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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this arrangement of thingsare impressed not only the natives of the various slavestates, but others—100,000 others every year, to speak inround numbers—who, either enticed by the false promisesof labor agents, kidnapped by labor agents or shipped bypolitical authorities in partnership with labor agents,leave their homes in other parts of the country to jour-ney to their death in the hot lands. Debt and contract slavery is the prevailing system ofproduction all over the south of Mexico. Probablythree-quarters of a million souls may properly be classedas human chattels. In all the rest of Mexico a systemof peonage, differing from slavery principally in degree,and similar in many respects to the serfdom of Europe inthe Middle Ages, prevails in the rural districts. Underthis system the laborer is compelled to give service tothe farmer, or hacendado, to accept what he wishes topay, and even to receive such beatings as he cares todeliver. Debt, real or imaginary, is the nexus that binds
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THE COUNTRY PEONS AND THE CITY POOR 111 the peon to his master. Debts are handed from father toson and on down through the generations. Though theconstitution does not recognize the right of the creditor totake and hold the body of the debtor, the rural authoritieseverywhere recognize such a right and the result is thatprobably 5,000,000 people, or one-third the entire popula-tion, are today living in a state of helpless peonage. Farm peons are often credited with receiving wages,which nominally range from twelve and one-half cents aday to twenty-five cents a day, American money—seldomhigher. Often they never receive a cent of this, but arepaid only in credit checks at the hacienda store, at whichthey are compelled to trade in spite of the exorbitantprices. As a result their food consists solely of cornand beans, they live in hovels often made of no moresubstantial material than corn-stalks, and they wear theirpitiful clothing, not merely until the garments are all ragsand patches a

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