Until now those nations have seen nothing more than the very antiquated pages of Thomas Gage or the studies of Baron Humboldt, very good, certainly but which could only be made upon a nation still enslaved. Further, the famous _savant_ gave more attention to his scientific investigations than to his character portraits.
Since his day, almost all travelers have calumniated us, from Lovestern and Madam Calderon, to the writers--male and female--of the court of Maximilian, trading upon public curiosity, selling it their satires against us.
There is occasion, then, to make of fine letters an arm of defense. There is a field, there are niches, there is time, it is necessary that there shall be the will. There are talents in our land which can compete with those which shine in the old world.
If there is one thing characteristic in the Holy Week at Tixtla, it is this procession of the Christs, ancient, venerated, and difficult to abolish. It responds to a necessity of the organization of the Tixtla Indians, strongly fetichistic, perhaps because of their priestly origin. This propensity has caused the maintenance always in the pueblo of a large family of indigenous sculptors who live by the fabrication of images--poor things!--without having the least idea of drawing, nor of color, nor of proportion, nor of sentiment. For them sculpture is still the same rudimentary and ideographic art that existed before the conquest. Thus with a trunk of bamboo, with the pith of a _calchual_, or of any other soft and spongy tree, they improvise a body which resembles that of a man, give it a coat of water-glue and plaster and paint it afterwards in most vivid colors, literally bathing it in blood. _Á mal cristo, mucho sangre_ (bad Christ, much blood); such is the proverb which my artistic compatriots realize in an admirable fashion. After they varnish the image with a coat of oil of fir, they have it blessed by the priest and then adore it in the domestic _teocalli_, on whose altar it is set up among the other penates of similar fabrication.
The only day on which such Christs sally forth to public view is Holy Thursday and in reality few family festivals assume a more intimate character than the especial festival with which each native family celebrates the sallying forth of its Christ. _A padrino_ (godfather) is selected who shall take it out, that is to say who shall carry it in the procession, on a platform if it is large, in his hand if it is little. But every Christ has an attendance which bears candles and incense.