Shorter Notices
Mexican Kaleidoscope. By Norman Wright. (Heinemann. 15s.)
MR. WRIGHT was Military Attaché to the Mexican Government during the war, and spent three years in the country. Foremost among " things Mexican " that interested him was the complex racial question. The last census taken in 1942 reveals that, out of a population of 20,625,826, the whites of pure Spanish ancestry are only to per cent. The remainder is made up of mixed and full- blooded Indians, descendants of some fifty-four tribes, and there are large indigenous groups which have no bonds whatever with the rest of the country's populace. The special facilities which the author enjoyed gave him advantages few foreigners have obtained in recent years. The accounts of his expeditions into regions in- habited by the Zapotecos and the Seris are of outstanding interest. Whilst the Zapotecos are an intelligent and progressive people, whose habits.and customs have been studied in detail, the Seris have been very little observed. Their standard of living is comparable with that of the Stone Age, and they have no agriculture, eating what they can kill in the sea or on land. " Indubitably the most primitive and retarded human community now living on the North American Continent," they are hardly known to the Mexicans themselves. Mr. Wright includes a chapter on archaeology, in which he collates certain main facts which will suffice those who do not wish to probe too deeply into antiquity. This is a readable book on a swiftly developing country, and there are excellent illustrations.
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