Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 228, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1913 — IN A MEXICAN VILLAGE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN A MEXICAN VILLAGE

THE little village of Panuco de Coronado, in the state of Durango, presents an average Mexican village, one that can be duplicated anywhere in the northern two-thirds of the country. It is typical even in its legend —all mining towns here have the same. Once upon a time its mines yielded so much rich ore that the owner could pave with silver the street leading from his house to the church on the occasion of his. daughter’s marriage. Panuco, like all Mexican villages, is a transplanted bit of the orient. There is the same small, low adobe house with flat roof and no chimney and usually no window. Women carry the same jars of water on their heads and men clad in loose white cotton trudge lazily behind their little burros or more likely add their weight to the already overburdened animals. The glaring sun beats down from a tropical sky on the same palm and cactus and a general air of emptiness and silence pervades the streets. The. universal building material Is adobe, which is faced with piaster only In the better houses. These are always built in the form of a hollow square—the rooms opening into the patio in the center. The more pretentious homes have windows, barred on the outside because the houses are built snug up to the street, which gives (hem the appearance of cells In a prison. Village Scenes by Day. There is no patch of green or anybright to relieve the uniform dust brown color of house and street, writes Jessie Fawler in the Los Angeles Times. No spear of grass is in sight and all the flowers are kept in the patio. The particular village ctfn boast of two trees, one cottonwood on the outskirts and one pepper berry. To enter one of these huts is to step in on a mud floor, rarely a brick one, to see a few earthenbowls and saucers In one corner, a little pile of charred ashes In another and a rude altar made of a couple of packing Choses, decorated with a few gaudy bits of tinsel and scraps of ribbon and empty beer bottles with withered flowers, an offering to the virgin of Guadeloupe who looks down dtrom the wall. Chairs, bed and tableXare luxuries not commonly found. Mexican women are fond of flowers and the patios are bright with blossoms throughout the year. One traveler describes a Mexican village as “sun, silence and adobe," and this is one’s first and last Impression. Whatever life It Is around the plaza; for away from here one sees paly an occasional water carrier or a peon closely wrapped In his serape squatting on the ground in the sun. Pigs and dogs are everywhere. They come from every open doorway and follow us, yelping and barking. A dozen dogs are not too many for an average family. And the pigs—they sleep in the middle of the street, and not until our horses’ feet are almost on them do they grunt and lazily move a step to the right. But in the evening all is changed and the place is full of life and stir. Everybody comes out to enjoy the music and to stroll around and around the plaza. Men and women do not walk together unless married or engaged, but the men walk three or four abreast on the inside of the promenade and the women on the outside in the opposite direction. Through the open doors of the pulque shops may be seen groups of men drinking the nauseous beverage. These shops, as well as all the stores, are not known by the name of their owner, but by some such fapclful names as “Flowers of May," “Afternoons in April” and "The Surprise.” No village is too small to have Its band, and a good one, too, that plays at the plaza one or two evenings a week throughout the year. The natives are very musical and one hears everywhere the tinkle of the guitar or ipandol'.n playing-dome native air, like the plaintive “La Golodrina,” or possibly the latest Importation from home. • One does not need to read the sign “Esquela para nlnas" painted In big black letters on a low plastered building to know that it is a school for girls, for the children study In concert and—well, pulmonary troubles are not common at this altitude. Primary education Is compulsory throughout the republic and so every village has two schools, one for boys and another for girls. When Pay Day Arrives. Pay day comes once a month. Work

at the mines stops for the day and by seven o’clock the men and women begin to gather around the office and set up their little stands for the sale o£ dulces, limes, pomegranates, sugar* cane and oranges. By nine o’clock the place has taken on quite a holiday aspect. Groups of senoras, each with a black eyed baby In her lap, sit on the ground and crochet lace or Idly gossip. Men wrap themselves close in their serapes and wait stplidly for ten o’clock, when they will be paid off. All the people, men, women and children, come from miles around on foot, on burros, on ponies and in all sorts of nondescript wagons. Thq hacendado comes in from some neigh, boring hacienda, looking very pie* turesque in his silver bespangled buckskin, while his pony, with silvertrimmed saddle is a match for hiq rider. When they have all been paid they must get rid of their money at the store.

Each man wears around his waist q square piece of white cloth folded diagonally and tied so that the point hangs down in the back. This cloth serves a double purpose; It acts as q belt to hold up the trousers and as q receptacle for all purchases made. The man removes this cloth, spreads It out on the counter at the store and Into it are dumped ills purchases—* packages of cigarettes, boxes o| matches, a few cakes of soap, two or three kilos of corn and perhaps a couple of meters of cloth. No wrapping paper is used, but everything, lard excepted, is dumped into this cloth. Crackers he takes either inside his hat or on the out* side. He never looks at the quality or asks the price, for It is a case ol Hobson’s choice. Time is no object with these people, so it Is almost night before the last one goes away. The fiesta of Santa Cruz the of the holy cross, is the miner’s'day of the year, when all the mines through* out the country stop work. Crosses are placed on all unfinished as well as a huge one in the plaza, and are decorated with flowers, bits of ribbon and glass, while around the main cross are placed palmilias with their five feet stocks of beautiful white flowers. There is incessant fir. ing of guns throughout the day and the celebration ends with music and dancing in the evening.

TYPICAL GROCERY STORE.