`What were they?' Adam enquired.
`Soon after the Conquest, the Spaniards divided the country
into districts, making themselves feudal lords on the same pattern as the nobles in Europe. They looked on the Indians on their great estates as serfs, and compelled them to give their labour without payment. The Church could not altogether abolish these ecomiendas, as they were called, but it did persuade the King of Spain to agree to a law that after “two lives” the exploiters should have to surrender their right to use the Indians as slave labour.
`Of course, there were evasions. Many of the Spaniards continued to exploit the simple Indians by selling them goods at exorbitant prices for which they could not pay, then making them continue to work against debts that they could never hope to wipe off; so the encomiendas were not finally abolished until Mexico achieved independence. Even so, the law did result, two generations later, in great numbers of Indians becoming paid workers instead of slaves.
`Then there came the Franciscan friars. They did not concern themselves with the law but were simple missionaries and, like all missionaries, they were aware that the quickest way to convert the heathen was to work for his health and happiness. Three of them walked barefoot all the way from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, and that made an immense impression. Later the Franciscans spread all over the country, often penetrating to places in which no other white man had ever been. They led frugal, pious lives, teaching the Indians such arts as they knew, and acting as righteous judges in all local and family disputes; so that they became greatly revered.
`As in Spain, these friars organised their parishioners into ' guilds, each with a devotion to a certain saint. On the Saint's day his guild put on a play in which angels and devils, knights and Moors fought battles; always, of course, ending in the triumph of Christianity. To be given a part in these spectacles was thought a great honour and to be debarred from participating in them a terrible disgrace. They became the most important thing in village life and in that way the friars were able to exercise great influence for god over the social as well as the religious lives of the people.' Snatching another couple of grapes, Alberuque ate them quickly, spat out the pips and, before Adam could think of any remark, resumed
`Before the coming of the Spaniards, the peasants had enjoyed a form of Communism, by which the land surrounding each village was held in common and plots were allotted to families in relation their capacity to work them. The Church insisted on the maintenance of that system and forbade white men or half castes to live permanently in the villages, to prevent their setting up shops and tempting the Indians to impoverish their food supply by exchanging produce for tawdry goods. It was such measures that caused those who lived in the villages to give absolute obedience to the friars; not because they feared them, but because they really looked on them as representatives on earth of a benign God.
`The health of the people was also cared for, both individually by the secular priests and nationally by the Church. For example, as Mexico is such a mountainous country a great difference exists between the climate and the density of the air at different levels. On average the temperature in Mexico City is twenty five degrees lower than that at Vera Cruz. In consequence, it was found that if Indians were taken from the highlands to work in the lowlands, and vice versa, great numbers of them died from respiratory diseases. The Spanish settlers were interested only in getting cheap labour, but the Church insisted on strict laws being passed to prevent the transfer of workers from their own districts. Of course, in those days, and for several centuries, the Church here was virtually the State. Her power was paramount. It was always exercised for the good of the people, and it still is.'
Adam nodded. `From all you tell me, I appreciate that the Church must have done a lot of good in the old days. But today I imagine it is almost moribund, as it lost all its power when
Mexico became independent.'
`By no means,' Alberuque replied quickly. `There have been periods when it has suffered persecution under atheist governments; but the people have always realised that it is their only protection against exploitation and so remained loyal to it. Do you realise that Miguel Hidalgo, the first man to lead a serious revolution, was a priest?
`For just on three hundred years Mexico had been the milch cow of Spain. The greater part of the silver coinage of today came originally from Mexico. Over four billion dollars' worth of it was sent to Europe. But the Spaniards were not content with that. Thousands of them came here to make fortunes, then went home again. They were known as gachupines wearers of spurs and they were given all the most lucrative jobs, both in the government and in the Church. The Creoles that is, Spaniards who had been born in Mexico they regarded with contempt, and the Indians as cattle.
'Miguel Hidalgo was a Creole. Owing to that he had no hope of ever becoming a Bishop and he intensely resented the privileges that the Spaniards enjoyed. To protect Spanish interests the inhabitants of New Spain were not allowed to cultivate grapes or
olives or to deal in salt or tobacco, or in the ice brought down from the mountains. The Indians were not even permitted to ride a horse, carry arms or work in specialized crafts. But Hidalgo was a born rebel. He did many of these illegal things, read forbidden books and, as the shining light of the Literary Society of Queretaro, brought to its members the doctrines of the French Revolution. then, with the cry of “ Mexico for the Mexicans”, he urged his parishioners to revolt.'
`I've read about that,' Adam put in. But in the rebellion he led made a hopeless mess of things and countenanced an appalling massacre of government troops who had surrendered at Alhondiga.'
`It is true that he was no general; that in the end he was defeated, captured and executed. But the fact remains that all over the country people rose in their thousands to support him; and the reason for that was not only a political one. It was largely because he took as his banner that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it is this small town priest whom all Mexicans now honour as the Father of Independence.'
`But that was way back in 1810. Religion was still a great force everywhere.'
`In Mexico it has remained so. Of course, there have been periods when the Church has suffered severely at the hands of her enemies. Under the Constitution brought in by Benito Juarez in 1857 the Church was deprived of all her immense properties, the privileges of the clergy were abolished, priests and nuns were permitted to renounce their vows and education was taken out of the hands of the Church to be conducted by atheist schoolmasters. But persecution only strengthened the ardour of the faithful and their numbers were so great that for three years there was civil war in which they put up a desperate resistance.
`The war disrupted the whole country to such an extent that Porfirio Diaz, who afterwards ruled Mexico for so long, had to make peace with the Church and again allow her to acquire property.
`The Presidents who succeeded Diaz were again of the Left and endeavoured to force their atheism on the country, especially by the new Communist inspired Constitution of 1917 With the Pope's blessing, our Archbishop repudiated the Constitution. The government retaliated by expelling all foreign born priests and nuns, and again closed the parish schools. The Church fought back by ceasing to hold religious services for three years. By 1928 the masses became so desperate at being denied the consolations of religion at they again rose in revolt. The rebellion was called the War of the Cristeros, because the insurgents went into battle against the forces of the atheist President Calles with the cry of “Long live Christ the King”.