Morelos
A narrow-gauge railroad, crossing the country from
Vera Cruz to Acapulco, was long ago projected, by
way of Jalapa, Puebla, Mexico City, and Cuernavaca.
This transcontinental line is continued westward
from the capital by the Morelos Railroad, one of
the very few enterprises purely Mexican in
character and controlled by energetic native
capitalists. It runs at first parallel with the
old road to Puebla, over which travel has rolled
for centuries, and which, even in this age of
steam, is crowded with the mules and donkeys of
the freighters. Two daily trains leave the gate of
San Lazaro for the South, composed of first,
second, and third class cars, the fare being two
cents per mile for the former, and less than one
cent for the latter. At the hacienda of Los Reyes,
composed of a few scattered adobe huts, a train
connects for the ancient city of Tezcoco, and
eventually for Puebla.
The scenery for the most part is dreary, but
plains waving with grain, like those of Ameca and
Ozumba, and the great volcanoes always in sight,
especially from the latter place, make the route
one of varied interest. Beyond the Mexican
plateau, fifty miles from the capital, the road
descends over a forbidding country, known as the
mal pais, or "bad lands," fifty miles
farther, to the town of Cuautla. This is a place
of note, situated in tierra calicute, celebrated
for its great sugar plantations and tropical
fruits.
On the 18th of June, 1881, the Morelos road was
formally opened to this point with a grand
banquet, and an assembling here of nearly all the
notables of Mexico. A week later a most terrible
accident occurred at the barranca of Malpais,
caused by the washing away of the foundations of a
bridge, by which two hundred persons, principally
soldiers, were precipitated down a ravine, and the
cars, loaded with lime and rum, took fire,
enveloping the victims in flames. Had that
accident happened at the opening of the road, when
President Gonzalez, Diaz, Romero, and most of the
leading men of Mexico were there, the consequences
to the republic would have been most disastrous.
The whole work, with its sharp and numerous
curves, and its insecure bridges, seemed to
justify the boast of the native population (before
the accident), that the engineer was a Mexican,
and had never built a road before. The disaster
proved a lesson to the American engineers,
especially those who came first in the dry season,
when all the ravines and arroyos are bare, and who
realized that they must reside here through a
rainy season or two before they could fully
understand the perils of a road from floods.
The Mexican manner of railroad building, I may
remark in passing, is diametrically opposed to the
American. First, you must get a
"concession,"--permission to build. Then
you seek out some point far distant from any
existing railroad, and transport your material to
that place. To begin at the coast would be
contrary to Mexican tradition, and establish a
damaging precedent. By beginning at the farther
end of the line, you give employment to a great
many carters and teamsters, which is but simple
justice, as the road when built will certainly
take away their freights. Realizing this, these
aggrieved people make their charges accordingly.
This way of constructing a road will take more
time and capital, but you will have the sympathies
of the owners of mules and diligences, and the
satisfaction of having offended nobody's pet
theories and traditions. The road will approach
completion so gradually that it will seem as
though it had always existed, and by that time you
may have the pleasure of renewing the portion
first built, and of employing the descendants,
even to the third generation, of your original
workmen.
It was in this manner that the first railroad
in Yucatan was built, and various others, and was
originally insisted upon by the Mexican government
in regard to the two great American roads. In
making the road from Tampico to San Luis Potosi,
for instance, material and rolling-stock were
carted into the interior over tremendous hills, at
a frightful expense, because the charter read
"from San Luis to Tampico," instead of
the reverse.
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Introduction
| Mexican
Railway | Central
|
National
| Morelos
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