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n
arous iviexico
JOHN KENNETH TURNER

^

-/

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BARBAROUS MEXICO

HMex

BARBAROUS MEXICO

BY

JOHN KENNETH TURNER
r

^X A; A
,

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
CO-OPERATIVE

Copyright 1910

By Charles H. Kerr & Company

JOHN F. HIGGINS
PRINTER AND BINDER

376-382

MONROE STREET

CHICAGO. ILLINOIS

/

^
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
Since the publication of the first edition of this book
than four months ago both the prophecies which it
embodies have been fulfilled. On page 10 I say that
Mexico *'is on the verge of a revolution in favor of
democracy ;" and on page 267, that ''The United States
will intervene with an army, if necessary, to maintain
Diaz or a successor zvho would continue the special partnership with American capital,"
As this is written, nearly 30,000 American soldiers are
patrolHng the Mexican border and American warships
are cruising in the neighborhood of Mexican ports.
Though not a soldier may cross the line, though not a
vessel may fire a shot, this is effective intervention all the
same. The confessed purpose is to crush the revolution
by cutting off its source of supplies and by preventing
less

patriotic Mexicans residing in the United States from
going home to fight for the freedom of their country.
The action of President Taft in mobilizing the troops
was taken without regard for the wishes of the American
people and without due explanation to them. The action
of the troops in seizing revolutionist supplies and arresting revolutionist recruits is not only against every tradition of political liberty upon which this nation is supposed
to be based, but it is unlawful and criminal and punishable under the laws of the States by fine and imprisonment. It is not a crime against any federal or state law
to ship food, or even arms and ammunition, into Mexico
with the open intention of selling them to the revolutionists.
It is not a crime against any federal or state law
to go from the United States into Mexico with the open
intention of joining the revolution there.
Without a
formal proclamation of martial law the military authorities have no right to exceed the civil laws and when
they do so they are liable to fine and imprisonment for
unlawful detention.
Martial law has not been proclaimed on the border.
Every day the military authorities there are violating

PREFACE.

6

the laws. But the civil authorities are cowed, the people
are cowed, and the victims, Mexican or American, seem
By fiat of the executive law and
to have no redress.
civil authority have been subverted and, as far as the
Mexican situation is concerned, the United States has
been turned into a military dictatorship as sinister and
irresponsible as that of Diaz himself.
And why has this thing been done? To maintain a
chattel slavery more cruel than ever existed in our
Southern states. To uphold a political tyranny a hundred
times more unjust than the one against which our men
of Seventy-Six revolted. If the policy of the Taft administration be permitted to continue these purposes will
be attained. Already the revolution has received such a
set-back that, though it win in the end, many good and

brave men must die who otherwise might have lived.
The purpose of this book was to inform the American
people as to the facts about Mexico in order that they
might be prepared to prevent American intervention
against a revolution the justice of which there can be no
question.
So far "Barbarous Mexico" has failed in this purpose.
Will it fail in the end? Are the American people as enslaved in spirit as the Mexicans are in body ? In Mexico
In the
the only protest possible is a protest of arms.
United States there is still a degree of freedom of press
and speech. Though by tricks and deceits innumerable
the rulers of America succeed in evading the will of the
majority, the majority yet may protest, and if the protest

be long enough and loud enough, it is still capable of
making those rulers tremble. Protest against the Crime
of Intervention.
And should it become necessary, in
order to make the rulers heed, to raise that protest to a
threat of revolution here, so be it; the cause will be

worth while.

JOHN KENNETH TURNER.
Los Angeles, Calif., April 8, 1911.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER

PAGE

The Slaves of Yucatan
The Extermination of the Yaquis

37

III.

Over the Exile Road

49

IV.

The Contract Slaves of Valle Nacional.

67

V.

In the Valley of Death

82

VI.

The Country Peons and the City Poor. 109
120
The Diaz System
Repressive Elements of the Diaz Ma-

I.

II.

VII.
VIII.

9

chine
IX.

X.

The Crushing of Opposition Parties
The Eighth Unanimous Election
Diaz

138

160

of
174

XL

Four Mexican Strikes
197
XII. Critics and Corroboration
220
XIII. The Diaz-American Press Conspiracy... 237
XIV. The American Partners of Diaz
253
XV. American Persecution of the Enemies
OF Diaz

XVI. Diaz Himself
XVII.

The Mexican People

270
299
324

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
facing page

Slave Mother and Child^ also Henequen Plant

20

Women Are Cheaper than Grist-Mills

20

Calling the Roll at Sunrise on a Slave Plantation

26

Scene in a Yaqui Bull Pen on the Exile Road
Band of Yaquis on the Exile Road

49

Type of "Enganchado/' or Plantation Slave

70

52

Boy Slaves on a Sugar Plantation in the Hot Lands
96
Cargadores with Baskets, Seen Everyw^here on the
110
Mexican Plateau
Midnight in Mexico City "Meson," Cheap Lodging House 116
Tv^o Groups of Waifs Sleeping in a "Meson"
118
Ready for the Execution
140
Mexican Cavalry and Mexican County Jail
144
Yaquis Hanged in Sonora, Mexican Rurales
148
A Typical Mexican Military Execution, Before and After 164
Diaz ane Taft Photographed Together at El Paso, Texas 254
Portraits of Five American Revolutionists
272
Primitive Plow; Mexico Is Backward in Modern Machinery, Not Because the Mexican Laborer Is Stupid,
but Because He Is Cheap
328
Wood Carriers, City of Mexico
334

BARBAROUS MEXICO
CHAPTER I
THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

What is Mexico?
Americans commonly characterize Mexico as "Our
Sister Republic."

Most of us picture her vaguely as

a republic in reality
people a

little

much like our own, inhabited by

different in temperament, a

little

poorer

and a little less advanced, but still enjoying the protection of republican laws

—a free people

in the sense that

we are free.
Others of us,

who have seen the country through a

car window, or speculated a

little

in

Mexican mines

or Mexican plantations, paint that country beyond the
Rio Grande as a benevolent paternalism in which a
great and good man orders all things well for his foolish but adoring people.
I

real

found Mexico to be neither of these things. The
Mexico I found to be a country with a written

and written laws in general almost as fair
and democratic as our own, but with neither constitution
Mexico is a country without
nor laws in operation.
political freedom, without freedom of speech, without
constitution

a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.

It is

a land where there has been no contest
9

BARBAROUS MEXICO

10

for the office of president for more than a generation,
where the executive rules all things by means of a
standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed
price.
I found Mexico to be a land where the people
are poor because they have no rights, where peonage
is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel
slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands.
Finally, I
found that the people do not idolize their president, that
the tide of opposition, dammed and held back as it has
been by army and secret police, is rising to a height
where it must shortly overflow that dam. Mexicans
of all classes and affiliations agree that their country
IS on the verge of a revolution in favor of democracy;
if

not a revolution in the time of Diaz, for Diaz

and

is

is

old

expected soon to pass, then a revolution after

Diaz.

My special interest in political Mexico was first awakened early in 1908, when

Mexican

revolutionists

cerated in the county

I

came in contact with four

who were
jail

at

at

that

time incar-

Los Angeles, California.

Here were four educated, intelligent Mexicans, college
all of them, who were being held by the United

men,

States authorities on a charge of planning to invade a

friendly

nation

—Mexico—with an armed force from

American soil.

Why should intelligent men take up arms against a
Why should they come to the United States

republic?

to prepare for their military maneuvers?

I talked

with

Mexican prisoners. They assured me that at
one time they had peacefully agitated in their own country for a peaceful and constitutional overthrow of the
those

persons in control of their government.

But for that very thing, they declared, they had been
imprisoned and their property had been destroyed. Secret

—
THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

11]

police had dogged their steps, their lives had been threat-

ened, and countless methods had been used to prevent
them from carrying on their work. Finally, hunted
as outlaws beyond the national boundaries, denied the
rights of free speech, press and assembly, denied the

peaceably

right

changes,

to

organize

they had resorted

to
to

bring
the

about

political

only alternative

arms. Why had they wished to overturn their government? Because it had set aside the constitution, because
it had abolished those civic rights which all enlightened

men agree are necessary for the unfolding of a nation,
because it had dispossessed the common people of their
lands, because it had converted free laborers into serfs,

peons, and some of them even into

"Slavery?

—

slaves.

Do you mean to tell me that there is any

real slavery left in the

western hemisphere?"

I scoffed.

"Bah
You are talking like an American socialist. You
mean 'wage slavery,' or slavery to miserable conditions
of livelihood. You don't mean chattel slavery."
But those four Mexican exiles refused to give ground.
"Yes, slavery," they said, "chattel slavery. Men, women
!

—

and children bought and sold like mules just like mules
like mules they belong to their masters. They are

—and

slaves."

"Human
America!

beings

bought

and

sold

like

And in the twentieth century.

mules

in

Well," I told

myself, "if it's true, I'm going to see it."

So it was that early

in

the Rio Grande bound for

September, 1908,

I

crossed

my first trip through the

back yards of Old Mexico.

Upon this first trip I was accompanied by L. Gutierrez De Lara, a

Mexican of distinguished family, whose
De Lara
was opposed to the existing government in Mexico,

acquaintance I had made also in Los Angeles.

BARBAROUS MEXICO

12

which fact my critics have pointed out as evidence of
bias in

my investigations.

On the contrary, I did not

depend on De Lara or any other biassed source for

my information, but took every precaution to arrive
and by as many different avenues
Every essential fact which I put down
here in regard to the slavery of Mexico I saw with my
own eyes or heard with my own ears, and heard usually
from those individuals who would be most likely to
at the exact truth,

as practicable.

minimize their cruelties

—the slave-drivers themselves.

De Lara I must say
me most important aid in gathering my

Nevertheless, to the credit of
that he gave

By his knowledge of the country and the
by his genius as a "mixer," and, above all,

material.

people,

through his personal acquaintance with valuable sources

—

men on the inside
and hear things which are prac-

of information all over the country

— was enabled
I

to see

tically inaccessible to the

Slavery in Mexico!
in

Yucatan.

ordinary investigator.

Yes, I found it.

The peninsula of Yucatan

found it first
is an elbow of
I

Central America, which shoots off in a northeasterly

almost half way to Florida.
It belongs to
Mexico, and its area of some 80,000 square miles is
almost equally divided among the states of Yucatan and
Campeche and the territory of Quintana Roo.
The coast of Yucatan, which comprises the northcentral part of the peninsula, is about a thousand miles
direction

directly

south of

New Orleans.

The surface of

the

state is almost solid rock, so nearly solid that it is usually

impossible to plant a tree without
to receive the shoot

first

blasting a hole

and make a place for the

roots.

Yet this naturally barren land is more densely populated
than is our own United States.

More than that, within

one-fourth of the territory three- fourths of the people

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
live,

13

and the density of the population runs to nearly

seventy-five per square mile.

The

secret of these peculiar conditions

is

that the

and the climate of northern Yucatan happen to be
perfectly adapted to the production of that hardy species
of century plant which produces henequen, or sisal
hemp. Hence we find the city of Merida, a beautiful
soil

modern city claiming a population of 60,000 people,
and surrounding it, supporting it, vast henequen
plantations on which the rows of gigantic green plants
extend for miles and miles. The farms are so large
that each has a little city of its own, inhabited by from
500 to 2,500 people, according to the size of the farm.

The owners of these great farms are the chief slaveholders of Yucatan; the inhabitants of the

little

cities

The annual export of henequen from
Yucatan approximates 250,000,000 pounds. The population of Yucatan is about three hundred thousand. The
are the slaves.

slave-holders' club

numbers 250 members, but the vast

majority of the lands and the slaves are concentrated
in the hands of fifty

henequen kings.

The slaves num-

ber more than one hundred thousand.

In order to secure the truth in its greatest purity from
the lips of the masters of the slaves I went among them

playing a part.

Long before I put my feet upon the

white sands of Progreso, the port of Yucatan, I had
heard how visiting investigators are bought or blinded,

how,

if

they cannot be bought, they are wined and

dined and filled with falsehood, then taken over a route
previously prepared

they go

away

— fooled,

in short, so completely that

half believing that

the slaves

are not

hundred thousand half-starving, overworked, degraded bondsmen are perfectly happy and so
contented with their lot that it would be a shame indeed
slaves, that the

BARBAROUS MEXICO

14

to yield to them the

humanity,

is

freedom and security which, in all

the rightful share of every

human being

born upon the earth.

The part which I played in Yucatan was that of an
much money to sink in henequen properties, and as such I was warmly welcomed by the
henequen kings. I was rather fortunate in going to
Yucatan when I did. Until the panic of 1907 it was
investor with

a well-understood and unanimously approved policy of
the

"Camara de Agricola,"

that

foreigners

the planters' organization,

should not be allowed to invade the

henequen business.

This was partly because the profits

of the business were huge and the rich Yucatecos wanted
to

"hog it all" for themselves, but more especially be-

cause they feared that through foreigners the story of

might become known to the world.
But the panic of 1907 wiped out the world's henequen
market for a time. The planters were a company of
little Rockefellers, but they needed ready cash, and they
were willing to take it from anyone who came. Hence
my imaginary money was the open sesame to their club,
and to their farms. I not only discussed every phase
of henequen production with the kings themselves, and
while they were off their guard, but I observed thousands
of slaves under their normal conditions.
Chief among the henequen kings of Yucatan is
Olegario Molina, former governor of the state and Secretary of Fomento (Public Promotion) of Mexico.
Molina's holdings of lands in Yucatan and Quintana
their misdeeds

Roo aggregate 15,000,000 acres, or 23,000 square miles
The fifty kings live in
in itself.
costly palaces in Merida and many of them have homes

—a small kingdom
abroad.

They travel a great deal, usually they speak

several different languages,

and they and their families

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
are a most cultivated class of people.
all

Yucatan, even

all

the peninsula

dependent on the fifty henequen kings.

15

All Merida and

of

Yucatan, are

Naturally these

men are in control of the political machinery of their
state, and naturally they operate that machinery for their

own benefit.

The slaves are 8,000 Yaqui Indians im-

ported from Sonora, 3,000 Chinese (Koreans), and be-

tween 100,000 and 125,000 native Mayas, who formerly

owned the lands that the henequen kings now own.
The Maya people, indeed, form about ninety-five per
cent of the population of Yucatan. Even the majority
of the fifty henequen kings are Mayas crossed with the
blood of Spain. The Mayas are Indians and yet they
are not Indians. They are not like the Indians of the

—

United States, and they are called Indians only because

homes were in the western hemisphere when the
Europeans came. The Mayas had a civilization of their
own when the Europeans "discovered" them, and it
was a civilization admittedly as high as that of the most
advanced Aztecs or the Incas of Peru.
their

The Mayas

are a peculiar people.

They look

like

no other people on the face of the earth. They are not
like other Mexicans; they are not like Americans; they
are not like Chinamen; they are not like East Indians;
they are not like Turks.
Yet one might very easily
imagine that fusion of

all

these five widely different

peoples might produce a people

much like the Mayas.

They are not large

but their features are

in

stature,

remarkably finely chiselled and their bodies give a strong
impression of
olive, their

elegance

and grace.

Their

skins

are

foreheads high, their faces slightly aquiline.

The women of all classes in Merida wear long, flowing
white gowns, unbound at the waist and embroidered

about the hem and perhaps also about the bust in some

BARBAROUS MEXICO

16
bright color
ings

—green, blue or purple. In the warm even-

a military band plays and hundreds of comely

women and girls thus alluringly attired mingle among
the fragrant flowers, the art statues and the tropical

greenery of the city plaza.

The planters do not call their chattels slaves. They call
them "people," or "laborers," especially when speaking
But when speaking confidentially they
to strangers.
have said to me

"Yes, they are slaves."

:

But I did not accept the word slavery from the people
of Yucatan, though they were the holders of the slaves
themselves.
the name,

The proof of a fact is to be found, not in
but in the conditions thereof.

Slavery

is

the ownership of the body of a man, an ownership so

absolute that the body can be transferred to another,

an ownership that gives to the owner a right to take
the products of that body, to starve

it,

to chastise

it

at

Such is slavery in the
extreme sense. Such is slavery as I found it in Yucatan.
The masters of Yucatan do not call their system

will,

to kill

it

with impunity.

slavery; they call

it

enforced service for debt.

"We

do not consider that we own our laborers; we consider
And we do not consider
that they are in debt to us.
that we buy and sell them we consider that we transfer
the debt, and the man goes with the debt." This is the
way Don Enrique Camara Zavala, president of the
;

"Camara de Agricola de Yucatan," explained the attitude of the henequen kings in the matter.
against the law

;

"Slavery is

we do not call it slavery," various plant-

ers assured me again and again.

But the fact that it is not service for debt is proven
by the habit of transferring the slaves from one master
to another, not on any basis of debt, but on the basis of
the market price of a man. In figuring on the purchase

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
of a plantation

I

17

always had to figure on paying cash

same as for the land, the
Four hundred Mexican dollars
apiece was the prevailing price, and that is what the
planters usually asked me.
"If you buy now you buy
at a very good time," I was told again and again. "The
panic has put the price down.
One year ago the
price of each man was $1,000."
The Yaquis are transferred on exactly the same basis
as the Mayas the market price of a slave and yet all
people of Yucatan know that the planters pay only $65
apiece to the government for each Yaqui. I was offered
for $400 each Yaquis who had not been in the country
a month and consequently had had no opportunity of
rolling up a debt that would account for the difference
in price.
Moreover, one of the planters told me: "We
for the slaves, exactly the

machinery and the cattle.

—

—

don't allow the Yaquis to get in debt to us."
It

would be absurd

to

suppose that the reason the

price was uniform was because all the slaves were equally
in debt.

the

I

details

probed this matter a little by inquiring into
of the selling transaction.

"You

get

the

photograph and identification papers with the man," said
one, "and that's all."

"You get the identification papers

and the account of the debt," said another.

"We don't

keep much account of the debt," said a third, "because
it

doesn't matter after you've got possession of the man."

"The man and the
said another; "if

identification papers are enough,"
your man runs away, the papers are

for you to get him back again."
"Whatever the debt, it takes the market price to get
him free again," a fifth told me.
Conflicting as some of these answers are, they all
tend to show one thing, that the debt counts for nothing

all the authorities require

after the debtor passes into the hands of the planter.

BARBAROUS MEXICO

18

Whatever the debt, it takes the market price to get the
debtor free again!

Even then, I thought, it would not be so bad if the
servant had an opportunity of working out the price

and buying back his freedom. Even some of our negro
slaves before the Civil War were permitted by exceptionally lenient masters
to do that.
But I found that such was not the custom. "You
need have no fear in purchasing this plantation," said
one planter to me, "of the laborers being able to buy
their freedom and leave you. They can never do that."
The only man in the country whom I heard of as
having ever permitted a slave to buy his freedom was
a professional man of Merida, an architect. "I bought
a laborer for $1,000," he explained to me. "He was
a good man and helped me a lot about my office. After
I got to liking him I credited him with so much wages
per week. After eight years I owed him the full $1,000,
so I let him go. But they never do that on the planta-

—

tions

—

—

^never."

Thus I learned that the debt feature of the enforced
service does not alleviate the hardships of the slave by

making it easier for him to free himself, neither does
it

aifect the conditions of his sale or his complete sub-

On the other hand, I found that
one particular in which this debt element does
play an actual part in the destiny of the unfortunate
of Yucatan militates against him instead of operating in
jection to his master.

the

his favor.

For it is by means of debt that the Yucatan

slave-driver gets possession of the free laborers of his

realm to replenish the overworked and underfed, the
overbeaten, the dying slaves of his plantation.

How are the slaves recruited? Don Joaquin Peon
informed me that the Maya slaves die oflf faster than

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

19

they are born, and Don Enrique Camara Zavala told
me that two-thirds of the Yaquis die during the first year

of their residence in the country.

Hence the problem

of recruiting the slaves seemed to me a very serious one.

Of course, the Yaquis were coming in at the rate of
500 per month, yet I hardly thought that influx would
be sufficient to equal the tide of life that was going out
I was right in that surmise, so I was informed,

by death.

but I was also informed that the problem of recruits

was not so difficult, after all.
"It

is

very easy," one planter told me.

"All that

is

you get some free laborer in debt to
you, and then you have him. Yes, we are always getnecessary

is

that

ting new laborers in that way."

The amount of the debt does not matter, so long as
a debt, and the little transaction is arranged by men
who combine the functions of money lender and slave
broker. Some of them have offices in Merida and they
It IS

get the free laborers, clerks and the poorer class of

people generally into debt just as professional loan sharks

of America get clerks, mechanics and
debt

office

men into

—by playing on their needs and tempting them.

Were these American clerks, mechanics and office men
residents of Yucatan, instead of being merely hounded
by a loan shark, they would be sold into slavery for all
time, they

and their children and

their children's chil-

dren, on to the third and fourth generation, and even
farther, on to such a time as some political change puts
a stop to the conditions of slavery altogether in Mexico.

These money-lending slave brokers of Merida do not
hang out signs and announce to the world that they have
slaves to sell. They do their business quietly, as people

who are comparatively safe in their occupation, but as
people who do not wish to endanger their business by

BARBAROUS MEXICO

20

—

gambling
These slave
sharks were mentioned to me by the henequen kings
Other old
themselves, cautiously by them, as a rule.
residents of Yucatan explained their methods in detail.
I was curious to visit one of these brokers and talk with
him about purchasing a lot of slaves, but I was advised
against it and was told that they would not talk to a
foreigner until the latter had established himself in the
community and otherwise proved his good faith.
These men buy and sell slaves. And the planters buy
and sell slaves. I was offered slaves in lots of one up
by the planters. I was told that I could buy a man or
a woman, a boy or a girl, or a thousand of any of them,
too

great

publicity

like

police-protected

houses in an American city, for example.

do with them exactly as I wished, that the police
would protect me in my possession of those, my fellow
beings. Slaves are not only used on the henequen planto

tations, but in the city, as personal servants, as laborers,

as household drudges, as prostitutes.

How many of

these persons there are in the city of Merida I do not

know, though I heard many stories of the absolute power
exercised over them.

Certainly the

number is several

thousand.

So we see that the debt element in Yucatan not only
does not palliate the condition of the slave, but rather

makes it harder.

It

increases his extremity, for while

it does not help him to climb out of his pit,

it

reaches

out its tentacles and drags down his brother, too. The
portion of the people of Yucatan who are born free
They
possess no "inalienable right" to their freedom.
are free only by virtue of their being prosperous. Let
a family, however virtuous, however worthy, however
cultivated, fall into misfortune, let the parents fall into

debt and be unable to pay the debt, and the whole family

SLAVE MOTIIKK AND CUILU; ALSO IIENEQUEN PLANT

WOMEN ARE CHEAPER THAN GRIST-MILLS

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

21

hands of a henequen planter.
Through debt, the dying slaves of the farms are replaced
is

liable to pass into the

by the unsuccessful wage-workers of the cities.
Why do the henequen kings call their system enforced
Probservice for debt instead of by its right name?

—

two reasons because the system is the outgrowth of a milder system of actual service for debt,
and because of the prejudice against the word slavery,
both among Mexicans and foreigners. Service for debt
in a milder form than is found in Yucatan exists all over
Mexico and is called peonage. Under this system, police
authorities everywhere recognize the right of an emably for

ployer to take the body of a laborer

him, and to compel the laborer to

who is in debt to

work out the debt.

Of course, once the employer can compel the laborer
to work, he can compel him to work at his own terms,
and that means that he can work him on such terms as
will never permit the laborer to extricate himself from
his debt.

Such is peonage as

it

exists throughout all Mexico.

In the last analysis it is slavery, but the employers control the police,
all

the same.

and the

fictional distinction is

kept up

Slavery is peonage carried to its greatest

possible extreme,

and the reason we

find the

extreme

in Yucatan is that, while in some other sections of Mexico a fraction of the ruling interests are opposed to
peonage and consequently exert a modifying influence
upon it, in Yucatan all the ruling interests are in hene-

quen.
for all.

The cheaper the worker the higher the profits
The peon becomes a chattel slave.

The henequen kings of Yucatan seek to excuse their
system of slavery by denominating
for debt.
is

it enforced service
"Slavery is against the law," they say. "It

against the constitution."

When a thing is abolished

BARBAROUS MEXICO

22

by your constitution it works more smoothly if called
by another name, but the fact is, service for debt is
just as unconstitutional in Mexico as chattel slavery.
The plea of the henequen king of keeping within the

law

is

entirely without foundation.

A comparison of

from the Mexican constituthe following two
tion will show that the two systems are in the same
clauses

class.

"Article
free.

I,

Slaves

Section

1.

In the Republic

all

are born

who set foot upon the national territory

recover, by that act alone, their liberty, and have a right
to the protection of the laws."

"Article V, Section 1 (Amendment).
No one shall
be compelled to do personal work without just compensation

and without

his

full

The

consent.

state

shall

not permit any contract, covenant or agreement to be
carried out having for

its

object the abridgment, loss

or irrevocable sacrifice of the liberty of a man, whether
by reason of labor, education or religious vows. *

Nor shall any compact be tolerated

in

which a man

agrees to his proscription or exile."

So the slave business in Yucatan, whatever name may
be applied to it,

hand,

is

still

unconstitutional.

On the other

the policy of the present government

is to be
taken as the law of the land, the slave business of
Mexico is legal. In that sense the henequen kings "obey

if

the law."

Whether they are

will leave to hair-splitters

righteous in doing so I

in morality.

decision may be, right or wrong,

it

Whatever the

does not change, for

better or for worse, the pitiful misery in which I

found

the hemp laborers of Yucatan.

The slaves of Yucatan get no money. They are half
They are worked almost to death. They are
beaten. A large percentage of them are locked up every
starved.

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
night in a house resembHng a

they must

still

work, and

jail.

If

23
they are sick

they are so sick that

if

it

is

impossible for them to work, they are seldom permitted

The women are compelled

the services of a physician.

to marry, compelled to marry men of their own planta-

tion only, and sometimes are compelled to marry certain

men not of their choice.
children.

ordered at the

wishes to

There are no schools for the

Indeed, the entire lives of these people are

kill

whim of a master, and if the master
may do so with impunity. I

them, he

heard numerous stories of slaves being beaten to death,
but I never heard of an instance in which the murderer

The police, the public
know exactly what is expected of them, for the men who appoint them are the
planters themselves.
The jefes politicos, the rulers of
the political districts corresponding to our counties, who
was punished, or even arrested.

prosecutors and the judges

are as truly czars of the districts as Diaz is the Czar of
all

Mexico, are invariably either henequen planters or

employes of henequen planters.

The
slaves

first

mention of corporal punishment for the

was made to me by one of the members of the

Camara, a large, portly fellow with the bearing of an
opera singer and a white diamond shining at me like
a sun from his slab-like shirt front. He told a story,

and as he told it he laughed.
little different way. I

I laughed, too,

but in a

could not help feeling that the story

was made to order to fit strangers.
"Oh, yes, we have to punish them," said the fat king
of henequen.
"We even are compelled to whip the
house servants of the city.

It is their

nature; they de-

mand it. A friend of mine, a very mild man, had a
woman servant who was always wishing to serve somebody else.

My friend finally sold the woman, and some

BARBAROUS MEXICO

24
months

later

he met her on the street and asked her

how she liked her new master. 'Finely/ she answered,
'finely.
You see, my master is a very rough man and
"
he beats me nearly every day
The philosophy of beating was made very clear to me
by Don Felipe G. Canton, secretary of the Camara.
!'

is

*'It

necessary to whip them

—

oh, yes, very neces-

sary," he told me, with a smile, "for there

way

no other
other

is there of enforcing the discipline of the

farm?

to

means

is

What

make them do what you wish.

If we did not

whip them they would do nothing."
I could think of no ground
upon which to assail Don Felipe^s logic. For what,
pray, can be done to a chattel slave to make him work
but to beat him? With the wage worker you have the
fear of discharge or the reduction of wages to hold over
his head and make him toe the mark, but the chattel
slave would welcome discharge, and as to reducing his
food supply, you don't dare to do that or you kill him
I could

make no reply.

At least, that is the case in Yucatan.
One of the first sights we saw on a henequen planta-

outright.

tion was the beating of a slave

—a formal beating before

the assembled toilers of the ranch early in the morning
call.
The slave was taken on
back
of
huge
Chinaman
the
a
and given fifteen lashes
across the bare back with a heavy, wet rope, lashes so

just after the daily roll

lustily

delivered that the blood ran

This method of beating

down the victim's

an ancient one in
Yucatan and is the customary one on all the plantations
for boys and all except the heaviest men. Women are

body.

is

required to kneel to be beaten, as sometimes are

of great weight.

men

Men and women are beaten in the fields

as well as at the morning roll

call.

Each foreman, or

capataz, carries a heavy cane with which he punches

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

25

and prods and whacks the slaves at will. I do not
remember visiting a single field in which I did not see
some of this punching and prodding and whacking
going on.
I

saw no punishments worse than beating in Yucatan,
I was told of men being strung

but I heard of them.

up by their fingers or toes to be beaten, of their being
dungeon-like holes, of water being
dropped on the hand until the victim screamed, of the
extremity of female punishment being found in some
outrage to the sense of the modesty in the woman. I
saw black holes and everywhere I saw the jail dormithrust into black

tories,

armed guards and night guards who patrolled
farm settlements while the slaves

the outskirts of the
slept.

I

heard also of planters who took special delight

in personally superintending the beating of their chattels.

For example, speaking of one of the richest plantman of Merida said to

ers in Yucatan, a professional

me:

"A favorite pastime of

was

on

his,

horse and watch the 'cleaning up* (the punishment)

of.,

his slaves.

to

sit

He would strike a match to light his cigar.

At the first puff of smoke the first stroke of the wet
rope would fall on the bare back of the victim.
He
would smoke on, leisurely, contentedly, as the blows fell,
one after another. When the entertainment finally palled
on him he would throw away his cigar and the man
with the rope would stop, for the end of the cigar was
the signal for the end of the beating."

The great plantations of Yucatan are reached by private mule car lines built and operated specially for the
business of the henequen kings.
that we visited was typical.

of Merida,

it

The

first

plantation

Situated fifteen miles west

contains thirty-six square miles of land,

BARBAROUS MEXICO

26

one-fourth of it in henequen, part of the rest in pasture
and a part unreclaimed. In the center of the plantation
is the

farm settlement, consisting of a grass-grown patio,

or yard, surrounding which are the main farm buildings,
the store, the factory, the house of the administrador, or
general manager; the house of the mayordomo primero,

or superintendent; the houses of the mayordomos secundos, or overseers, and the little chapel.
are the corrals, the drying yard,

dormitory.

Finally,

surrounding

Behind these

the stable, the jail
all

are the rows of

one-room huts set in little patches of ground, in which
reside the married slaves and their families.
Here we found fifteen hundred slaves and about thirty
Thirty of the slaves were
bosses of various degrees.
Koreans, about two hundred were Yaquis and the rest
were Mayas. The Maya slaves, to my eyes, differed
from the free Mayas I had seen in the city principally
in their clothing and their general unkempt and overworked appearance. Certainly they were of the same
clay. Their clothing was poor and ragged, yet generally
The women wore calico, the men the thin, unclean.
bleached cotton shirt and trousers of the tropics, the
trousers being often rolled to the knees.

Their hats

were of coarse straw or grass, their feet always bare.
Seven hundred of the slaves are able-bodied men, the
Three hundred and eighty
rest women and children.
married
live with their families in
men
are
and
the
of
huts.
These
huts
one-room
are set in little patches
the
square,
feet
which,
rocky and barren as
of ground 144
they are, are cultivated to some small purpose by the
women and children. In addition to the product of
their

barren garden patch each family receives daily

credit at the plantation store for twenty-five centavos,

or twelve and one-half cents' worth of merchandise.

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

27

No money is paid; it is all in credit, and this same system prevails on about one-half the plantations. The other
half merely deal out rations.
It amounts to the same
thing, but some of the planters stick to the money
credit system merely in order to keep up the pretense
of paying wages. I priced some of the goods at the
store
corn, beans, salt, peppers, clothing and blankets
was about all there was and found that the prices were

—

high.

—

I could not

understand how a family could live

on twelve and one-half cents* worth of it each day, a
hard-working family, especially.

The

slaves

rise

from

their beds

when the big bell

in the patio rings at 3:45 o'clock in the

morning, and

work begins as soon thereafter as they can get
to it. Their work in the fields ends when it is too dark

their

to see,

and about the yards it sometimes extends until

long into the night.

The principal

labor of the plantation

is

harvesting

the henequen leaves and cleaning the weeds

from beEach slave is given a certain number
of leaves to cut or plants to clean, and it is the policy
of the planter to make the stint so hard that the slave
is compelled to call out his wife and children to help
him.
Thus nearly all the women and children of the
plantation spend a part of the day in the field.
The
unmarried women spend all the day in the field, and
when a boy reaches the age of twelve he is considered
to be a man and is given a stint of his own to do. Sundays the slaves do not work for the master. They spend
their time in their patches, rest or visit.
Sunday is
the day on which the youths and maidens meet and plan
tween the plants.

to marry.

Sometimes they are even permitted to go off

the farm and meet the slaves of their neighbor, but never

are they permitted to marry the people of other planta-

BARBAROUS MEXICO

28

would necessitate the purchase of either
the wife or the husband by one or the other of the two
owners, and that would involve too much trouble.
Such are the conditions in general that prevail on

tions, for this

all

the plantations of Yucatan.

We spent two days and two nights on the plantation
called

San Antonio Yaxche and became thoroughly

acquainted with its system and its people.

Not only do not the owners of the great henequen
farms of Yucatan live on their farms, but neither do
the managers.
Like the owners, the managers have
their homes and their offices in Merida, and visit the
plantations only from two to half a dozen times a month.
The mayordomo primero is ordinarily the supreme ruler
of the plantation, but when the manager, or administrador, heaves in sight, the

mayordomo primero be-

comes a very insignificant personage indeed.
At least that was the case on San Antonio Yaxche.
The big mayordomo was compelled to bow and scrape
before the boss just as were the lesser foremen, and
at meal time Manuel Rios, the administrador, I and my
companion the latter, much to the disgust of Rios, who
looked upon him as an underling dined alone in state
while the mayordomo hovered in the background, ready
to fly away instantly to do our bidding.
At the first
meal and it was the best I had in all Mexico I felt

—

—

—

—

strongly impelled to invite Mister

down and have something.

I did

Mayordomo

to

sit

not do it, and after-

wards I was glad that I did not, for before I left the
ranch I realized what an awful breach of etiquette I
would have been guilty of.
In the fields we found gangs of men and boys, some
gangs hoeing the weeds from between the gigantic
plants and some sawing off the big leaves with machetes.

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
The harvest of

29

the leaves goes on unceasing

all

the

twelve months of the year, and during the cycle every
plant on the

farm

is

gone over four times.

Twelve

leaves are usually clipped, the twelve largest, the thirty

smallest being left to mature for another three months.

The workman chops off the leaf at its root, trims the
sharp briars off the two edges, trims the spear-like tip,
counts the leaves

he

is

1-eft

on the

plant,

counts the leaves

and finally
end of his row, where they

cutting, piles his leaves into bundles,

carries the bundles to the

are carted away on a movable-track mule-car line.
I

found the ground uneven and rocky, a punishment

for the feet, the henequen leaves thorny and treach-

erous and the air thick, hot and choking, though the

The ragged, bare-

season was considered a cool one.

footed harvesters worked steadily, carefully and with
the speed of better paid laborers
piece."

They were working

*'by

who work "by the
the piece," too, the

reward being immunity from the lash.

Here and there

among them I saw tired-looking women and children,
sometimes

little

girls as

young as

eight or ten.

Two

thousand leaves a day is the usual stint on San Antonio
Yaxche.
On other plantations I was told that it is
sometimes as high as three thousand.

The henequen leaves, once cut, are carted to a large
building in the midst of the

farm

settlement,

where

they are hoisted in an elevator and sent tumbling down

Here
a long chute and into the stripping machine.
hungry steel teeth tear the tough, thick leaves to pieces,
and the result is two products a green powder, which

—

and long strands of greenish, hair-like fibre,
which is henequen. The fibre is sent on a tramway to
the drying yard, where it turns the color of the sun.
Then it is trammed back, pressed into bales, and a few
is

refuse,

BARBAROUS MEXICO

30

days or weeks later the observer will see it at Progreso,
the port of Yucatan, twenty-five miles north of Merida,

being loaded into a steamship flying the British

The United

States buys nearly

all

the

flag.

henequen of

Yucatan, our cordage trust, an alleged concern of Stand-

ard Oil, absorbing more than half of the entire product.
Eight centavos per pound was the 1908 price received
for sisal

hemp in the bale.

One slave dealer told me

no more than one.
About the machinery we found many small boys
working. In the drying yard we found boys and men.
All of the latter impressed me with their listless movements and their haggard, feverish faces. This was explained by the foreman in charge. "When the men are
sick we let them work here," he said
"on half pay!"
Such was the men's hospital. The hospital for the
women we discovered in a basement of one of the main
that the production cost

—

buildings.

It

was simply a row of windowless, earthen-

rooms, half-dungeons, in each of which lay one
woman on a bare board, without a blanket to soften it.
floor

More than three hundred of the able-bodied

slaves

spend the nights in a large structure of stone and mortar,

surrounded by a solid wall twelve feet high, which

is

topped with the sharp edges of thousands of broken

To this inclosure there is but one door,
and at it stands a guard armed with a club, a sword
and a pistol. These are the quarters of the unmarried
men of the plantation, Mayas, Yaquis and Chinese;

glass bottles.

also of the "half-timers,"

slaves

whom the plantation

uses only about half of the year, married men,

some

of them, whose families live in little settlements bordering on the farm.

These "half-timers" are found on only about onethird of the plantations, and they are a class which has

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN

31

been created entirely for the convenience of the masters.

They become "full-timers" at the option of the masters,
and are then permitted to keep their families on the
They are compelled to work longer than

plantations.

half the year

if

they are wanted, and during the time

when they are not working they are not permitted to
go away on a hunt for other work. Generally their
year's labor

divided into two sections, three months

is

in the spring and three in the fall, and during that period

they cannot go to visit their families.

They are always

kept in jail at night, they are fed by the farm, and their
credit of twelve and one-half cents per day is kept back
and doled out to their families a little at a time to pre-

vent starvation.

A moment's figuring will show that the yearly credit
for a half-timer
this is all

who works six months is $22.50, and

—absolutely —that the family of the
all

half-

time slave has to live on each year.
Inside the large, one-room building within the stone

Yaxche we found, swinging so
one another, more than three
hundred rope hammocks. This was the sleeping place
wall at San Antonio

close that they touched

of the half-timers and the unmarried full-timers.

We

entered the enclosure just at dusk, as the toilers, wiping
the sweat from their foreheads, came filing in.
the dormitory

Behind

we found half a dozen women working

over some crude, open-air stoves.
wolves the ragged workers ringed

Like half-starved
about the

simple

kitchen, grimy hands went out to receive their meed of

supper, and standing there the miserable creatures ate.

sampled the supper of the slaves. That is, I samit with my tongue, and the rest, which
my nostrils warned me not to sample with my tongue,
I sampled with my nostrils. The meal consisted of two
I

pled a part of

—
BARBAROUS MEXICO

32

large corn tortillas, the bread of the poor of Mexico,

a cup of boiled beans, unflavored, and a bowl of fish
putrid, stinking fish, fish that reeked with an odor that
stuck in my system for days.

How could they ever eat

Ah, well, to vary a weary, unending row of meals
consisting of only beans and tortillas a time must come
when the most refined palate will water to the touch of
something different, though that something is fish which
it?

offends the heavens with

"Beans,

tortillas,

fish!"

its

I

rottenness.

suppose that they can at
"provided they do

least keep alive on it," I told myself,

no worse at the other two meals." "By the way," I
turned to the adminstrador, who was showing us about,
"what do they get at the other two meals?"
"The other two meals?" The administrador was
puzzled. "The other two meals ? Why, there aren't any
others.

Beans,

This is the only meal they have!"
tortillas, fish,

once a day, and a dozen hours

under the hottest sun that ever shone!
"But, no," the administrador corrected himself. "They
do get something else, something very fine, too, something that they can carry to the field with them and eat
when they wish. Here is one now."
At this he picked up from one of the tables of the
women a something about the size of his two small fists,
and handed it to me, triumphantly. I took the round,
soggy mass in my fingers, pinched, smelled and tasted
it.
It proved to be corn dough, half fermented and
patted into a ball. This, then, was the other two meals,
the rest^ of the substance besides beans, tortillas and
decayed fish which sustained the toilers throughout the
long day. I turned to a young Maya who was carefully
picking a fish bone.

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
"Which would you rather

be," I asked

33
of

him, "a

half-timer or a full-timer?"

"A full-timer," he replied, promptly, and then in a
"They work us until we are ready to fall,
then they throw us away to get strong again. If they
worked the full-timers like they work us they would
lower tone:

die."

"We come to work gladly," said another young Maya,
But before the end of the
week we want to run away. That is why they
lock us up at night."
"Why don't you run away when you're free to do it ?"
I asked. "When they turn you out, I mean?"
The administrador had stepped away to scold a woman. "It's no use," answered the man earnestly. "They
always get us. Everybody is against us and there is
no place to hide."
"They keep our faces on photographs," said another.
"They always get us and give us a cleaning-up (beating) besides. When we're here we want to run away,
but when they turn us out we know that it's no use."
I was afterwards to learn how admirably the Yucatan
"because we're starved to it.
first

country

is

aways.

No fruits or eatable herbs grow wild in that

adapted to preventing the escape of run-

rocky land. There are no springs and no place where
a person can dig a well without a rock drill and dynamite.
So every runaway in time finds his way to a
plantation or to the city, and at either place he is caught

and held for identification.

A free laborer who does

not carry papers to prove that he is free is always liable

up and put to much trouble to prove that
he is not a runaway slave.
to be locked

Yucatan has been compared to Russians Siberia.

"Si-

beria," Mexican political refugees have told me, "is hell

BARBAROUS MEXICO

34

frozen over; Yucatan is hell aflame."

many

points

in

But I did not see
two countries.
a sense, and political

common between

True, the Yaquis are exiles in

the

exiles at that, but they are also slaves.
exiles of

Russia are not slaves.

The political

According to Kennan,

they are permitted to take their families with them, to

choose their own abode, to live their own life, and are
often given a small monthly stipend on which to live.

I

could not imagine Siberia as being as bad as Yucatan.

The Yucatan slave gets no hour for lunch, as does
the American ranch hand.

He goes to the field in the

morning twilight, eating his lump of sour dough on the
way. He picks up his machete and attacks the first
thorny leaf as soon as it is light enough to see the thorns
and he never lays down that machete until the twilight
of the evening.

Two thousand of the big green leaves

a day is his "stint," and besides cutting, trimming and
piling them, he must count them, and he must count the

number of leaves on each plant and be sure that he does
not count too many nor too few. Each plant is supposed to grow just 36 new leaves a year. Twelve of
12 largest, are cut every four months, but
whatever the number cut just 30 leaves must be left
after the clipping.
If the slave leaves 31 or 29 he is
if
he
fails
beaten,
to cut his 2,000 he is beaten, if he
trims his leaves raggedly he is beaten, if he is late at
And he is beaten for any other
roll-call he is beaten.
little shortcoming that any of the bosses may imagine
Sithat he detects in his character or in his make-up.
these, the

beria?

To my mind Siberia is a foundling asylum com-

pared to Yucatan.

Over and over again I have compared in my mind
condition of the slaves of Yucatan with what I

the

have read of the slaves of our southern

states before

!

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
the Civil War.

35

And always the result has been in favor

of the black man.

Our slaves of the South were almost

always well fed, as a rule they were not overworked, on

many plantations they were rarely beaten, it was usual to
give them a little spending money now and then and to
allow them to leave the plantation at least once a week.

Like the slaves of Yucatan they were cattle of the ranch,
but, unlike the former, they were treated as well as cattle.

In the South before the

War there were not so

many plantations where the negroes died faster than
they were born. The lives of our black slaves were not

—

so hard but that they could laugh, sometimes and sing.
But the slaves of Yucatan do not sing
I shall never forget my last day in Merida.
Merida
is probably the cleanest and most beautiful little city in all

Mexico.

It might even challenge comparison in its white

prettiness with any other in the world.

The municipality

has expended vast sums on paving, on parks and on
public buildings,

and over and above this the henequen

kings not long since made up a rich purse for improve-

ments extraordinary. My last afternoon and evening
in Yucatan I spent riding and walking about the wealthy
residence section of Merida.
Americans might expect
to find nothing of art and architecture down on this
rocky Central American peninsula, but Merida has its
million dollar palaces like New York, and it has miles of

them set in miraculous gardens.
Wonderful Mexican palaces!
gardens!
slavery

—

Wonderful Mexican

A

wonderful fairyland conjured out of
slavery of Mayas, and of Yaquis. Among the

Yucatan slaves there are ten Mayas to one Yaqui, but
of the two the story of the Yaquis appealed to me the

The Mayas are dying in their own land and
with their own people. The Yaquis are exiles. They

more.

BARBAROUS MEXICO

36

are dying in a strange land, they are dying faster, and

they

are

dying alone, away from their

families,

for

every Yaqui family sent to Yucatan is broken up on the

way. Husbands and wives are torn apart and babes are
taken from their mothers' breasts.

CHAPTER 11
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS

My real purpose in journeying to Yucatan was to find
out what became of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora.

In

common with thousands of other Americans who have
lived for years in our Southwest and near the border
line of Mexico, I knew something of the sufferings of the

Yaquis in their native state, of the means which had
been taken to stir them to revolt, of the confiscation of
their lands, of the methods of extermination employed by
the army, of the indignation voiced by the decent element of Sonora, finally of President Diaz's sweeping
order of deportation.
I

knew that the order of deportation was being car-

were being gathered
up monthly and sent away into exile. But what fate
was awaiting them there at the end of that exile road?
The answer was always vague, indefinite, unsatisfactory.
Even well-informed Mexicans of their country's metropAfter the Yaqui exiles sailed
olis could not tell me.
from the port of Veracruz the curtain dropped upon
them. I went to Yucatan in order to witness, if possible, the final act in the life drama of the Yaqui nation.
ried out, that hundreds of families

And I witnessed it.
The Yaquis are being exterminated and exterminated
There is no room for controversy as to that; the

fast.

only controversy relates to whether or not the Yaquis
deserve to be exterminated.

It is

undoubtedly true that

a portion of their number have persistently refused to
accept the destiny that the government has
for them.

marked out

On the other hand, there are those who
Z1

38

BARBAROUS MEXICO

assert that the Yaquis are as worthy as other Mexicans

and deserve as much consideration at the hands of their
rulers.

The extermination of the Yaquis began in war; its
finish is being

accomplished in deportation and slavery.

The Yaquis are called Indians.

Like the Mayas of

Yucatan, they are Indians and yet they are not Indians.

we would not call them Indians,
As far back as their history can
be traced they have never been savages. They have
In the United States

for they are workers.

been an agricultural people. They tilled the soil, discovered and developed mines, constructed systems of
irrigation, built

adobe towns, maintained public schools,

had an organized government and their own mint. When
the Spanish missionaries came among them they were
in possession of practically the whole of that vast territory south of Arizona which today comprises the state
of Sonora.

"They are the best workers in Sonora," Colonel Francisco B. Cruz, the very

man who has charge of their

deportation to Yucatan, and of whom I will have more
to say later, told me.

*'One Yaqui laborer

is

worth

two ordinary Americans and three ordinary Mexicans,"
E. F. Trout, a Sonora mine foreman told me.

"They

are the strongest, soberest and most reliable people in

Mexico," another one told me.

"The government

is

taking our best workmen away from us and destroying

"The government says it wants to open up the Yaqui country for
settlers," S. R. DeLong, secretary of the Arizona Historical Society and an old resident of Sonora, told me,
the prosperity of the state," said another.

"but it is my opinion that the Yaquis themselves are the
best settlers that can possible be found."

Such expressions are heard very frequently in Sonora,

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS

39

border states and in border publications. The
Yaqui certainly has an admirable physical development.
During my journeys in Mexico I learned to pick him out
at a glance, by his broad shoulders, his deep chest, his
sinewy legs, his rugged face. The typical Yaqui is almost a giant, the race a race of athletes. Perhaps that
is just the reason why he has not bent his head in submission to the will of the masters of Mexico.
American mine-owners and railroad men of Sonora
in the

are repeatedly complaining against the deportation of
it is because they are such good workAnother matter which I have heard much remarked about by border Americans is the regard of the

the Yaquis, and

men.

so-called renegade, or fighting Yaquis, for the property

of Americans and other foreigners.
first

When the Yaquis

took up arms against the present government some

twenty-five years ago they did so because of a definite

Usually they fought on the defensive.
Driven to the mountains, they have been compelled at
times to sally forth and plunder for their stomachs*

grievance.

But for many years it was known to all men that
or any people but
Mexicans.
And for a long time they never committed
any depredations on railroads or railroad property,
which in Sonora has always been American.
The origin of the Yaqui troubles is generally attributed to a plot on the part of a number of politicians, the
sake.

they seldom attacked Americans

purpose being to get possession of the rich lands in
Southern Sonora which the Yaquis had held for hun-

For twenty-four years past the only
has had have been Ramon Corral,
Sonora
governors
now Diaz*s vice-president, Rafael Yzabal and Luis
Torres. These three have rotated in office, as it were,
for more than a generation. As no popular elections
dreds of years.

40

BARBAROUS MEXICO

were held at all, these three friends had absolutely no
one to answer to except President Diaz, and their authority in Sonora has been practically absolute.
The Yaquis seem to have had a pretty good title to
their lands when Corral, Yzabal and Torres came upon
the scene.

At the time of the Spanish conquest they

were a nation of from one to two hundred thousand people, supposed by some authorities to have been offshoots
from the Aztecs. The Spanish were never able to subdue them completely, and after two hundred and fifty
troublous years a peace was entered into whereby the
Yaquis gave up a part of their territory and, as acknowledgment of their rightful ownership of the rest
of it, the King of Spain gave them a patent signed by
his own hand.
This was nearly one hundred and fifty
years ago, but the royal patent was honored by every
ruler and chief executive of Mexico down to Diaz. During all that time the Yaquis were at peace with the world.
Their reputation as a naturally peaceful nation was
It remained for the government of Diaz to

established.

them into war.
During these years of peace the Yaquis became part
and parcel of the Mexican nation. They lived like other
Mexicans. They had their own personal farms, their
own homes, and they paid taxes on their property like
other Mexicans.
During the war against Maximilian
they sent soldiers to help Mexico, and many of them
distinguished themselves by brilliant service.
But the Yaquis were goaded into war. The men at
the head of the government of Sonora wanted the Yaqui
lands.
Moreover, they saw an opportunity for graft in
bringing a large body of soldiers into the state. So they
harassed the Yaquis. They sent bogus surveyors through
the Yaqui valley to mark out the land and tell the peostir

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS

41

government had decided to give it to forThey confiscated $80,000 in a bank belonging

pie that the
eigners.

to Chief Cajeme.

Finally, they sent armed men to arrest

Cajeme, and when the latter could not find him they
set fire to his house and to those of his neighbors, and
assaulted the women of the village, even Cajeme's wife
not being respected.

Finally, the victims

were goaded

into war.

Since that day twenty-five years ago the Mexican government has maintained an army almost perpetually in
the field against the Yaquis, an army ranging in numThousands of soldiers
bers from 2,000 to 6,000 men.
and tens of thousands of Yaquis have been killed in battle and many hundreds of the latter have been executed
After a few years Chief
after being taken prisoners.
Cajeme was captured and publicly executed in the presence of a large body of his people who had been taken

was
promptly elected to Cajeme's place, and the fight went

prisoner

on.

with

him.

Tetabiate,

another

Finally, in 1894, at one fell swoop, as

Yaqui,

it

were, the

ground was literally taken from under the feet of the
By act of the federal government the best of
rebels.
their lands were taken from them and handed over to
one man, General Lorenzo Torres, who is at this writing

army in Sonora, then second in command.
The government is credited with having been guilty

chief of the

of the most horrible atrocities. Two examples are cited
by Santa de Cabora, a Mexican writer, as follows:

"On May
ordered the
children, in

1892, General Otero, of the Mexican army,
imprisonment of the Yaquis, men, women and
the town of Navajoa, and hung so many of these
17,

people that the supply of rope in the town was exhausted,
being necessary to use each rope five or six times."

it

"A colonel in the army, Antonio Rincon, in July, of 1892,
took two hundred Yaauis» men* women and children, pcisoneis.

42

BARBAROUS MEXICO

and carried them in the gunboat El Democrata and dropped
them in the ocean between the mouth of the Yaqui river and
the seaport of Guaymas, all of them perishing."

A report was circulated along our Mexican border
that

an incident similar to the last mentioned happened

February,

in

1908.

Colonel Francisco B. Cruz,

who

was in charge of the exiles and who claims to have been
on board of the gunboat and witnessed the incident, declared to me, however, that this report was not true.
The Yaquis were drowned, he declared, but not by the
authorities, and, since at that time the government was
not killing any Yaquis whom it could catch and sell, I
accept the version of Colonel Cruz as the correct one.
"Suicide

—nothing but

suicide," asseverated the Colo-

"Those Indians wanted to cheat me out of my commission money and so they threw their children into the
sea and jumped in after them. I was on board myself
and saw it all. I heard a loud cry, and looking, saw
some of the crew running to the starboard side of the
vessel.
I saw the Yaquis in the water. Then there was
a cry from the port side and I saw the Yaquis jumping
overboard on that side. We lowered boats, but it was
no use they all went down before we got to them."
"Every soldier who kills a Yaqui," an army physician
who served two years with the troops against the Yaquis
and whom I met in Mexico City, told me, "is paid a reward of one hundred dollars. To prove his feat the
soldier must show the ears of his victim. 'Bring in the
ears/ is the standing order of the officers.
Often I
have seen a company of soldiers drawn up in a square
and one of their number receiving one hundred dollars
nel.

;

for a pair of ears.

"Sometimes small squads of the Indians are capwas with the army it was customary

tured, and when I

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS
to offer the men

43

freedom and money to lead the troops

over the secret mountain trails to the fastnesses of their
friends.

The alternative was the rope, yet I never knew

of one of these captives turning traitor.

*Give me the

and I have seen such a man run,
put the rope round his own neck and demand that it be
tightened quickly, that he might not again be subjected
to so base an insult.'*
I have before me a letter signed by G. G. Lelevier, a
former member of the Mexican Liberal Party and editor
of one of their papers in the United States. Lelevier is
said to have afterwards gone over to the cause of the
government. Commenting on a photograph showing a
lot of Yaquis hanging from a tree in Sonora, the letrope,' they would cry,

ter says:

"This picture resembles very much another one that

was taken at the Yaqui river when General Angel Martinez was in command of the Mexican army of occupation. It was the custom of this general to hang men because they could not tell him where the insurrecto Yaquis
were at the time, and he went so far as to lasso the
women of the Yaquis and to hang them also. It went
on so until the chief of the geographical commission reported the facts to the City of Mexico and threatened to
resign if the practice continued. Then this monster of a
general was removed.
"But later on Governor Rafael Ysabal it must have
been in 1902 made a raid on Tiburon Island where
some peaceful Yaquis had taken refuge, and then and
there ordered the Seri Indians to bring to him the
right hand of every Yaqui there, with the alternative of

—

the Seris themselves being exterminated.

—

Doctor Boido

took a snapshot with a kodak, and you could see in

it

the governor laughing at the sight of a bunch of hands

44

BARBAROUS MEXICO

had been brought to him and that were dangling
from the end of a cane. This picture was even published in derision of the exploits of Governor Ysabal
in the newspaper El Imparcial, of Mexico City."
In 1898 the government troops were armed for the
first time with the improved Mauser rifle, and in that
year they met and wiped out an army of Yaquis at
Mazacoba, the killed numbering more than 1,000. This
ended warfare on anything like an equal footing. There
were no more large battles; the Yaqui warriors were
merely hunted. Thousands of the Indians surrendered.
Their leaders were executed, and they and their families were granted a new territory to the north, to which
they journeyed as to a promised land. But it proved to
be a barren desert, entirely waterless and one of the
most uninhabitable spots in all America. Hence the
peaceful Yaquis moved to other sections of the state,
some of them becoming wage-workers in the mines,
others finding employment on the railroads, and still
others becoming peons on the farms. Then and there
this portion of the Yaqui nation lost its identity and
became merged with the peoples about it. But it is
these Yaquis, the peaceful ones, who are sought out and
that

deported to Yucatan.

A few Yaquis, perhaps four or five thousand, refused
up the battle for their lands. The found inacand established a stronghold high up in
the Bacetete mountains, which border upon their former
home. Here flow never-ceasing springs of cold water.
Here, on the almost perpendicular cliffs, they built their
little homes, planted their corn, raised their families and
sang, sometimes, of the fertile valleys which once were

to give

cessible peaks

The army of several thousand soldiers still
hunted them. The soldiers could not reach those moun-

theirs.

!

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS

45

tain heights, but they could wait for the Indians in the

gorges and shoot them as they came down in search of
meat, of clothes, and of other comforts which they

yearned to add to their existence.

Many small bands of these so-called renegades have
Others have been captured and executed.
Rumors of peace have traveled the rounds only to prove

been killed.

untrue a little

later.

ernment have been

Peace conferences with the govheld, but

have failed because the

"renegades" could secure no guarantee that they would
not be either executed or deported after they laid down
In January, 1909, the report was

their arms.

officially

sent out by Governor Torres that Chief Bule and sev-

hundred of his warriors had surrendered on conBut later troubles showed this announcement
to have been premature. There are at least a few hundred Yaquis among those Bacetete crags. They refuse
eral

ditions.

They are outlaws. They are cut off from
They have no connection with the peaceful

to surrender.

the world.

element of their nation that is scattered all over the state

Yet the existence of this handful of "renegades"
Mexican government has
for gathering up peaceful Mexican families and deporting them at the rate of 500 per month
Why should a lot of women and children and old men
be made to suffer because some of their fourth cousins
of Sonora.
is

the only excuse the

—

are fighting away off there in the hills ?
cian with whom I talked in

The army physiMexico City answered the

question in very energetic terms.

"The reason?" he said. "There is no reason. It is
The excuse is that the workers con-

only an excuse.

tribute to the support of the fighters.
is

If

it

is

true,

it

true only in an infinitesimal minority of cases, for the

vast majority of the Yaquis are entirely out of touch

BARBAROUS MEXICO

46

There may be a few guilty parties,
but absolutely no attempt is made to find them out.
For what a handful of patriotic Yaquis may possibly be
doing tens of thousand are made to suffer and die. It
is as if a whole town were put to the torch because one
with the fighters.

of

its

inhabitants had stolen a horse.'*

The deportation of Yaquis to Yucatan and other slave
Mexico began to assume noticeable proporIt was carried out on a small scale
at first, then on a larger one.
Finally, in the spring of 1908, a despatch was published in American and Mexican newspapers saying that
President Diaz had issued a sweeping order decreeing
that every Yaqui, wherever found, men women and children, should be gathered up by the War Department
sections of

tions about 1905.

and deported to Yucatan.
During my journeys in Mexico I inquired many times
as to the authenticity of this despatch, and the story was
confirmed. It was confirmed by men in the public departments of Mexico City. It was confirmed by Colo-

And it is certain
may have come from,

nel Cruz, chief deporter of Yaquis.
that such an order, wherever

it

was carried out. Yaqui workingmen were taken daily
from mines, railroads and farms, old workingmen who
never owned a rifle in their lives, women, children, babes,
the old and the young, the weak and the strong. Guarded
by soldiers and rurales they traveled together over the
And there are others besides Yaquis who

exile road.

Pimas and Opatas, other Inand any dark people found who were
poor and unable to protect themselves were taken, tagged
as Yaquis, and sent away to the land of henequen. What
becomes of them there? That is what I went to Yuca-

traveled over that road.
dians, Mexicans,

tan to find out.

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS

47

The secret that lies at the roots of the whole Yaqui
summed

affair was revealed to me and the whole matter

up in a few words by Colonel Francisco B. Cruz of the
Mexican army, in one of the most remarkable interviews
which I obtained during my entire trip to Mexico.
For the past four years this officer has been in immediate charge of transporting all the Yaqui exiles to Yucatan.
I was fortunate enough to take passage on the
same steamer with him returning from Progreso to
Veracruz. He is a stout, comfortable, talkative old campaigner of about sixty years.

The steamship people put

us in the same stateroom, and, as the colonel had some

government passes which he hoped to sell me, we were
soon on the most confidential terms.
'Tn the past three and one-half years," he told me, *T
have delivered just fifteen thousand seven hundred Yaquis in Yucatan delivered, mind you, for you must remember that the government never allows me enough expense money to feed them properly, and from ten to
twenty per cent die on the journey.
"These Yaquis," he said, "sell in Yucatan for $65
apiece men, women and children. Who gets the money ?

—

—

Well, $10 goes to me for my services.

over to the Secretary of War.

The rest is turned

This, however,

is

only

a drop in the bucket, for I know this to be a fact, that

every foot of land, every building, every cow, every
burro, everything left behind by the Yaquis

when they

are carried away by the soldiers, is appropriated for the
private use of authorities of the state of Sonora."

So according to this man, who has himself made at
least

$157,000 out of the business, the Yaquis are de-

ported for the

money there is

in

it

—

first,

the

money

from the appropriation of their property, second, the
money from the sale of their bodies. He declared to me

"

!

BARBAROUS MEXICO

48

would never stop until the last
had been squeezed out of the business.
The company of officials who have rotated in office in
Sonora for the past twenty-five years would see to that,
that the deportations

possible dollar

he said.

These little confidences of the colonel were given me
merely as bits of interesting gossip to a harmless foreigner.
citizens

He had no notion of exposing the officials and
whose names he mentioned. He expressed no

objection whatever to the system, rather gloried in it.

"In the past six months," the fat colonel told me, "I
have handled three thousand Yaquis five hundred a
month. That's the capacity of the government boats
between Guaymas and San Bias, but I hope to see it increased before the end of the year. I have just been

—

given orders to hurry 1,500 more to Yucatan as quickly

Ah, yes, I ought to have a com-

as I can get them there.
fortable

little

fortune for myself before this thing

is

over, for there are at least 100,000 more Yaquis to come

"One hundred thousand more to come!" he repeated
at

my exclamation.

"Yes, one hundred thousand,

—

if

Of course, theyVe not all really Yaquis, but
And President Diaz's chief deporter of Sonora work-

one.

upon the deck of the

ing-people lolling there

freight

steamer passed me a smile which was illuminating, ex-

—

ceedingly illuminating

^yes,

terribly

illuminating!

CHAPTER III
OVER THE EXILE ROAD

Yaquis traveling to Yucatan, after arriving at the port
of Guaymas, Sonora, embark on a government war vessel for

the port of

San Bias.

After a journey of four

or five days they are disembarked and are driven by foot

over some of the roughest mountains in Mexico, from

San Bias to Tepic and from Tepic to San Marcos. As
crow flies the distance is little more than one hundred miles; as the road winds it is twice as far, and requires from fifteen to twenty days to travel. "Bull pens,"
the

or concentration camps, are provided all along the route,

and stops are made at the principal cities.

All families

are broken up on the way, the chief points at which this

done being Guaymas, San Marcos, Guadalajara and
Mexico City. From San Marcos the unfortunates are
carried by train over the Mexican Central Railway to
Mexico City and from Mexico City over the International Railway to Veracruz. Here they are bundled into
is

one of the freight steamers of the "National" company,
and in from two to five days are disembarked at Progreso and turned over to the waiting consignees.
On the road to Yucatan the companion of my journeys, L. Gutierrez DeLara, and I, saw gangs of Yaqui
exiles, saw them in the "bull pen" in the midst of the

army barracks in Mexico City finally we joined a party
of them at Veracruz and traveled with them on ship
from Veracruz to Progreso.
There were 104 of them shoved into the unclean hole
;

astern of the freight steamer Sinaloa, on which we em-

barked.

We thought

it

might be difficult to obtain the

BARBAROUS MEXICO

50
Opportunity to

visit this

unclean hole, but, luckily,

we

The guard bent readily to friendly
were mistaken.
words, and before the ship was well under way my
companion and I were seated on boxes in the hold with
a group of exiles gathered about us, some of them, tobacco-famished, pulling furiously at the cigarettes which
we had passed among them, others silently munching the
bananas, apples and oranges which we had brought.
There were two old men past fifty, one of them small,
active, sharp-featured, talkative, dressed in American
shoes and slouch hat, with the face
and manner of a man bred to civilization the other, tall,
silent, impassive, wrapped to the chin in a gay colored
blanket, the one comfort he had snatched from his few
belongings as the soldiers were leading him away. There
was a magnificent specimen of an athlete under thirty,
with a wizened baby girl of two held in the crook of one
overalls, jumper,

;

arm, an aggressive-faced woman of forty against whom
was closely pressed a girl of ten shivering and shaking

two overgrown boys
who squatted together in the background and grinned
half foolishly at our questions, bedraggled women,
nearly half of them with babies, and an astonishingly
large number of little chubby-faced, bare-legged boys
and girls who played uncomprehendingly about the floor
or stared at us from a distance out of their big solemn
in the grasp of a malarial attack,

black eyes.

"Revolutionists?" I asked of the man in overalls and

jumper.

"No; workingmen."
"Yaquis?"
"Yes, one Yaqui," pointing to his friend in the blanket.
"The rest are Pimas and Opatas."

OVER THE EXILE ROAD

51

"Then why are you here?"
"Ah, we are all Yaquis to General Torres. It makes
no difference to him. You are dark. You dress in my
clothes and you will be a Yaqui to him. He makes no
investigation, asks no questions
only takes you."
?"
"Where are you from
I asked of the old man.
"Most of us are from Ures. They took us in the
night and carried us away without allowing us to make
up bundles of our belongings."
"I am from Horcasitas," spoke up the young athlete
with the babe on his arm. "I was plowing in the field
when they came, and they did not give me time to un-

—
—

hitch my oxen."

"Where is the mother of your baby?" I inquired cuyoung father.
"Dead in San Marcos," he replied, closing his teeth

riously of the

tight.

killed

one

"That three weeks' tramp over the mountains
They have allowed me to keep the little

her.

—so

far."

"Did any of you make resistance when the soldiers
came to take you?" I asked.
"No," snswered the old man from Ures. "We went
quietly; we did not try to run away."
Then with a
smile
"The officers found more trouble in looking after
their men, their privates, to prevent them from running
away, from deserting, than they did with us.
"We were one hundred and fifty- three at the start, we
of Ures," went on the old man. "Farm laborers, all of
us.
We worked for small farmers, poor men, men with
not more than half a dozen families each in their employ. One day a government agent visited the neighborhood and ordered the bosses to give an account of all
:

The bosses obeyed, but they did not
know what it meant until a few days later, when the

their laborers.

!

"

BARBAROUS MEXICO

52

Then they knew, and they saw ruin
soldiers came.
coming to them as well as to us. They begged the offiHe is a good man. He
cers, saying: 'This is my peon.
has been with me for twenty years.

I

need him for the

harvest.'

"It

is

woman

true," broke in the

stricken child.

two years.

with

the

ague-

"We were with Carlos Romo for twenty-

The night we were taken we were seven;

now we are two."
"And we were

with Eugenio Morales

years," spoke another

for

sixteen

woman.

"Yes," went on the spokesman, "our bosses followed
us, begging, but it was no use.

Some of them followed

the way to Hermosillo.

There was Manuel Gandara, and Jose Juan Lopez, and Franco Tallez, and Eugenio Morales and the Romo brothers, Jose and Carlos.
You will find them there now and they will tell you that
what we say is true. They followed us, but it was no
use. They had to go back and call vainly at our empty
houses for laborers. We were stolen and they were

us

all

—

robbed

"They died on the way like starving cattle," went on
man from Ures. "When one fell ill he never
got well again. One woman was deathly sick at the
start.
She begged to be left behind, but they wouldn't
leave her. She was the first to fall it happened on the
train between Hermosillo and Guaymas.
"But the crudest part of the trail was between San
Bias and San Marcos. Those women with babies! It
was awful! They dropped down in the dust again and
Two never got up again, and we buried them
again.^
the old

—

ourselves there beside the road."

"There were burros

in

San

woman, "and mules and horses.

Bias,"

interrupted a

Oh, why didn't they

;

OVER THE EXILE ROAD

53

But our men were good. When the little
legs of the ninos were weary our men carried them on
their backs. And when the three women who were far
gone in pregnancy could walk no more our men made
stretchers of twigs and carried them, taking turns. Yes,
our men were good, but now they are gone. We do
not see them any more!"
"The soldiers had to tear me away from my husband/*
said another, "and when I cried out they only laughed.
The next night a soldier came and tried to take hold of
me, but I pulled off my shoes and beat him with them.
let

US ride?

Yes, the soldiers bothered the

women often, especially

week we starved in Mexico City, but always the
women fought them back."
"I have a sister in Yucatan," said a young woman unthat

der twenty.
"Two years ago they carried her away.
As soon as we arrive I shall try to find her. We will
keep each other company, now that they have taken

my husband from me.

Tell me,

Yucatan as they say it is?

I

is it

so terribly hot in

do not like hot weather,

yet if they will only let me live with my sister I will not

mind."

"To whom do all these bright little tads, these muchachos, all of the same

size,

belong?" I inquired.

"Quien sahef' answered an old woman.
"Their
parents are gone, just as are our babes. They take our
children from us and give us the children of strangers.

And when we begin to love the new ones, they take
them away, too. Do you see that woman huddled over
They took her four
boys at Guadalajara and left her nothing. Myself?

there with her face in her hands?
little

Yes, they took my husband.

For more than thirty years

we had never been parted for a single night. But that
made no difference he is gone. Yet perhaps I am lucky
;

BARBAROUS MEXICO

54
I

still

have

my daughter.

Do you think, though, that

we may meet our husbands again in Yucatan?"
As we breasted the Veracruz lighthouse, the shoulder
of a Norther heaved itself against the side of the vessel,
the ocean streamed in at the lower portholes and the

quarters of the unhappy exiles were flooded with water.

They fled

met by flying
them back again. Between
the flooded hold and the flooded poop the exiles spent
the night, and when, early the next morning, as we drove
into the Coatzacoalcos river, I strolled aft again, I saw
them lying about the deck, all of them drenched and
shivering, some of them writhing in the throes of acute
for the deck, but here were

sheets of rain, which drove

seasickness.

We steamed thirty miles up the Coatzacoalcos river,
then anchored to the shore and spent a day loading jun-

market of New Orleans.
Two hundred ordinary cattle may be coaxed through a

gle bulls for the tough beef

hole in the side of a ship in the space of two hours, but
these bulls were as wild as wolves, and each had to be
half butchered before he
straight and narrow way.

the

would consent to walk in the
Once inside, and ranged along

two sides of the vessel, they fought, trampled each

other, bawled as loud as steam whistles, and in a num-

ber of instances broke their head ropes and smashed
through the flimsy railing which had been erected to
prevent them from over-running other portions of the
lower deck. In a bare space at the stern of the vessel,

surrounded on three sides by plunging, bawling bulls,
were the quarters of the "Yaquis." It was stay there
and run the risk of being trampled, or choose the un-

For the remaining four days of the
sheltered deck.
journey, one of which we spent waiting for the Norther
to pass, the "Yaquis" chose the deck.

OVER THE EXILE ROAD

55

At last we arrived at Progreso. As we entered the
train for Merida we saw our friends being herded into
the second class coaches. They left us at the little station of San Ignacio, on their way to a plantation belonging to Governor Olegario Molina, and we saw them no
more.
In Yucatan I soon learned what becomes of the Yaqui
exiles.

They are

sent to the henequen plantations as

slaves, slaves on almost exactly the

same basis as are the

100,000 Mayas whom I found on the plantations. They are

held as chattels, they are bought and sold, they receive

no wages, but are fed on beans, tortillas and putrid fish.

They are beaten, sometimes beaten to death. They are
worked from dawn until night in the hot sun beside the
Mayas. The men are locked up at night. The women
are required to marry Chinamen or Mayas. They are
hunted when they run away, and are brought back by
the police

if

they reach a settlement.

Families, broken

up in Sonora or on the way, are never permitted to reunite. After they once pass into the hands of the planter
the government cares no more for them, takes no more
account of them.
The government has received its
money, and the fate of the Yaquis is in the hands of
the planter.
I talked with them.
I saw many Yaquis in Yucatan.
saw them beaten. One of the first things that I saw
on a Yucatan plantation was the beating of a Yaqui.
His name was Rosanta Bajeca.
The act, though not intentionally so, perhaps, was theIt was at 3 :45 o'clock in the morning,
atrically staged.
The slave gang was
just after roll-call of the slaves.
drawn up in front of the plantation store, the fitful rays

I

of the lanterns sputtering high on the store front playing uncertainly over their dusky faces and dirty white

56
forms.

BARBAROUS MEXICO
There were seven hundred of them.

Now and

then a brighter lantern beam shot all the way to the towering tropical trees, which, standing shoulder to shoulder,

walled in the grass-grown patio.

Under

the hanging

lanterns and facing the ragged band stood the administrador, or general manager, the

mayordomo primero, or
mayordomos

superintendent, and the lesser bosses, the

secundos, the majacol and the capataces.
**Rosanta Bajeca!'*

The name, squeaked out by the voice of the administrador, brought from the crowd a young Yaqui, mediumsized,

sinewy-bodied, clean-featured, with well-formed

head erect on square shoulders, bony jaw fixed, dark,
deep set eyes darting rapidly from one side to another
of the circle which surrounded him, like a tiger forced
out of the jungle and into the midst of the huntsmen.
"Off with your shirt!" rasped the administrador, and
at the words superintendent and foremen rmged closer
about him. One reached for the garment, but the Yaqui
fended the hand, then with the quickness of a cat,
dodged a cane which swished at his bare head from the
opposite direction. For one instant no more with the
hate of his eyes he held the circle at bay, then with a
movement of consent he waved them back, and with a
single jerk drew the shirt over his head and bared his
muscular bronze body, scarred and discolored from pre-

—

—

Submissive but dignified
he stood there, for all the world like a captive Indian
chief of a hundred years ago, contemptuously awaiting
vious beatings, for the whip.

the torture of his enemies.
Listlessly the waiting slaves looked on.

A regiment

of toil, they stood half a dozen deep, with soiled calico
trousers reaching half way to the ankles or rolled to the

knees, shirts of the same material with

many gaping

OVER THE EXILE ROAD

57

mouths showing the bare bronze skin beneath, bare legs,
bare

feet, battered

hands

grass hats held deferentially in the

—a tatterdemalion

lot,

shaking the sleep from their

Three races
Maya, aborigine of Yucatan, the tall, arrow-backed Chinaman and
the swarthy, broad-fisted Yaqui from Sonora.
eyes, blinking at the flickering lanterns.

there were, the sharp-visaged, lofty-browed

At a

third

command

of

the

administrador

there

stepped from the host of waiting slaves a giant Chinese.
Crouching, he grasped the wrists of the silent Yaqui.

The next moment he was standing

straight with the

Yaqui on his back in the manner of a tired child being
carried by one of its elders.
Not one of that throng who did not know what was
coming, yet not until a capatas reached for a bucket

hanging high on the store front did there come a tenThe
sion of nerves among those seven hundred men.

whipper extraordinary, known as a majocol, a deepchested, hairy brute, bent over the bucket and soused
Withdrawing
his hands deep into the water within.
them, he held high for inspection four dripping ropes,

The thick writhing things in the
dim lamplight seemed like four bloated snakes, and at
sight of them the tired backs of the ragged seven hundred straightened with a jerk and an involuntary gasp
Laggard slumber, though
rippled over the assemblage.
At last all were
unsated, dropped from their eyes.
each three feet long.

awake, wide awake.
The ropes were of native henequen braided tight and
thick and heavy for the particular purpose in hand
Water-soaked, to give them more weight and cutting
power, they were admirably fitted for the work of
"cleaning up," the term whereby corporal punishment
is

known on the plantations of Yucatan.

!

BARBAROUS MEXICO

58

The hairy majocol selected one of the four, tossed
back the remaining three, the pail was carried away and
the giant Chinaman squared off with the naked body of

The
drama was an old one to them, so old that their eyes
must have ached many times at the sight, yet for them
it could never lose its fascination.
Each knew that his
own time was coming, if it had not already come, and
not one possessed the physical power to turn his back
upon the spectacle.
the victim to the gaze of his fellow bondsmen.

Deliberately the majocol measured his distance, then
as deliberately raised his arm high and brought it swiftly

down again; the bloated snake swished through the air
and fell with a spat across the glistening bronze shoulders of the Yaqui

The administrador, a small, nervous man of many gestures, nodded his approval

and glanced at his watch, the

mayordomo, big, stolid, grinned slowly, the half dozen
capataces leaned forward a little more obliquely in their
eagerness, the regiment of slaves swayed bodily as by
some invisible force, and a second gasp, painful and
sharp like the bursting air from a severed windpipe,
escaped them.

Every eye was riveted tight upon that scene

in the

—the giant Chi-

uncertain dimness of the early morning

naman, bending slightly forward now, the naked body
upon his shoulders, the long, uneven, livid welt that
marked the visit of the wet rope, the deliberate, the agonizingly deliberate majocol, the administrador, watch in
hand, nodding endorsement, the grinning mayordomo,
the absorbed capataces.

All held their breath for the second blow.
rest,

held

the rope would never

fall.

breath with the

it

I held

my

for ages, until I thought

Not until I saw the finger

—
OVER THE EXILE ROAD

59

signal of the administrador did I know that the blows
were delivered by the watch and not until it was all over

did I

know that, in order to multiply the torture, six

seconds were allowed to intervene between each stroke.

The second blow fell, and the third, and the fourth.
fell, ages apart.
At the
fourth the strong brown skin broke and little pin-heads

I counted the blows as they

of crimson pushed themselves out, burst, and started

downward in thin tricklets.
back lost its

rigidity

and

At the sixth the glistening

fell

to quivering like a jelly-

At the ninth a low whine somewhere in the depths
of that Yaqui, found its devious way outward and into
fish.

the open.

Oh, that whine!

I

hear it now, a hard, hard

whine, as if indurated to diamond hardness by drilling

way to the air through a soul of adamant.
At last the spats ceased there were fifteen the administrador, with a final nod, put away his watch, the
giant Chinaman released his grip on the brown wrists
its

—

and the Yaqui tumbled in a limp heap to the ground.
He lay there for a moment, his face in his arms, his
quivering, bleeding flesh to the sky, then a foreman
stepped forward and put a foot roughly against his
hip.

The Yaqui lifted his head, disclosing to the light a
A moment later he rose to his feet and staggered forward to
join his fellow bondsmen. In that moment the spell of
pair of glazed eyes and a face twisted with pain.

breathless silence on the seven hundred

snapped, the
ranks moved in agitation and there rose a hum of low
speech from every section of the crowd. The special

"cleaning up" of the morning was over.

Five minutes

work on the farm had begun.
Naturally I made inquiries about Rosanta Bajeca to
find out what crime he had committed to merit fifteen

later the day's

BARBAROUS MEXICO

60

lashes of the wet rope.

I

ascertained that he had been

only a month in Yucatan, and but three days before had

been put in the field with a harvesting gang to cut and
trim the great leaves of the henequen plant.

Two thou-

sand a day was the regular stint for each slave, and
Bajeca had been given three days in which to acquire
the dexterity necessary to harvest the required

number

He had failed. Hence the flogging.

There
had been no other fault.
"It's a wonder," I remarked to a capatas, "that this
Yaqui did not tear himself from the back of the Chinaman. It's a wonder he did not fight. He seems like a
brave man he has the look of a fighter.'*
of leaves.

;

The capataz chuckled.
"One month ago he was a fighter," was the reply,
"but a Yaqui learns many things in a month in Yucatan.
Still, there was a time when we thought this dog would
never learn. Now and then they come to us that way;
they never learn; they're never worth the money that's
paid for them."
"Tell me about this one," I urged.

"He fought; that's all. The day he came he was put
to

work loading bundles of

leaves onto the

elevator

—

which leads to the cleaning machine. The mayordomo
yes, the mayordomo primero
happened along and
punched the fellow in the stomach with his cane. A
half minute later a dozen of us were struggling to pull
that Yaqui wolf away from the throat of the mayordomo.
We starved him for a day and then dragged him out for
a cleaning up. But he fought with his fingers and with

—

his teeth until a capatas laid

him

out with the blunt

edge of a machete. After that he tasted the rope daily
for a while, but every day for no less than a week the
fool fought crazily

on until he kissed the earth under

OVER THE EXILE ROAD

61

But our majocol never faltered.
That majocol is a genius. He conquered the wolf. He
wielded the rope until the stubborn one surrendered, until that same Yaqui came crawling, whimpering, on hands
and knees and licked with his naked tongue the hand of
the man who had beaten him!"
During my travels in Yucatan I was repeatedly
the weight of a club.

human character of the peoThe
Yaquis are Indians, they are not white, yet when one
struck with the extremely

ple

whom the Mexican government calls Yaquis.

converses with them in a language mutually understood

one is struck with the likenesses of the mental processes
of White and Brown. I was early convinced that the

Yaqui and I were more alike in mind than in color. I
became convinced, too, that the family attachments of
the Yaqui mean quite as much to the Yaqui as the family attachments of the American mean to the American.
Conjugal fidelity is the cardinal virtue of the Yaqui
home and it seems to be so not because of any tribal
superstition of past times or because of any teachings
of priests, but because of a constitutional tenderness

sweetened more and more with the passing of the years,
for the one with whom he had shared the meat and the
shelter

and the labor of

life,

the joys

and sorrows of

existence.

Over and over again I saw this exemplified on the exroad and in Yucatan. The Yaqui woman feels as
keenly the brutal snatching away of her babe as would
The heart-strings of
the cultivated American woman.
Yaqui
are
no
more
proof
against
the
wife
a violent and
unwished- for separation from her husband than would
ile

be the heart-strings of the refined mistress of a beautiful American home.

The Mexican government

forbids

divorce

and

re-

BARBAROUS MEXICO

62

marriage within its domain, but for the henequen planters of

Yucatan

all

things

are possible.

To

a

Yaqui

woman a native of Asia is no less repugnant than he is
American woman, yet one of the first barbarities
henequen planter imposes upon the Yaqui slave
woman, freshly robbed of the lawful husband of her
bosom, is to compel her to marry a Chinaman and live
with him!
"We do that," explained one of the planters to me,
"in order to make the Chinamen better satisfied and less
inclined to run away. And besides we know that every
new babe born on the place will some day be worth anywhere from $500 to $1,000 cashT
The cultivated white woman, you say, would die of
the shame and the horror of such conditions.
But so
to an

the

does the brown woman of Sonora.

than

Don Enrique Camara

No less a personage

Zavala,

president

"Camara de Agricola de Yucatan," and a
planter himself, told me:
"If the Yaquis last out the

first

of

the

millionaire

year they generally

and make good workers, but the
trouble is, at least two-thirds of them die off in the first
tzvelve months!"
On the ranch of one of the most famous henequen
kings we found about two hundred Yaquis. One-third
of these were men, who were quartered with a large
body of Mayas and Chinamen. Entirely apart from
these, and housed in a row of new one-room huts, each
get along

set in

all

right

a tiny patch of uncultivated land,

we discovered

the Yaqui women and children.
We found them squatting around on their bare floors
or nursing an open-air fire and a kettle just outside the
back door. We found no men among them, Yaquis or

—
OVER THE EXILE ROAD

63

Chinamen, for they had arrived only one month before
f rom Sonora.
all of them
In one house we found as many as fourteen inmates.
There was a woman past fifty with the strength of an
Indian chief in her face and with words which went to
the mark like an arrow to a target. There was a comfortable, home-like woman with a broad, pock-marked
face, pleasant words
and eyes which kindled with
friendliness despite her troubles. There were two woman
who watched their fire and listened only. There was a

—

of fifteen, a bride of four months, but now alone,
a wonderfully comely girl with big eyes and soft mouth,
who sat with her back against the wall and smiled and
girl

smiled

—

until she cried.

There was a sick woman who

lay on the floor and groaned feebly but never looked up,

and there were eight children.
*'Last week we were fifteen," said the home-like
woman, "but one has already gone. They never get
well." She reached over and gently stroked the hair of
the sister who lay on the floor.
"Were you all married?" I asked.
"All," nodded the old woman with the face of a chief.
"And where are they now ?"
"Quien sahef" And she searched our eyes deep for
the motive of our questions.
"I am a Papago," reassured De Lara.

"We are friends."

"You are not working," I remarked.

"What are you

doing?"
"Starving," said the old woman.

"We get that once a week— for all of us," explained
the home-like one, nodding at three small chunks of raw

—

less than a five-cent stew in the United States
which had just been brought from the plantation store.

beef

BARBAROUS MEXICO

64

"Besides that we get only corn and black beans and not
half enough of either of them."

"We are like hogs; we are fed on corn," put in the
old woman. "In Sonora we made our tortillas of wheat."

"How long will they starve you?" I asked.
"Until we marry Chinamen," flashed the old woman,
unexpectedly.

"Yes," confirmed the home-like one. "Twice they have

brought the Chinamen before
said:

us,

lined

them up, and

'Choose a man.' Twice."

"And why didn't you choose?"
This question several of the women answered in chorus.

In words and wry faces they expressed their ab-

horrence of the Chinamen, and with tremulous earnestness assured us that they had not yet forgotten their

own husbands.
"I begged them," said the old woman, "to let me off.
I told them I

was too old, that it was no use, that I was
I must choose, too.

a woman no longer, but they said

They will not let me off; they say I will have to choose
with the rest."

"Twice they have lined us up," reiterated the home"and said we must choose. But we wouldn't
choose. One woman chose, but when she saw the rest
hang back she pushed the man away from her. They
threatened us with the rope, but still we hung back.
They will give us but one more chance, they say. Then
if we do not choose, they will choose for us.
And if we
do not consent we will be put in the field and worked and
whipped like the men."
"And get twelve centavos a day (six cents American)
to live on," said the old woman.
"Twelve centavos a
day with food at the store twice as dear as in Sonora!"
"Next Sunday morning they will make us choose," relike one,

"

OVER THE EXILE ROAO

65

peated the home-like woman. "And if we don't choose

—

''Last Sunday they beat that sister there," said the old

woman.

"She swore she'd never choose, and they beat
Come, Refugio, show
them your back."
But the woman at the fire shrank away and hung her
head in mortification.
"No, no," she protested, then after a moment she muttered: "When the Yaqui men are beaten they die of
her just like they beat the men.

shame, but the women can stand to be beaten ; they cannot die."
"It's true," nodded the old woman, "the men die of
shame sometimes and sometimes they die of their own

—

will."

When we turned the talk to Sonora and to the long
journey the voices of the women began to falter.

They

were from Pilares de Teras, where are situated the mines
of Colonel Garcia. The soldiers had come in the daytime while the people were in the field picking the ripe
corn from the stalks. They had been taken from their
harvest labor and compelled to walk all the way to Hermosillo, a three weeks' tramp.

The Yaqui

love

for the one

who suckled them is

strong, and several of the younger women recounted the
details of the parting

from the mother.

Then we spoke

of their husbands again, but they held their tears until
I

asked the question

:

"How would you like to go back

with me to your homes in Sonora?"

That opened the flood-gates. The tears started first
down the plump cheeks of the cheery, home-like woman,
then the others broke in, one at a time, and at last the
listening children on the floor were blubbering dolefully

with their elders. Weeping, the unhappy exiles lost their
last modicum

of reserve. They begged us please to take

!

^

BARBAROUS MEXICO

them back to Sonora or to find their husbands for them.
The old woman implored us to get word to her boss,
Leonardo Aguirre, and would not be content until I had
penned his name in my note-book. The bashful woman
at the fire, aching for some comforting, hopeful words,
parted her dress at the top and gave us a glimpse of the
red marks of the lash upon her back.
I looked into the face of my companion; the tears
were trickling down his cheeks. As for me, I did not
cry. I am ashamed now that I did not cry
Such is the life of the Yaqui nation in its last chapter.
When I looked upon those miserable creatures there I
But
said:. "There can be nothing worse than this."
when I saw Valle Nacional I said: "This is worse than
Yucatan."

—

CHAPTER IV
THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL
Valle Nacional is undoubtedly the worst slave hole in

Mexico.

Probably it is the worst in the world.

When

I visited Valle Nacional I expected to find it milder than

Yucatan.

I

found it more pitiless.

In Yucatan the

Maya slaves die off faster than they

are born and two-thirds of the Yaqui slaves are killed

during the

first

year after their importation into the

country.

In Valle Nacional all of the slaves, all but a

very few

—perhaps

five

—pass back

per cent

to earth

within a space of seven or eight months.

This statement is almost unbelievable. I would not
have believed it; possibly not even after I had seen the
whole process of working them and beating them and
starving them to death, were it not the fact that the
masters themselves told me that it was true.

And there

are fifteen thousand of these Valle Nacional slaves

thousand new ones every year!
"By the sixth or seventh month they begin to die off

fifteen

like flies at the first winter frost,

and after that they're

The cheapest thing to do is to let
them die there are plenty more where they came from."
Word for word, this is a statement made to me by
not worth keeping.
;

Antonio Pla, general manager of one-third the tobacco
lands in Valle Nacional.
"1 have been here for more than five years and every

month I see hundreds and sometimes thousands of men,

women and children start over the road to the valley, but
I never see them come back.
Of every hundred who go
over the road not more than one ever sees this town
67

BARBAROUS MEXICO

68
again."

This assertion was made to

me by a station

agent of the Veracruz al Pacifico railroad.

"There are no survivors of Valle Nacional
ones/' a government engineer

—no

real

who has charge of the

improvement of certain harbors

told

me.

"Now and

then one gets out of the valley and gets beyond El Hule.

He staggers and begs his way along the weary road toward Cordoba, but he never gets back where he came
from.
Those people come out of the valley walking
corpses, they travel on a little way and then they fall."

This man's work has carried him

much

into Valle

and he knows more of the country, probably,
than does any Mexican not directly interested in the
Niacional

slave trade.

"They die they all die.
;

The bosses never let them go

until they're dying."

Thus declared one of the police officers of the town
of Valle Nacional, which is situated in the center of the
valley and is supported by it.

And everywhere over and over again I was told the
same thing.

Even Manuel Lagunas, president e (mayor)

of Valle Nacional, protector of the planters and a slave

owner himself, said it. Miguel Vidal, secretary of the
The bosses themselves said it. The
Indian dwellers of the mountain sides said it. The slaves
said it. And when I had seen, as well as heard, I was
convinced that it was the truth.
The slaves of Valle Nacional are not Indians, as are
the slaves of Yucatan. They are Mexicans. Some are
skilled artizans.
Others are artists. The majority of
them are common laborers. As a whole, except for their
rags, their bruises, their squalor and their despair, they
are a very fair representation of the Mexican people.
They are not criminals. Not more than ten per cent were

municipality, said it.

—
THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL

69

even charged with any crime.

The rest of them are

peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

Yet not one came to the

valley of his own free will, not one would not leave the
valley on an instant's notice if he or she could get away.

Do not entertain the idea that Mexican slavery is confined to Yucatan

and Valle Nacional.

lar to those of Valle

Conditions simi-

Nacional are the rule in many sec-

and especially in the states south of
Nacional because it is most notorious as a region of slaves, and because, as I have al-

tions of Diaz-land,

the capital.

I cite Valle

ready suggested, it presents just a little bit the worst ex-

ample of chattel slavery that I know of.

The secret of the extreme conditions of Valle Nacional
is

mainly geographical.

Valle Nacional is a deep gorge

from two to five miles wide and twenty miles long
tucked away among almost impassable mountains in the
extreme northwestern corner of the state of Oaxaca.
Its mouth is fifty miles up the Papaloapan river from El
Hule, the nearest railroad station, yet

it

is

through El

Hule that every human being passes in going to or coming from the valley. There is no other practical route
in, no other one out.
The magnificent tropical mountains which wall in the valley are covered with an impenetrable jungle made still more impassable by jaguars,
pumas and gigantic snakes. Moreover, there is no wagon
road to Valle Nacional only a river and a bridle path
;

a bridle path which carries one now through the jungle,

now along precipitous cliffs where the rider must dismount and crawl, leading his horse behind him, now
across the deep, swirling current of the river.

It takes

a strong swimmer to cross this river at high water, yet

a pedestrian must swim

it

more than once in order to

get out of Valle Nacional.

The equestrian must cross it five times— four times in

BARBAROUS MEXICO

70

a canoe alongside which his

mount swims laboriously,

once by fording, a long and
large rocks

from.

difficult route over which
must be avoided and deep holes kept away

The valley itself is as flat as a floor, clear of all

rank growth, and down its gentle slope winds the Papaloapan river.

The valley, the river and its rim form one

of the most beautiful sights it has ever been my lot to
look upon.
Valle Kacional

is

two from El Hule.

three days' journey

from Cordoba,

Stray travelers sometimes get as far

as Tuztepec, the chief city of the political district, but

no one goes on to Valle Nacional who has not business
there.
It is a tobacco country, the most noted in Mexico, and the production is carried on by about thirty large
plantations owned and operated almost exclusively by
Spaniards. Between El Hule and the head of the valleyare four towns, Tuztepec, Chiltepec, Jacatepec and Valle
Nacional, all situated on the banks of the river, all provided with policemen to hunt runaway slaves, not one
of whom can get out of the valley without passing the
towns.

Tuztepec, the largest,

is

provided with ten po-

(mounted country police).
Besides, every runaway slave brings a reward of $10
to the man or policeman who catches and returns him
licemen and eleven rurales

to his owner.

Thus it will be understood how much the geographof Valle Nacional accounts for its being
worse than most other slave districts of
Combined with this may be mentioned the
Mexico.
complete understanding that is had with the government
and the nearness to a practically inexhaustible labor
ical isolation

just a

little

market.
Just as in Yucatan, the slavery of Valle Nacional

is

merely peonage, or labor for debt, carried to the extreme,

TYPE OF

ENGANCHADO

OR PLANTATION SLAVE

—
THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL

71

although outwardly it takes a slightly different form
that of contract labor.

The origin of the conditions of Valle Nacional was
The planters needed lacontract labor.
They went to the expense of importing laborborers.
undoubtedly

ers with the understanding that the laborers

with their jobs for a given time.

would stay

Some laborers tried

jump their contracts and the planters used force to
The advance money and the cost
transportation
looked
upon as a debt which the
was
of
laborer could be compelled to work out. From this it
was only a step to so ordering the conditions of labor
to

compel them to stay.

that the laborer could under no circumstances ever hope
to get free.

In time Valle Nacional became a word of

They reSo the planters felt
compelled to tell them they were going to take them
somewhere else. From this it was only a step to play-

horror with the working people of all Mexico.
fused to go there for any price.

ing the workman false all round, to formulating a contract not to be carried out, but to help get the laborer

Finally, from this it was only a step to
forming a business partnership with the government,
whereby the police power should be put into the hands
of the planters to help them carry on a traffic in slaves.
The planters do not call their slaves slaves. They

into the toils.

call

them contract laborers.

I call

them slaves because

the moment they enter Valle Nacional they become the

personal property of the planter and there is no law or

government to protect them.
In the first place the planter buys his slave for a given

Then he works him at will, feeds or starves him
armed guards over him day and
night, beats him, pays him no money, kills him, and the
laborer has no recourse. Call it by another name if it
sum.

to suit himself, places

BARBAROUS MEXICO

72
pleases you.

I

call

it

slavery only because I do not

know of a name that will fit the conditions better.
I have said that no laborer sent to Valle Nacional to
become a slave travels the road of his own free will.
There are just two ways employed to get them there.
They are sent over the road either by a jefe politico or
by a "labor agent" working in conjunction with a jefe

politico or other officials of the

government.

A jefe politico is a civil officer who rules political
He is appointed

districts corresponding to our counties.

by the president or by the governor of his state and is
also mayor, or presidente, of the principal town or city
in his district. In turn he usually appoints the mayors of
the towns under him, as well as all other officers of importance. He has no one to answer to except his gov-

ernor—
the national president
—and altogether quite a
Czar

feels like interfering

^unless

is

little

in his domain.

The methods employed by the jefe politico working
alone are very simple.
ers to terms in jail

Nacional.

Instead of sending petty prison-

he sells them into slavery in Valle

And as he pockets the money himself, he

naturally arrests as many persons as he can. This method
is

followed more or less by the jefes politicos of all the

leading cities of southern Mexico.

The jefe politico of each of the four largest cities
in

southern Mexico, so I was

told

by

Manuel La-

gunas, by "labor agents," as well as by others whose
veracity in

the

matter

—pays an annual
his office.

I

rental

have no reason to question
of

$10,000

per

year

for

The office would be worth no such amount

were it not for the spoils of the slave trade and other litLesser
tle grafts which are indulged in by the holder.
send
lesser
amounts.
They
governors
their
pay
jefes
gangs
in
of
from
ten
road
to one
their victims over the

—
THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL

73

hundred or even more. They get a special government
rate from the railroads, send along government-salaried
rurales to guard them; hence the selling price of $45 to
$50 per slave is nearly all clear profit.
But only ten per cent, of the slaves are sent directly to
Valle Nacional by the jefes politicos. There is no basis
in law whatsoever for the proceeding, and the jefes politicos prefer to

work in conjunction with "labor agents."

There is also no basis in law for the methods employed
by the "labor agents," but the partnership is profitable.

The

officials

are enabled

to

hide

behind

the *'labor

agents" and the "labor agents" are enabled to work under
the protection of the officials and absolutely without fear

of criminal prosecution.
In this partnership of the government and the labor
agent

—

^popularly

known as an enganchador (snarer)

the function of the labor agent

is

to snare the laborer,

the function of the government to stand behind him, help

him, protect him, give him low transportation rates and
free guard service,

and finally, to take a share of the

profits.

The methods employed by the labor agent in snaring
One is to open an em-

the laborer are many and various.

ployment office and advertise for workers who are to be

home and plenty of
freedom somewhere in the south of Mexico. Free transportation is offered.
These inducements always cause

given high wages, a comfortable

a certain number to take the

bait, especially

men with

families who want to move with their families to a more

The husband and father is given an
advance fee of $5 and the whole family is locked up
in a room as securely barred as a jail.
After a day or two, as they are joined by others, they
come to have misgivings. Perhaps they ask to be let

prosperous clime.

BARBAROUS MEXICO

74
out,

and then they find that they are indeed prisoners.

They are told that they are in debt and will be held until
they work out their debt. A few days later the door
opens and they file out. They find that rurales are all
about them. They are marched through a back street
to a railroad station, where they are put upon the train.
They try to get away, but it is no use they are prisoners.
In a few days they are in Valle Nacional.
;

Usually the laborer caught in this way is taken through
the formality of signing a contract.
is

He is told that he

to get a good home, good food, and one, two or three

dollars a day wages for a period of six months or a year.

A printed paper is shoved under his nose and the enganchandor rapidly points out several alluring sentences
A pen is put quickly into his hand and
he is told to sign in a hurry. The five dollars advance
fee is given him to clinch the bargain and put him in debt

written thereon.

to the agent.

He is usually given a chance to spend this,

or a part of it, usually for clothing or other necessaries

order that he may be unable to pay it back when he

in

discovers that he has been trapped.

printed

contract

—fixing the wages,

filled out afterwards by

The blanks on the
etc.

—are usually

the labor agent or the consignee.

In Mexico City and other large centers of population
there are permanently maintained places called

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/tribal%3Apascua_yaqui%3A7d1aa51e2ba188e5. Public record. Not legal advice.