and other artists
Mexico City News, ix, 38–39, 39, 42, 48, 49 Murillo, Gerardo (Dr. Atl), 70, 92–93, 320n.13
México en la Cultura, ix Murray, John, 311
Mexico in Revolution series (Orozco), x, 17, Museum of the American Indian, 133, 136, 262.
20–21 See also Heye Foundation
‘‘Mi guitarra,’’ 208, 213 Music: and Carrillo Puerto, 171; Cuban music
Migrant workers. See Braceros (migrant (sones), 101, 321n.4; and dancing, 126, 156–
workers) 157; fiesta music, 126, 156–157; mariachi
Mill, John Stuart, 118 music, 86; of Maya, 105, 126, 133, 142, 147,
Miller, Henry, 72 193, 196, 208–209, 235, 236; and musical
Milpas (cultivated fields), 114, 153, 322n.13 instruments, 326n.2; by Palmerín, x, 67,
Miserendino, Vincenzo, 44, 45 207, 213–214, 250, 258–259, 287; serenades
Moats, Alice-Leone, xi of Alma Reed, 207–209; State Band playing
Mobile, Ala., Press Register, 35 Mexico’s National Anthem, 193, 196; from
Modotti, Tina, xi, 25 United States, 100. See also ‘‘La Peregrina’’
Molina, Luis G., 78, 79, 87, 109, 261 (ballad)
Molina, Olegario, 78, 159
Mondragón, General, 93 Nachi Cocom, 4, 63, 124, 132–133, 186
Monroe Doctrine, 263 Nacho (chiclero), 236, 239
Monte Albán, 91–92, 326n.2 Ñáñigo, 101–102, 321n.2
Montejo, Francisco, 188–189, 326n.6 Napoleon III, 322n.9
Montejo family, 3, 104, 133, 135, 188 Nash, Joe: on Acapulco’s International Film
Montenegro, Roberto, xi, 92 Festival, 50; and Democratics Abroad, 37; at
Montenegro, Sasha, 49 Mexico City News, 49; on Orozco’s friend-
Montes, Rodolfo, 313–314 ship with Alma Reed, 45; on Alma Reed in
Montes de Oca, Luis, 70 cantina, 49–50; on Alma Reed’s ashes, 27–
Mooney, Tom, 82 29; on Alma Reed’s death, 40; Schuessler’s
Moore, Grace, 50 interviews with, xii; travels through Mexico
Moreno Cantón, Delio, 162, 223, 227–229 by, on bicycle, xii, 49
Morley, Frances, 131 Nassau, 97
Morley, Sylvanus G.: and archaeological expe- The Nation, 310
ditions generally, x, 10, 134, 261; and arrival National Action Party (PAN), 328n.18
in Mérida, 64; assistant of, 131; and Carrillo National Anti-Reelectionist Party, 32n.18, 224,
Puerto’s relationship with Zapata, 160; at 228
Chichén Itzá, 197; and dating of Maya National Archives (Mexico), 91
index 341

National History Museum (Mexico City), 34, 275; and invitation to Alma Reed to visit
318n.43 Mexico, 7–9, 85, 88; and Mexican Revolu-
National Institute of Anthropology, 200 tion, 161; and national budget, 272–275; and
National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico national debt, 186, 263, 272–274; person-
City), 210 ality of, 90; Alma Reed’s reporting on, 6–7,
National Revolutionary Party (PNR), 257, 258, 66, 68, 87; support for, 90–91, 291, 311–312,
328n.16 327n.9; U.S. assistance for, 185; U.S. recogni-
Negrismo, 101 tion of government of, x, 7, 68, 90, 271–276,
Negrón Pérez, Mario, 170 313; and Zamarripa persecutions, 253
New Mexico, 183 Obreros (laborers), 94–95, 227, 251
New School for Social Research mural, 23–24, Ocampo, Melchor, 112, 256, 322n.9, 328n.11
24 Ochs, Adolph S., x, 10, 66, 73, 80, 87, 266, 267,
New York: Actors’ Group Costume Ball in, 271–272, 278–280
277; Carrillo Puerto in, 245–248; Delphic O’Farrill, Rómulo, Sr., 38
Society in, x, 14, 15, 18, 22–23, 24, 51; Del- O’Higgins, Pablo, xi
phic Studios Gallery in, x–xi, 14, 18, 21–23, Oil industry, 90, 313–314, 325–326n.3
316n.18, 317n.29; Orozco in, ix, 16, 316n.16; Older, Fremont, 7
Orozco’s exhibitions in, 20–21, 316n.18, Olid, Cristóbal de, 257
317n.26, 317n.29; Alma Reed’s home in, 14, Olin, Nahui, 93
15, 18, 20 Orozco, José Clemente: biography of, ix, x, 16,
New York Journal, 275 17, 316n.25; Chicago Arts Club exhibition of
New York Times: on Carrillo Puerto, 66; on works by, 34; exhibitions of, in New York,
Carthage archaeological expedition, 14; on 20–21, 316n.18, 317n.26, 317n.29; film on, 49;
Mexico, 80; on mysteries of Greco-Latin first meeting between Reed and, 17; home
world, 14; on Obregón government, x, 6–7, of, in New York, 16; Indian Prometheus,
66, 68, 87, 271–276, 279; on Peabody Mu- 24; and Mexican Cultural Renaissance, 70;
seum’s possession of archaeological items Mexico in Revolution series by, x, 17, 20–21;
from Chichén Itzá, x, 266, 267–268; Alma murals by, x, 10, 16, 23–25, 24, 92, 94–95,
Reed’s obituary in, 318–319n.49; and U.S. 317–318n.36; in New York, ix, 16, 24, 316n.16;
recognition of Mexico, 7, 68, 271–276; on photograph of, 18; portraits by, 17, 316n.22;
Yucatán archaeological sites, x, 10, 11, 63, Alma Reed’s friendship with, 44–45; Alma
66, 73, 80, 131–137, 201, 202, 215, 266 Reed’s promotion of art of, x–xi, 17, 20–25,
New York World, 247, 268 34, 317–318n.36; Table of Brotherhood, 24,
The News. See Mexico City News 24; Weston’s portrait of, 23
Nicholson, Irene, xi Orozco de Valladares, Margarita, 16–17, 20,
Nigeria, 321n.2 44–45, 316n.16, 316n.18, 317n.26, 317n.29,
Nile Notes (Curtis), 73 317–318n.36
Noche Triste (‘‘Sad Night’’), 96, 321n.20 Ortiz Argumedo, Abel, 161–162
Nourse, John, 119 Otero, General, 154
Novedades, ix, 38, 42 Oxkintok ruins, 270
Novo, Salvador, 42
Pacifism, 181
Oaxaca, 91–92 Padrón, Pepé, 298
Obregón, Álvaro: and assassination of Carrillo PAFL. See Pan-American Federation of Labor
Puerto, 309–310; attempted overthrow of, (PAFL)
4–5; and Carrillo Puerto, 67; and de la Paine, Frances Flynn, 317n.25
Huerta revolt, 292, 314; and Delahuertistas, Paine, Thomas, 118
4–5; government of, 71, 81, 89–91, 185, 272– Palacios Macedo, Miguel, 271
342 Index

Palavicini, Félix F., 90, 225–226 Pérez, Marcelina, 163–164

Palés Matos, Luis, 321n.3 Pérez Miranda, Pedro, 223
Palma Castro, Efraín, 229–230 Peter Martyr (Pedro Mártir de Anglería), 103
Palma Cervera, Manuel, 223, 224 Peterkin, Julia, 316n.22
Palma de Carrillo, María Isabel, 6, 13, 26, 68, Phillips, Howard S., 47, 312–314
127–128, 170, 179–181, 283 Phillips, William, 312
Palma, Pedro, 170 Pijoan, José, 23, 317n.36
Palmer, Alexander Mitchell, 247, 327n.6 Pino Suárez, José María, 183, 184, 227–229
Palmer, Eva, x, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 44–45, 316n.22 ‘‘Plan de Ayala,’’ 160, 161
Palmer Raids, 245, 247–248, 327n.6 Plan of San Luis Potosí, 96, 159, 321n.21
Palmerín, Ricardo, x, 67, 207, 213–214, 250, Plato, 281
258–259, 287 PNR, 257, 258, 328n.16
Palomo, Major, 302 Polk, James, 263
PAN, 328n.18 Pollock, Jackson, 43
Pan-American Federation of Labor (PAFL), Pomona College mural, 23, 317–318n.36
185, 293, 311, 312, 326n.4 Ponce, Alfredo, 295
Pan-American Union, 274 Poniatowska, Elena, ix–xii, 42
Pani, Alberto J., 94 Poot Cobá, Ruperto, 26, 28
Paniche de Ponce, Betty, 312 Porter, Katherine Anne, xi, 13–14, 16, 315n.8
Paraguay, 133 Porter, R. H., 323n.1
Parodi, Claudia, 29 Portes Gil, Emilio, 252
Parodi, Lisette, 29–31, 40–41, 43 Posner, Richard: on Catholicism and Alma
Parsons, William Barclay, 12–13, 64, 105–106, Reed, 26; and film adaptation of Alma
134–135, 262 Reed’s autobiography, 47–49; first meeting
Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), 328n.18 between Alma Reed and, 31–32; friendship
Partido Demócrata, 223 between Alma Reed and, 39–40, 42; home
Partido Laborista, 252 of, in Mexico City, 30–31; and Novo, 42;
Partido Liberal Mexicano, 95–96, 159, 321n.19 and Lisette Parodi, 29–31; photograph of,
Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), 257, 39; and Alma Reed’s autobiography, xii, 40,
258, 328n.16 46–47, 53; and Alma Reed’s clothing, 31–32;
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), on Alma Reed’s death, 40–41; Schuessler’s
258, 328n.16, 328n.18 meetings with, 40–43
Partido Socialista de Sureste. See Socialist Party Poverty of Maya, 224–225
Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), Preminger, Otto, 50
258, 328n.16, 328n.18 Press Register (Mobile, Ala.), 35
Pasos, Josefa, 174 PRI, 258, 328n.16, 328n.18
Patrón (employer), 251 Prieto Laurens, Jorge, 291–292, 313
Paz, Octavio, 44 Prison system, 4, 69, 82–86, 117–118
Peabody Museum, Harvard University, x, 10, 64, Prometheus Bound (Orozco), 23
66, 75, 133, 187, 209, 218, 235, 266, 267–268 Prorok, Byron Khun de, 14
Pearson’s Magazine, 224 Puerto, Josefa, 174
Peladito, pelado (person of lower socioeco- Puerto, Manuel, 174
nomic classes), 93, 320n.15 Puerto de Carrillo, Doña Adela: ancestry and
El Peninsular, 227 family background of, 166, 174; and assas-
‘‘La Peregrina’’ (ballad), x, 5–6, 7, 38, 42, 67, 69, sination of sons, 69, 308, 311; courage of,
213–214, 250, 258–259, 287, 303, 315nn.3–4 166–167; Felipe’s admiration for, 114, 127; on
Peregrina (movie), 49 Felipe’s childhood and youth, 173–182; and
index 343

Felipe’s tombstone, 69; and imprisonment and Orozco’s art, x, 16, 17, 20–25, 34, 317–
of sons, 302; marriage of, 174, 179; as official 318n.36; Orozco’s friendship with, 44–45;
hostess for Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 68, 283; parties given by, 18, 47–48; photographs of,
physical appearance of, 173; Alma Reed’s 3, 8, 9, 12, 15, 18, 22, 32, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43,
meeting with, 165, 173–182; and Zamarripa 46, 48, 51, 52, 210; physical appearance of,
persecutions, 253 ix, 22, 89, 317n.33; portraits of, 17–18, 19, 33,
Puestos (stands), 94 34, 35, 44, 45; Posner’s friendship with, 39–
Pulque, 320n.16 40, 42; and religion, 26, 118; Schuessler’s
Pulquerías (taverns), 94, 320n.16 first knowledge of, 1; and Society for the
The Pulse of Mexico, 79 Friends of Mexico, 35; translation of poetry
of Angelo Sikelianos by, 14, 20, 51; will and
Quetzalcóatl, 23n.5, 197, 326n.1 testament of, 40; youth of, 279–280. See
Quetzalcóatl Topiltzin, 326n.1 also Autobiography of Alma Reed
Quijano, Pancho, 178 —as journalist: Mexico City News column,
Quintal, Rafael, 224 38–39, 42; New York Times articles on Car-
Quintana Roo, 225, 231, 257, 264–265, 285, 297 thage archaeological expeditions, 14; New
York Times articles on mysteries of Greco-
Railroads and railroad trips, 85–86, 137, 165, 169, Latin world, 14; New York Times articles
188, 189, 221, 228–229, 235, 259, 289, 295–296 on Obregón government, x, 6–7, 66, 68,
Ramírez, José Luis, 47 87, 271–276, 279; New York Times articles
Ramírez, Julián, 296, 305 on Peabody Museum’s possession of ar-
Ramírez, Luis, 304 chaeological items from Chichén Itzá, x,
Ramírez Garrido, J. D., 252 266, 267–268; New York Times articles on
Rand School of Social Science, 246, 247 Yucatán archaeological sites, x, 10, 63, 66,
Redención, 161 73, 80, 131–137, 201, 202, 215, 266; Press Reg-
Reed, Alma (Pixan Halal): belongings of, do- ister in Mobile, Ala., 35; radio program, 35;
nated to museum, 34, 318n.43; bibliography San Francisco Call column, x, 6–7, 10, 81–
on, 55–56; biography of Orozco by, ix, x, 16, 86; and U.S. recognition of Mexico, 7, 68,
17, 316n.25; books by, ix–x, 16, 24–25, 47, 49, 271–276
55; bronze bust of, 44, 45; and CEDAM, 27; —in Mexico: at Chichén Itzá, 65, 193–205, 195,
Christmas cards from, 38, 40, 41; and clas- 201, 203, 215–219; first trip to Mexico, 8–
sical studies, 14, 34, 118–119; clothing of, ix, 9, 71, 80, 85–86, 88–93; home in Mexico
9, 22, 31–34, 157, 187, 210, 211, 212, 277, 287, City, 40, 42; in Kanasín, 109, 114, 123–130;
318n.43, 318n.46; and Communist Party, at Loltún Cave, 235–241; at Mérida Opera
36–37; in Cuba, 99–104, 285–286; death House dinner, 124, 130, 131–133; in Motul,
of, xii, 39–40, 316n.25, 318–319n.49; and 127, 165–182; ocean voyages to and from
Delphic Society, x, 14, 15, 18, 22–23, 51; and Mexico, 73, 76–78, 80–81, 87–88, 97–99,
Delphic Studios Gallery, x–xi, 14, 18, 21–23, 104–105, 261–262, 266, 285–287; railroad
317n.29; and Democratic Party, 37; family trip to Mexico, 85–86; in Suma, 147–149,
background of, 82; father of, 72, 73, 81, 82, 151, 156–158; Teatro Peón Contreras dinner,
110, 118, 279; FBI file on, 35–37, 318n.46; 183, 186–188; trip to Kanasín with Carrillo
films about, 49; funerary monument and Puerto, 109–121; trips to Chichén Itzá,
ashes of, 26–29, 28, 30, 31; home of, in 189–192, 214; at Uxmal, 130, 132, 137–145
New York, 14, 15, 18, 20; honors for, 50–52, —and Carrillo Puerto: assassination of Felipe,
51, 52; lecture tours of, in U.S., 42; mar- 13–14, 70; engagement and planned wed-
riage and divorce of, 1, 26, 89, 127, 318n.39; ding with, 1, 13, 68; first meeting with, 11–13,
mother of, 82; obituary of, 318–319n.49; 64–65, 105–108; gifts from, 33, 34, 36, 157,
344 Index

163–164, 210, 211, 212, 266; interviews of, Ruiz, Simón, 6, 7, 82–85, 89
107–109, 126–127, 165–172, 221–232, 241; Rulfo, Juan, xi, 44
letters and telegrams from Felipe, 13, 40, Russian Revolution, 246
66, 267–271, 277–284, 302–303; and ‘‘La Ruz, Gonzalo, 242
Peregrina,’’ 5–6, 38, 42, 67, 213–214, 250, Ruz Lhuillier, Alberto, 197
258–259, 287, 303; Mayan name for Alma, Ruz Ponce, Miguel, 225
13, 70, 128, 218–219, 315n.10, 328n.1; romance
with, x, xi, 1, 10–13, 64–68, 139, 219–220, Sáenz, Aarón, 70
228–229, 232–233, 259, 267, 269–271, 277– Salas, Silvio, 223
284; serenading of Alma, 207–209 Salazar, Gualberto, 226
Reed, Samuel Payne, 1, 26, 318n.39 Sales Díaz, Arturo, 161
Regeneración, 95, 96 San Antonio, Tex., 100–101
Renovators, 90, 320n.5 San Francisco Call, x, 6–7, 10, 81–86, 89
La Revista de Mérida, 222 San Juan Teotihuacán pyramids, 67
Revista de Yucatán, 159, 325n.12 San Quentin Penitentiary, 82–86
Revueltas, Fermín, xi, 92 Sánchez, Guadalupe, 292–295, 313, 314
Reyes, Alfonso, 319n.3 Sanger, Margaret, 120
Reygadas, Ingeniero, 270 Sansores, Rosario, ix, 42
Reygadas Vértiz, José, 189 Santa Anna, 262
Ricárdez Broca, Juan, 4, 5, 296, 302–303, 306, Sapodilla tree, 324n.10
308–311 Saville, Marshall H., 64, 136, 138, 144
Rico, Juan, 242, 250, 257 Saylor, Florence, 84
Ríos Franco, Ramón, 5 Saylor Bill, 84
Rivas Mercado, Antonieta, 21, 317n.33, Schools. See Education
317nn.30–31 Schreiner, Olive, 118
Rivas Mercado, Antonio, 317n.30 Schuessler, Michael: discovery of Alma Reed’s
Rivera, Diego, 10, 16, 22, 23, 70, 92 autobiography by, xi, xii, 13, 29–31; editorial
Rivero, José, 167 approach by, to Alma Reed’s autobiogra-
Road construction, 4, 75, 108, 114, 126, 188, 191, phy, 52–53; first knowledge of Alma Reed
191, 193, 194, 214, 281, 288 by, 1; Johansson’s meetings with, xii, 43–
Robinson, Colonel, 293–294 47; Possner’s meetings with, 40–43; trips to
Robinson, Ione, xi, 16, 22–23, 52 Yucatán by, 1, 5–6, 26
Rodríguez, Hermenegildo, 295, 301, 303, 306, Schulberg, Budd, 47–49, 48
308, 310, 329n.6 Segura, José, 47
Rodríguez, Jorge, 245–248 Separatista movement, 161–162, 325n.16
Rodríguez Lozano, Manuel, 21, 317n.31 Serape, 93
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 70 Serdán, Aquiles, 77
Rosado, Durán, 209 Serrano, Francisco R., 90, 252
Rosado Alonzo, Eligio, 296–297 Sharks, 104, 141
Rosado Vega, Luis, x, 5–6, 67, 126, 128, 205, 208, Shaw, George Bernard, 118, 120
210–214, 258–259, 315n.4 Shedd, Margaret, xi, 52
Ross, Stanley Robert, 227–228 Sidney, Sir Phillip, 259
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 171 Sierra, Justo, 263
Rovzar, Bon and Aimee, 290 Sikelianos, Angelo, x, 14, 20, 51
Rubio, Olallo, 271 Sikelianos, Eva. See Palmer, Eva
Rublee, Mrs. George H., 120 Silva Herzog, Jesús, 161, 228
Ruiz, Pedro, 296, 298, 305–307 Sinclair, Harry F., 325–326n.3
index 345

Sindicato (union), 94 Tablada, José Juan, 16

Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 10, 18, 33, 70, 92 Table of Brotherhood (Orozco), 24, 24
Sisal. See Henequen (hemp) haciendas and Tamarindo trees, 123
henequen industry Tansill, Charles Callan, 184
Slavery, 63, 79, 111–112, 151–156, 172, 224, 246, Taracena, Alfonso, 292
264 Taylor, Elizabeth, 47
Smith, H. Allen, 318n.39 Teapot Dome scandal, 184, 325n.3
Smithsonian Institution, 76 Tejeda, Francisco, 305, 307, 329n.5
Snow, Sinclair, 311 Temperance, 117, 124, 141, 150–151, 176, 187
Socialist Party: accomplishments of, in Yuca- Teotihuacán, Valley of, 92
tán, 116, 246; and Alliance for Resistance, Tepic, 190, 326n.8
319n.4; and Carrillo Puerto, 66, 69, 78, Thompson, Sir Edward: as American Consul
79–80, 95, 105, 109, 118, 245, 322n.10; and in Yucatán, 66, 266, 268; and Carnegie Ex-
Carrillo Puerto’s tombstone, 69; and Com- pedition details, 261; and Cenote Sagrado
munist Party in Yucatán, 257–258; and de (Sacred Well) at Chichén Itzá, 65, 200, 202,
la Huerta revolt, 295; emblem and slogan 214–219, 266, 268; at Chichén Itzá, 196, 198,
of, 69, 124; and monument in Kanasín, 124; 200–202, 214–219; handwritten materials
and photography of Maya ruins, 236; in for Alma Reed from, 288; at Loltún Cave,
U.S., 245–248, 327n.6; and Workers Con- 235–239; photograph of, 11; and publicity in
gresses, 242–245, 250, 252, 254, 256–257; U.S. on Yucatán, 289–290; and removal of
and Zamarripa persecutions, 253 Chichén Itzá treasures to U.S., x, 10, 65–66,
Society for the Friends of Mexico, 35 218, 266, 267–268
Solís, Doña Juana, 174 Thompson, Juliet, 26
Solon, 204 Tibón, Carletto, xii
‘‘Sombras’’ (Sansores), ix Tibón, Gutierre, xii
Sones (Cuban music), 101, 321n.4 Time, meaning of, 124–125
Soriano, Juan, 44 Tlachtli (ball game), 198, 326n.1
Sosa Ferreyro, Roque Armando, 302 Tlaloc, 138, 203, 323n.4
Soto y Gama, Antonio, 160 Tolstoy, Leo, 118
Soto y Gama, Díaz, 161 Toltecs, 197–198, 199, 257, 323n.3, 328n.14
Spencer, Herbert, 119 Tomassi, Alfonso, 123
Spengler, Oswald, 125, 323n.2 Tomassi, Leopoldo, 123
Spinden, Herbert J., 64, 75–76, 135, 138, 140, 156, Tonatiuh, 165–166
187, 202–203, 268, 286 Toor, Frances, xi, 16, 49, 52, 316–317n.25
Sports, 126, 198 Torre Díaz, Álvaro, 245–246
Stalin, Joseph, 37 Torre G., Rosa, 148, 165, 166, 170, 181, 193
Stein, Gertrude, 93 Torregrosso, Louis, 256
Stein, Philip, 33, 34 Torres, Elena, 244–245
Steininger, G. Russell, 26 Torres, Luis, 153
Stephens, Governor, 84 Tovar, Mariano, 223
Stephens, John Lloyd, 75, 137–138, 142–144, Tozzer, Alfred Marston, 141, 268, 323–324n.6
324n.9 Trains. See Railroads and railroad trips
Sterner, Marie, 20–21 Traven, B., 44
Strikes. See Labor movement Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, 228
Sullivan, Stanley, 40 Treviño, Ricardo, 311
Suma, 147–149, 150, 151, 156–158 Trujillo, Hernán López, 304–307, 310
Sweden, 120 Tula, 197, 323n.3, 326n.1, 328n.14
346 Index

Tunkul (xylophone), 326n.2 Vasconcelos, José, 10, 16, 24, 70, 94, 279,
Turkey, 66, 278, 280 317n.30, 320n.7
Turner, Ethel, xi–xii, 46, 47, 79, 265, 329n.5, Vázquez Gómez, Francisco, 228
329n.7 Velázquez, Diego de, 103
Turner, John Kenneth, xi, 47, 151–155, 222 Velázquez, Padre, 171
Tut-Ankh-Amen tomb, 65, 74, 238 Veracruz invasion, 184
Twain, Mark, 74, 135 Villa, Francisco ‘‘Pancho,’’ 161, 183
Villarreal, Antonio, 293, 312
Ultima Thule, 80, 88, 319n.3 Virgil, 237
Unions. See Labor movement Von Humboldt, Baron Alexander, 74
Unitarianism, 26 Voodoo, 101–102, 312n.2
United States: agriculture in, 156, 187, 287; and Vourvoulias, Leander P., 52
Mexican-American War (1847–1848), 262,
263; music from, 100; recognition of Obre- Wallace, George, 37
gón government by, x, 7, 68, 90, 271–276, Walsh, Thomas, 14, 325–326n.3
313; relations between Mexico and, 183–187, War of the Castas (1847), 124, 147, 262, 263–264,
263–264; removal of Chichén Itzá treasures 324n.2, 325n.16
to, x, 10, 64, 65–66, 75, 133, 144, 218, 266, Washington, George and Martha, 72–73
267–268; Socialists and Communists in, Weinberg, Harry, 243
245–248, 327n.6, 328n.2; and Veracruz in- Weston, Edward, x, xi, 23, 25
vasion, 184; wealthy Mexican exiles in, 81. Whitney, Charlotte Anita, 328n.2
See also New York; Reed, Alma Wilson, Woodrow, 184, 327n.6
El Universal, 90, 225, 275, 290 Women: and birth control, 2, 64, 120; clothing
University of the Southwest, 117 for, 147, 235–236, 249, 324n.3; employment
Urquía, Rafael, 295, 296, 298, 305, 307 of, 251–252; and Feminist Leagues, 2, 3,
Uxmal: archaeological expedition at, 135, 136– 24, 120, 148, 165, 173, 181, 235–236, 256;
145; architecture of, 138, 140, 143, 324n.8; fiesta dresses for, 156–157, 163–164, 210, 277;
arts of, 140; Castillo del Adivino (Pyramid public office for, 148; role of, 24, 256; suf-
of the Magician) at, 138; culture of, 136; frage for, 3; in Suma, 147–148, 156–157; and
history of, 138, 139–140, 145; House of the Workers Congresses, 256
Dwarf (Castillo del Adivino) in, 138, 139, Workers Congresses, 242–245, 250, 252, 254,
142; House of the Turtles in, 143; library of, 256–257
144–145; Nunnery (La Casa de las Monjas) World War I, 81, 245
of, 131, 132, 140–142, 141; Palace of the Gov-
ernor in, 143–144; photographs of, 132, Xipau Xiu, 145
141; pyramids of, 133; Quadrangle of the Xochimilco, 67
Doves in, 142; red hands symbol in, 141;
Alma Reed at, 65, 130, 132, 137–145; roads to, Yampolsky, Mariana, xi
126; Saville on, 136; Stephens on, 137–138, Yaqui Indians, 79, 153–156, 224
142–144; travel to, 124, 137 Young, Art, 25
Young, Lt. Governor, 84
Valerio, Daniel, 296, 299, 305 Yucatán. See Archaeology; Carrillo Puerto,
Valladares, Francisco, 70 Felipe; Maya
Valladolid uprising, 224–226 Yum Chac, 138
Valle, Lieutenant, 294
Van Anda, Carl, 73, 74 Zacatán (drum), 326n.2
Van de Velde, Paul, 26 Zamarripa, Isaías, 253, 256
index 347

Zamora, Lois Parkinson, 29 Ziegfeld Follies, 100

Zamorano, Ignacio L., 306 Zombies, 101
Zamorano, Rafael P., 304, 309 Zubarán Capmany, Rafael, 291, 292
Zapata, Emiliano, 2, 160–161, 163
Zapote, 132