The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

Some years ago an Indian was thrashed to death on the estate of the brother of a high official in Yucatan. The body was easily disposed of, buried at night like a dog's. But some of his fellow-workmen talked, it seems, and news of the crime found its way to the capital. There a young lawyer, Perez Escofee, indignant at the report, took a solicitor down to the hacienda and got from some of the Indians affidavits as to their knowledge of the murder. Armed with these he published the facts in the Merida newspaper, demanding an investigation. The haciendado concerned sent his solicitor down and obtained from the very Indians sworn contrary statements. On these Perez, his adviser, and the editor who had had the courage to publish Escofee's first appeal, were arrested and thrown into prison. That is three years and more ago, and Escofee and his lawyer were still in Merida prison without trial at the time of our visit, if our information be correct. The haciendado's family dares not allow, and has so far proved powerful enough to prevent, a trial. The third man was liberated owing to very influential friends who threatened exposure if he were not released.

Another loathsome case was that of the beating to death of an Indian girl of eleven by her old Yucatecan mistress. The poor child had been guilty of some trifling disobedience, and the murderess, having plenty of money, had no difficulty in getting an order for burial, the death being announced as due to pneumonia. The truth would never have come out but for the prattling of the granddaughter of this human beast who, child-like, told some neighbours. Yucatecan mistresses beat their Indian servants mercilessly for slight faults; but it will scarcely seem credible to English readers that Yucatecans are so lost to all sense of manliness that they, too, are often guilty of the basest cruelty towards the women servants. We heard of one case where a Yucatecan, because the Indian girl was a little late in bringing him his early breakfast of milk and bread, threw in her face the jug of boiling milk, and beat her over the head with the long stick of crusty roll till she was unconscious. For such cowardly curs there is no punishment. In this case the poor girl confessed to a friend that for days she had murder in her heart, and this feeling of revenge worried her so that at last she went to the priest for advice. That worthy told her she must be docile: that she must submit herself in all things to her master. This is really the worst feature of the conspiracy to degrade the Indians, the part the Church plays. The priests back up the haciendados in everything because it is from them they get their money.

Another outrageous case was that in which a very rich Yucatecan was concerned. Because his Indian driver did not go quick enough to please him, he thrashed him into unconsciousness in the street, and afterwards had him put in prison on some trumped-up charge for six months. This case, however, was so public, many passers witnessing the grossness of the assault, that the family found it necessary to come to terms with the injured man.

It would not be at all true to say that the Indians are often beaten to death. Labour is far too scarce in Yucatan. A perfect network of regulations and laws are in force on all the haciendas to keep the Indians. The unfortunate wretches are absolutely essential to the fortune-getting of the Yucatecans, and are far too precious to be recklessly killed off. The haciendas are regarded as excellent breeding grounds for new generations of slaves. Thus a rule is that no Indian of either sex shall marry off the hacienda. The real truth is that the Indians are nothing but cattle, and just as much the property of their master as the heifers in a farmyard in England belong to the farmer. To a friend of ours an Indian came, saying he owed his master one hundred dollars, and begging that his debt might be paid and that he might come to work for him. Well, our friend agreed to pay his debt. Then round comes the master to say that the man really owed him three hundred and forty dollars—which of course was a lie, to be supported, if need be, by forged entries in the hacienda books. He further says he will not accept payment, as he wishes to get the man back and whip him publicly to make an example of him. The man said he would rather die than go back; and it ended by the master, fearful lest the slave should kill himself, selling him for his debt to another haciendado, who, in turn, would get all the work he could out of the poor devil. Thus, though there is no open slave market in Merida, these cowardly slave-owners traffic in their slaves at their own free will, and there is literally no escape for the Indians.

There are three reasons for the continuance of this cruel system. First, the prostitution of the Church to the haciendados. Superstitious to a degree remarkable even among the many semi-civilised peoples who have been victimised by Catholicism, the Mayans look to their priests as semi-divinities whose word is law; and a debauched priesthood, eager to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and themselves unscrupulous in self-indulgence, greedily support slavery.

Secondly, the lack of loyalty among the Indians to each other. This is the natural effect of the centuries of oppression which they have endured. All the manliness of the race, all the spirit and nobility of a nature which wrung a tribute even from Spanish historians, have been effectually crushed out of them. This is indeed the saddest side of it all. The Yucatecan bullies have done their work so well that if the Indians of all the haciendas could be asked whether they were contented, a large majority, possibly almost all, would apathetically declare themselves content. They are like prisoners who have been so long in the gloom of a dungeon that they would be actually terrified of the sunshine.

And thirdly, the water supply is an enormous auxiliary in the maintaining of the present disgraceful state of affairs. As we have said, there are no rivers in Yucatan, and the only water available is that obtained from the cenotes or wells attached to the haciendas. Practically you may say that the whole water supply of the country is in the hands of the landlords. To leave one farm would only mean going to another for the miserable serf. Each haciendado helps every other in keeping the slaves on the places. Thus, turn where he may, the Indian has no refuge but the woods, from which he would be hunted with dogs just as Mrs. Beecher Stowe has told us was always done in the South.

He submits to his fate; but hard as we have shown that to be, there is worse to be told. A slave, with a wage which is a mockery, a pittance, given really to make more plausible the case of his master, he must see his daughters submit to a systematic tyranny of lust which is really so base that it is difficult to write of it in calm language. Here in Yucatan every sexual horror which in the story of the South in the 'sixties horrified the world is reproduced, cloaked by the foulest hypocrisy. The Indian from her childhood up is the prey of the haciendado and his sons. From their foul clutches she cannot escape. If her father had, poor devil, any scruples left, he must stifle them or be prepared to risk his life by objecting. As a matter of fact, so immoral and degraded have almost all the hacienda Indians become, that objections to this droit du Seigneur, this Jus Primae Noctis, are almost unheard of. We are not writing without weighing our words carefully when we say that there are farms in plenty where the slave-owner demands as part of his serfs' obligations the right to every lass as soon as she enters on womanhood, sometimes much before. He demands it, and he does what he will with these children, for they are usually little else; and there is no remedy for the parents.

Inconceivable cynicism is the attitude of all Yucatecans towards sexual excesses. The young sons of fourteen and upwards are not restrained from, indeed they are often actually encouraged by fathers and even mothers in, indulging their boyish passions at the expense of the little Indian slave-girls. It is no answer to say, as some Yucatecans do, that the girls are in very many cases more than willing victims of their boy-lovers. Yucatecan lads are notably handsome, and even maids of the cold North would find it hard to withstand their wooing. It remains the fact that these youthful Don Juans in many cases do not woo at all. They command; and the girl-child must go at night to the boy's room or be cruelly beaten by him till she surrenders. If she plucked up courage to complain to her mistress, she would be simply laughed at. She is but a little slave-girl. What better fate could she ask for herself than to have thus early attracted the notice of the lad who will some day be her owner? And if a child results, why, it is but one more hacienda baby, brought up with the rest. No one cares; and if it be a girl, why then in the fullness of years it will most probably attract the notice of its own father, who by that time will have inherited the estates. The girl would not know, and dare not disobey if she did; and it is quite certain the man by that time would have ruined so many Indian girls that he would be past any sensitiveness where his self-gratifications were concerned. It is possible that the reader will by this time be willing to acquit us of any unfairness of which we may have seemed guilty in Chapter IV., when we divided the population of so-called civilised Yucatan into "Savages" and "Slaves."