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The statistical data, imperfect though they have been, have given force and value to the opinion, which for me is a fact, that the indigenous race becomes debilitated and decreases in proportion as the white race becomes strong and advances. This fact is in complete accord with the laws of nature; the disadvantage of the indigenous race consists, for its decrease, in its customs and in the hygienic conditions of its mode of life. A miserable hut serves as a habitation for a numerous family and in it, the inmates actually packed together, cannot but breathe a polluted air; food is scanty and innutritious, while the daily occupations are heavy and hard. Sad indeed is the sight of these unhappy indigenes who without distinction of sex and age are encountered in our city streets and who, exhausted under the weight of enormous burdens, return to their villages with the miserable pittance gained from their trading.

If we consider the Indian from the time of his birth, or even from before his birth, we see his life to be but a series of miseries and abjections. The Indian women, even at the time of travail, do not cease from their wearisome tasks and, without thought for the being who stirs within them, occupy themselves in grinding maize and making tortillas, labors which cannot but prove hurtful to the act of giving birth. While the period of suckling has not passed, the child is fed with tortillas and fruits and other foods unsuited to its digestive powers, causing by such imprudence diarrhœas and other diseases, which carry the children to the grave or, as they grow, leaves them infirm and feeble. Smallpox, in consequence of the neglect of the parents and their indifference to vaccination, causes frightful ravages—the disease being most pernicious in the indigenous race.

Such statistics as I possess of the movement of population in the pueblo of Ixtacalco, while they indicate that the Civil Registry has not yet extended its dominion to that pueblo, corroborate the opinion that the decrease of the race is mainly due to infant mortality.

In 1868 there were born	165
There died	190
Loss	25

In this mortality there were one hundred and forty children. In the year 1869, although the data show an augmentation of fifty-nine persons in the population, the infant deaths number sixty-five, to thirty-four of adults.

One fact ought to particularly call our attention because it proves that the degradation of the race is not in its constitution but in the customs of its members. The Indian women of the villages near the Capital, hiring themselves out as nurses in private homes, rear healthful and robust children, because in their new employment they improve their condition, by enforced cleanliness, by good food, and by the total change in their hygienic conditions. But this very circumstance is a serious misfortune for the race, the women impelled by the desire to gain better wages, abandoning their own children to the mercenary cares of other women, as if the lack of a mother’s love and care could be made good!

Another of the reasons which, in my opinion, cause the degeneration of the indigenous race, is that marriage takes place unwisely and prematurely. According to medical opinion, the nubile age of woman in our country is eighteen years, in the hot lands fourteen; between medical theory and actual practice there is an enormous difference. As regards the Indians, frequently union occurs between a woman scarcely arrived at the term of her development and a man of forty years or more, entirely developed and robust; as a consequence, the woman becomes debilitated and infirm and her children are weak and degenerate.

If to these causes, which operate so powerfully toward the decrease of the indigenous race, is added the sensible diminution it has suffered in our civil wars,—since the indigenous race supplies far the larger part of the army—the truth of my assertion seems fully corroborated.