Identifier: barbarousmexico00turn (find matches)
Title: Barbarous Mexico
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Turner, John Kenneth
Subjects: Mexico -- Politics and government 1867-1910 Mexico -- Economic conditions
Publisher: Chicago : C. H. Kerr & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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n by about thirty largeplantations owned and operated almost exclusively_bySpaniards. Between El Hule and the head of the valleyare four towns, Tuztepec, Chiltepec, Jacatepec and ValleNacional, all situated on the banks of the river, all pro-vided with policemen to hunt runaway slaves, not oneof whom can get out of the valley without passing thetowns. Tuztepec, the largest, is provided with ten po-licemen and eleven ruralcs (mounted country police).Besides, every runaway slave brings a reward of $10to the man or policeman who catches and returns himto his owner. Thus it will be understood how much the geograph-ical isolation of Valle Nacional accounts for its beingjust a little worse than most other slave districts ofMexico. Combined with this may be mentioned thecomplete understanding that is had with the governmentand the nearness to a practically inexhaustible labormarket. Just as in Yucatan, the slavery of Valle Nacional ismerely peonage, or labor for debt, carried to the extreme,
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TYPE OF ENGANCHADO OU PLAXTATIOX 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 wasundoubtedly contract labor. The planters needed la-borers. They went to the expense of importing labor-ers with the understanding that the laborers would staywith their jobs for a given time. Some laborers triedto jump their contracts and the planters used force tocompel them to stay. The advance money and the costof transportation was looked upon as a debt which thelaborer could be compelled to work out. From this itwas only a step to so ordering the conditions of laborthat the laborer could under no circumstances ever hopeto get free. In time Valle Nacional became a word ofhorror with the working people of all Mexico. They re-fused to go there for any price. So the planters feltcompelled to tell them they were going to take themsomewhere else. From this it was only a step to p

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