File:The Spanish-American republics (1891) (14576897557).jpg

Identifier: gri_spanishameri00chil (find matches)
Title: The Spanish-American republics
Year: 1891 (1890s)
Authors: Child, Theodore, 1846-1892
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
s of Chililive, the infant mortality is enormous. On the other hand, the peonesand their women folk are prodigies of hardy endurance; they are in-deed the fittest and strongest of their generation, all the weaker hav-ing died in the first few months or years of their struggle againstinsalubrious circumstances and conditions. These infant victims ofdefective sanitary arrangements do not occasion grief or mourning bytheir premature departure from this world; their mothers believe that URBAN AND COMMERCIAL CHILI. 115 the little souls immediately go to paradise and become angels, and so they are called angclitos, and their death is a pretext for rejoicing, and inviting neighbors to drink and dance. The little corpses are kept for days and days; often you will see women in the trains and the horse-cars with dead babies in their laps; the photographers, too, are constantly having infant corpsesbrought to themto make souvenirportraits. In thecountry the deathof an infant willinterrupt workor
Text Appearing After Image:
V%v PROCESSION OF CORPUS CHRIST!, SANTIAGO. more. In one village that I hap-pened to visit an epidemic of mea-sles had made half a dozen angeli-tos, and for nearly three weeks nowork had been done for many milesaround. The whole population had been keeping up a continuous wake, dancing, singing, and drinkingaround the angclitos, who were dressed up like church images, andsurrounded by burning tapers. This belief in angelitos and the cus-tom of wakes also prevail in Peru, Bolivia, and the Argentine. ll6 THE SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS. The fine houses of Santiago, I am told, are not often opened forentertainments. The invitation to dinner is not so freely given as inAnglo-Saxon countries; the family circle is more close; the familylife of two or three generations is self-sufficing. The means of socialintercourse is the tertulia, the reception, or medianochc, where theyoung people dance and the old people gossip; these, however, I amtold, are rare, so that there cannot be said to be much

Note About Images