The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 66

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66 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

Reclaiming Christ’s Heritage.

XVII.
MEXICO.

The Republic of Mexico is our nearest neighbor
to the south, and for almost two thousand miles
the southern boundary of our country is the north-
ern border of Mexico. The area of our southern
neighbor is about one-fourth that of our own. But
Mexico is more sparsely settled than the United
States, averaging only about twenty persons to
a square mile. The total population of Mexico is
about fifteen million, or about equal to the com-
bined population of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

Mexico’s People.

The population is made up of Indians, whites,
and those of mixed blood, called mestizos. The

An Indian Dwelling.

estimated Indian population is about five million.
Those of mixed blood are much more numerous,
while the Spanish-speaking whites are greatly in
the minority. These latter, however, form the rul-
ing class of the country, and Spanish is the official
language. The Indians and mestizos, for the most
part, use various Indian dialects, of which there
are almost two hundred. It is said that there are
regions in Mexico where the people living in neigh-
boring villages speak wholly different dialects.

While the aristocratic Spanish-speaking whites
in many cases are in possession of great wealth and
live in splendor, most of the people are wretchedly
poor and live in much the same manner that they
did before the Spaniards came and conquered the
land. Their houses are adobe, their cooking vessels
mostly of clay, and their food consists mainly of
beans; corn, and chilli peppers.

The natural resources of Mexico are very great.

Jt is rich in tropical fruit, and upon the whole the
soil is rich and responds liberally to the hand of
man. In the northern portion of Mexico the soil
and climate are well adapted to the raising of
cane and other agricultural products of a warm:
temperate region. Mexico is also rich in minerals.
More than half the silver in the world has been
taken from Mexican mines, and in its hills and
mountains are to be found gold, iron, copper, and
precious stones in wonderful abundance. The
country is also rich in oil, and its hundreds of oil-
wells yield millions of barrels annually. All these
great mineral and agricultural riches, however,
have brought the people of Mexico more woe than
wealth, for these resources have been developed by
large foreign corporations, who have felt under no
obligation to the inhabitants of the land and whose
sole aim seems to have been to exploit the country
to their own advantage. These corporations seem
to have felt no responsibility for the Mexican
people, and the idea of raising them from the
squalor of poverty apparently never entered their
mind.

Hand in hand with abject poverty goes the illit-
eracy of the masses in Mexico. Superstition holds
sway in the land to an incredible extent. Though
Mexico boasted a university long before our first
universities were thought of, and though a hospital
was founded here before the American colonies
were established, there is no country in the Western
Hemisphere whose people are steeped in greater
ignorance and no land in the Americas whose in-
habitants know less of the laws of health and
cleanliness.

Religious Conditions.

Mexicans are nominally members of the Roman -
Catholic Church, but remain as ignorant of the
true principles of Christianity and just as idola-
trous as before their conquest by. the Spaniards.

‘Up to 1857 the Mexican government was intolerant

of any but the Roman religion, but since then its
political leaders, most of whom are Socialists, have
taken an almost antagonistic stand to the Roman
Church. In 1917 a new constitution was adopted
which forbids any church body from owning prop-
erty. This law was passed to deprive the Roman
Catholic Church of its great landholdings, and has
resulted in the closing of a number of monasteries
and convents and the exclusion of several religious
orders and church leaders from the country. The
drift of the ruling classes to materialism and out-
spoken infidelity is everywhere to be noted.