Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

CHAPTER XX.
DIVES AND LAZARUS.

THERE is probably no other country where the gulf between the rich and poor is so wide. Six thousand people own all the land in Mexico, and eleven million people have to live upon terms made directly or indirectly by those six thousand. The same six thousand are also the governing class, and make all laws to favor their own interest. For instance, all the land of the rich is exempt from taxation, and this compels the poor laborer to pay the tax for the support of the government. It is hard for a man to acquire land here, as the holders will not sell, and the laws against foreigners are very strict. Mexico has never forgotten 1848, when California, Arizona and New Mexico were seized by the United States, and she now sees to it that Americans get no more. Thus, no American, without consent of the president, can acquire land within twenty leagues of the border. This precaution is based upon the experience of Texas. Mexicans allowed the Americans to settle in Texas, and so soon as they felt strong enough they struck out for independence and got it. If Americans were allowed to buy along the Rio Grande, it would be but a few years till the Rio Grande country would declare independence and join Texas, just as Texas joined the union.

The rich have also made a law that a man may become a slave for debt, and the property of the creditor. As a legal enactment the law has been repealed, but as a matter of fact, the law is as operative today as it ever was, and this class of slave labor is known as peons. The peon may owe the creditor a hundred dollars. He is paid such low wages he never cancels his debt, but continues till it is doubled. Should he become dissatisfied with his master, he can get some one else to buy him by paying the debt, and he thus becomes the slave of the second, but this is always done legally. The original owner must write out a statement of the amount of debt, and allow the peon three days for each hundred dollars to seek a new master. Once in debt, always in debt, so the poor peon is never free, and his wife is included in his contract, and the haciendas will have no other kind of labor. The Mexican by nature is averse to work, and where land is so fertile and fruit is so plenty, it is hard to get a free Mexican to work, and harder to hold him. The peon, on the other hand, has both a moral and legal compulsion to work, and the fear of the law compels him to work every day but Sundays and feast days. So this is the kind of labor the haciendados seek.

In opening a new plantation, instead of hiring men, the owner spends six or eight thousand dollars in buying peons from other farms, before his new place has earned him a dollar. When he becomes the property of his new master, a contract must be made as to time and wages. The peon agrees to work on all days except feast days, and to receive in wages two dollars and a half a month, plus a ration of corn, beans and salt, or four dollars a month without rations. The rations consist of six almuds (6½ quarts each) of corn, half an almud of frijoles (beans) and one pound of salt. If a peon refuses to pay his debts in money or work, the law places him in close confinement. Life on these haciendas is peculiar to itself. The buildings are in the form of a huge rectangle surrounded by high walls and entered by massive gates which are closed at night. The walls are mounted by towers and pierced by loop-holes for muskets, and generally surrounded by a moat. All these precautions have been necessary in a land infested by bandits and subject to the annual raids of the revolutionists who could get horses and supplies to furnish a regiment.

The hacienda of Jaral once controlled 20,000 peons and furnished a full regiment for the Spanish army in the war of independence. Within this enclosure on one side is the residence of the bosses, as the owners nearly all live in Europe. On the other sides, in adobe huts with dirt floors, live the peons with their families and dogs, while in the center or in a separate enclosure are the animals. It reminds one of the feudal days to hear the signal bell rung and see the hundreds of people hurrying to the hacienda and closing the ponderous gates and preparing for a siege. Revolutions and bandits are not as frequent now as formerly, but the haciendas have no faith in Utopia, so they still build in accordance with past experience. The universal work animal is the ox, and he is worked just as he was on the Nile four thousand years ago. The plow is a sharp stick with an iron point that does not turn the soil but only opens a furrow. The beam is fastened to the yoke, and the yoke is fastened to the animal’s horns by means of raw-hide thongs, the universal hammer and nails of the country. The people mend, repair and make everything by means of raw-hide. The plowman holds the single handle with his left hand, and in his right he carries a goad with a steel point on the end with which he persuades his team. The driver never speaks to his team, but if he wants the team to go to the left he silently prods the right hand ox, and vice versa. The cruel method of fastening the yoke to the horns compels the oxen to pull by their necks instead of by their shoulders, and with a heavy two-wheeled cart loaded with a ton of stone, their necks soon become so stiff they cannot bend them, and cannot graze nor drink water unless they stand in it leg deep.

Innovations? O no, the Mexican wants no innovation. An enterprising Yankee shipped some plows down, and the natives sawed off one handle of every one. He had always plowed with one handle and always will. In making excavations for building, no wheel-barrow is seen. A piece of raw-hide stretched between two poles and carried by two men is the only wheel-barrow they will ever use. The only ladder in the country is an upright pole with cross-pieces tied on by ropes. To saw lumber a pit is dug and the log laid across the top, then with one man in the pit and one on the log, it is sawed into lumber. For wagons they use only two-wheel carts, and in loading, sometimes three or four hundred pounds will overbalance on the forward side and crush the mule to the ground, but with whip and lash he is made to get up and move.

I have seen these two-wheel carts come from the mines loaded with over two tons of silver, and drawn by eight mules, and only one mule in the shafts, and his back would be bent into the segment of a circle and his legs spread like a cotton toy.

To thresh their grain, it is spread in the yard and the oxen and donkeys are driven over it two or three days to tramp it out, just as they did in Egypt in Pharaoh’s time. After ten yoke of oxen had tramped over the wheat for two days, I fear there are fastidious people who would refuse to eat it, but we can get accustomed to many things when we have to. Even the green scum on the stagnant water of the canal makes a fine dish when you cannot do any better.

There came a Yankee to this country once who saw a Mexican threshing machine, which consisted of about thirty sheep, goats and burros, that were wading knee-deep in grain and threshing it out; so when he got home, he sent that farmer a Yankee threshing machine almost as a present, and it was put to work. The grain was threshed clean and it performed the work of a dozen men and twice that number of animals, and seemed a great success, but it got bruited to the priests. They came and saw the machine and stood in amazement. From their standpoint it was too great an innovation, and what might it not lead to? They declared that the devil was in the machine, and positively forbade the peons to use it! The threats and warnings frightened the poor ignorant peons out of their wits, and that machine was sent back across the Rio Grande.

When railroads were first introduced, the priests had the tracks torn up, and for a long time the rubber hose of the air-brake was continually cut open, because it was said to be the work of the devil. Wise priests they are in Mexico. Well do they know that where intelligence and invention find their way among those Indians, the power of the priesthood is gone, so it is not a matter of ignorance with them. They are well-educated—too well to permit innovations that will lessen their influence and shekels. I have met these priests outside of their official capacity, and found that many of them were educated in Europe and America and were well posted in the affairs of today, all of which proves that their teaching what they know to be false is the most transparent humbug.