26 MEXICO. be unfounded. From the first breaking out of the Revolu- tion, the Creoles were obliged to court the alliance of the mixed classes, and in all their proclamations we find them representing their own cause, and that of the Aborigines, as the same. The distinctions of Castes werp all swallowed up in the great, vital distinction of Americans^ and Europeans ; against whom, supported, as they were, by the whole force of Spain, and holding, as they did, almost all the public employments in the country, nothing could have been done except by a general coalition of the natives. Hence the ap- parent absurdity of hearing the descendants of the first con- querors, (for such the Creoles, strictly speaking, were,) gravely accusing Spain of the atrocities, which their own an- cestors had committed ; invoking the names of Moctezuma and Atahualpa;* expatiating upon the miseries which the Indians had undergone, and endeavouring to discover some affinity between the sufferings of that devoted race and their own. It is consoling to reflect, however, that this necessity of identifying themselves with the Aborigines, although absurd as argument, has led to good practical results. Castes can no longer be said to exist in Mexico, nor, I believe, in any other part of Spanish America: many of the most distinguished characters of the revolutionary war belonged to the mixed breeds ; and, under the system now established, all are equally entitled to the rights of citizensliip, and equally capable of holding the highest dignities of the state. Several Curas, of pure Indian extraction, have already been depu- ties ; and I am acquainted with one young Indian, of dis- tinguished abilities, who is a member of the supreme tribunal of justice in Durango. General Guerrero, too, who, in 1824,
- Vide the Cuadro Historico of Carlos Bustamante, passim ; and the
first Manifesto of the Congress of Buenos Ayres, in which the massacre of Caxamalca is introduced, as one of the pleas of independence.
