Langston Hughes in Mexico

Below are excerpts from The Big Sea - (Hughes' autobiography) - on the short period during the youth of the African-American writer Langston Hughes in which he lived with his father in Mexico. Langston's father left the United States in the early 20th century to escape the overt discrimination against Blacks that was so prevalent during that period - eventually he ended up in Mexico where he found prosperity. However, this didn't stop him from being extremely racist towards the Mexican people. Langston didn't hold his father's racist views, and resisted them as much as he could:

During the revolutions, when all the white Americans had to flee from the Toluca district of Mexico, because of the rising nationalism, my father became the general manager of an electric light company belonging to an American firm in New York. Because he was brown, the Mexicans could not tell at sight that he was a Yankee, and even after they knew it, they did not believe he was like the white Yankees. So the followers of Zapata and Villa did not run him away as they did the whites. In fact, in Toluca, the Mexicans always called my father el americano, and not the less polite el gringo, which is a term that carries with it distrust and hatred. But my father was certainly just like the other German and English and American business men with whom he associated in Mexico. He spoke just as badly about the Mexicans. He said they were ignorant and backward and lazy. He said they were exactly like the Negroes in the United States, perhaps worse. And he said they were very bad at making money. [pages 39-40] ...The second day out from Cleveland, the train we were on rolled across Arkansas. As we passed through a dismal village in the cotton fields, my father peered from the window of our Pullman at a cluster of black peons on the main street, and said contemptuously: "Look at the niggers." When we crossed into Mexico at Laredo, and started south over the sun-baked plains, he pointed out to me a cluster of brown peons watching the train slow down at adobe station. He said: "Look at the Mexicans!" My father had great contempt for all poor people. He thought it was their own fault that they were poor. In Mexico City we went to the Grand Hotel. Then my father took me to call on three charming middle-aged Mexican ladies who were his friends...They were all three the color of parchment, a soft, ivory-yellow--the blood of Spain overcast just a little by the blood of Mexico--for they were not Indians. And they were not revolutionists. They had adored the former dictator-president, Porfirio Diaz, and when they wanted to speak of some one as uncouth, they said: "Muy indio." Very Indian! [pages 40-41] ...Their only worry about my father concerned his soul. He was not Catholic and never went to mass...But my father laughed when we got back to the hotel and said he hoped I did not believe in that foolishness. He said greasers and niggers would never get anywhere because they were too religious, always praying...They had a parlor car coach between Mexico City and Toluca, in which one could reserve a seat, but my father was too frugal with money to use this service. So we road in a crowded second-class coach, with people standing in the aisles, and all over one's feet, and bundles and baskets hanging from elsewhere. My father said: "Be careful of pickpockets and thieves. Mexicans steal." [page 42] ...Maximiliano,the mozo, took care of the horses and the chickens, swept the patio and the coral, and saddled the horses for me or my father. He was a silent boy who spoke but little Spanish, his being an Indian language from the hills. He slept on a pile of sacks in the tool shed, so I asked my father why he didn't give Maximiliano a bed, since there were several old beds around. He said: "Never give an Indian anything. He doesn't appreciate it." But he was wrong about that. I gave Maximiliano my spare centavos and cigarettes, and we became very good friends. He taught me to ride a horse without saddle or stirrups, how to tell a badly woven serape from a good one, and various other things that are useful to know in the high valley beneath the white volcanoes. My father paid Maximiliano and the cook almost nothing, but he gave me ten pesos a week allowance, which I used to share with the two servants. [page 44] ...Maximiliano came back from the station and sat down silently on the tile floor just inside my door, his blanket about him. At noon the cook brought me a bowl of warm soup, but I couldn't drink it. My stomach kept turning round and round inside me. And when I thought of my father, I got sicker and sicker. I hated my father. They sent for the doctor. He came and gave me a prescription...They asked what on earth could have happened to make me so ill. I must have had a great shock, they said, because my eyes were a deep yellow. But I never told them or the doctors that I was sick because I hated my father [page 49]

This following is a clip from Langston Hughes: Voices & Visions in which there is a short mention of Langston's father: