Family and Courtesy in Mexico
Among the upper classes the standard of personal integrity is high. The average Mexican gentleman is proud of his honour and punctilious in his care that it shall not in…
From: 1917 C.E. To: 1917 C.E.
Location: Mexico
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Mexico of the Mexicans by Lewis Spence.
Among the upper classes the standard of personal integrity is high. The average Mexican gentleman is proud of his honour and punctilious in his care that it shall not in any way become smirched. Public integrity, too, as instanced in the Press, is idealistic; but there is no law which can suppress comment upon a case while it is sub judice, and, in consequence, justice occasionally suffers.
In certain contingencies, the law is none too scrupulously adhered to in a country where lawyers abound—the sceptic might be inclined to say for that precise reason; for just as in highly civilised Scotland, where the percentage of lawyers is very large, private legal abuses are frequent and notorious through the laxity of the great legal corporations, in Mexico the lawyer is seldom answerable for his misdeeds to any higher authority; and as he composes the class that makes the laws and administers them, abuses are likely to flourish and continue so long as such conditions prevail.
The integrity of the Mexican shopkeeping class is less punctilious than that of its betters. Most Mexican shop-keepers have a different price for their fellow-countrymen and for the unfortunate estrangeiro; and as imported goods are already sufficiently highly ticketed, by the time the Mexican merchant has appraised them to the visitor they have mounted to an extortionate figure. Firmness is essential in dealing with traders in the better shops of the capital, unless the purchaser be one of those happily-circumstanced folk who can afford to disburse a profit of 150 per cent., and who prefers to do so rather than submit to an encounter in the unpleasant art of haggling.
Family life in Mexico is planned upon patriarchal lines. The Mexicans are most united in their family ties and affections; and parents and children, brothers and sisters are, as a rule, deeply attached to each other, and display much warmer sentiments in their relations than is the case in colder England. In Mexico, woman has not yet lost her natural charm and influence, which in the home she exercises to the full. The male members of the family are, as a rule, most amenable to the influence of the mother, the wife, the sister; and the Mexican woman exerts herself to retain the affection of her male relations in a manner that would astound a daughter of Britain. It has even been said that Mexican men are subject to a great deal of feminine "coddling"—a stupid term bestowed upon delicate attention and affectionate regard, the nature of which the Anglo-Saxon wholly fails to comprehend.
Mexican family life is patriarchal in that the young Mexican man does not leave his parents' house when he comes to years of discretion, and even upon marriage he frequently remains with them. Often a son-in-law is adopted into the family, and it is quite common to find the parents of either husband or wife in a Mexican home.
Courtesy is the rule and not the exception in Mexico. Even in the poorest circles the day-labourer will address his neighbour as "Don," and expects to be so entitled in return.
Roughness and asperity are conspicuous by their absence in the relationships of everyday life. No matter into what grade of society one may penetrate, he will find himself the object of the most respectful, nay, even solicitous, politeness. This courtesy is the natural endowment of the race.
The peon, scion of the grave and punctilious Aztec folk, is not to be outdone even by the descendant of the proud yet courtly Castilian. Indeed, the uniform respect with which the peasant class treat those whom chance has placed above them in the social scale, has not now its parallel in any European country, unless, perhaps, in Russia or some of the more out-of-the-way parts of the Austrian Empire, From the Mexican peon you will receive not only fair speech and a nice, discriminating politesse, but, on occasion, fervent and what seem heartfelt prayers for your welfare here and hereafter.
Spence, Lewis. Mexico of the Mexicans. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917.
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