The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

Henequen (Spanish jeniquen or geniquen) is a fibre commercially known as Sisal hemp, from the fact that it is obtained from a species of cactus, the Agave Sisalensis, first cultivated around the tiny port of Sisal in Yucatan. The older Indian name for the plant is Agave Ixtli. From its fleshy leaves is crushed out a fine fibre which, from the fact that it resists damp better than ordinary hemp, is valuable for making ships' cables, but the real wealth-producing use of which is so bizarre that no one in a hundred guesses would hit on it. It is used in the myriad corn-binding machines of America and Canada. They cannot use wire, and cheap string is too easily broken. Henequen is at once strong enough and cheap enough. Hence the piles of money heaping up to the credit of Yucatecans in the banks of Merida.

There is no doubt that henequen was known to and possibly cultivated by the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan; but its commercial value was not discovered until late in the nineteenth century. The first henequen plantation was formed in 1850. Soon there were several more, though they were one and all on the humblest scale both as regards extent and methods of cultivation. It was our good fortune to visit one of the very earliest, that of Yaxche, now the property of Señor Augusto Peon, and the photographs reproduced are of that estate. Señor Peon himself conducted us over it, and told us that as a lad he remembered the first clearing being made in the woods for the Eldorado-cactus about 1850. A mere acre, that was all! To-day he has close on six thousand acres under cultivation on this farm alone, with villages containing four thousand souls, and it would be quite rash to hazard a guess at his wealth. He is certainly a sterling millionaire three or four times over, and he told us that his income had actually doubled in less than ten years. Such is henequen!

But the plant was a long time winning its way to its present exalted position. Until within the last thirty years the only market for the fibre was the Mexican Republic itself, where fortunes were being coined by the crushing of yet another cactus, the Agave Americana or maguey, from which is obtained the foul-smelling pulque, dearly loved drink of all Mexicans. And then three decades back henequen began to win a reputation abroad, particularly in the States. In 1880, 97,351 bales, weighing 39,501,725 lb. and valued at about one and three-quarter million dollars, were exported. In 1904, 627,700 bales, weighing about 207,141,000 lb. and valued at 15,629,730 dollars, were exported, and during 1906 the amount shipped rose to 726,785 bales, each averaging 330 lb. in weight and totalling in value between twenty-five and twenty-six million dollars. Of these, 595,024 bales were sent to the United States (or 186,747 to New Orleans; 144,916 to Boston; 119,688 to New York; 63,620 to Texas City; 59,235 to Mobile; and 20,818 to Galveston); the remaining 131,761 bales going to various ports in Canada, Europe, and Cuba.

These amazing figures tell their own tale of the growth of the staple industry of Yucatan. A local trade has in a few short years become almost a world-monopoly, and from being a poor land the Peninsula has become a Monte-Cristo territory. Once the fibre was discovered by the corn growers, the trade went up by leaps and bounds; but it was the Spanish-American War of 1898 which gave it its great boom, and it may be said to be still "booming." The destruction and stoppage of the Manila hemp crops in the Philippines during the conflict gave the Yucatecans their chance. They met the shortage, and importers found that they had in the henequen fibre at once a cheaper and a stronger corn-binder. To-day Yucatan can sell all the henequen she can grow, and every month sees more and more woodland reclaimed and prepared to bear its share in swelling the receipts of the Meridan mushroom millionaires.

In North-West Yucatan you can travel mile after mile, league after league, and see absolutely nothing but henequen. It seems to need no soil. Out of the grey boulder-strewn ground stick the great green pineapple-like stalks crowned with a widely parted bunch of fleshy green leaves with black thorny points. Planted in even lines about four yards apart, they stretch endlessly towards the horizon, the monotony broken only here and there by the grey stone walls, like those of a Yorkshire farm, which mark off and enclose each plantation. As we wandered round his huge estate, Señor Peon explained to us the process through which henequen goes from planting till it is fibre white and clean. In preparing land for planting it must first be cleared of all timber, and in the outlying districts from dawn till sundown one hears the ring of the axe as the Indians fell the trees. After this clearing comes a period, usually about a year, during which the land is allowed to lie fallow, the fallen timbers rotting and everything preparing for the flames. Towards the end of the dry season this burning takes place. This is also the method of preparing the milpas or maize fields for their new crops, and thus in April all over the country you see mighty columns of black smoke rising into the cloudless blue, like the smoke of burnt offerings to the Harvest-God. If rain does not come—and it very rarely does—the fallen timber and dried undergrowth burn for days until there is nothing left but a few black smouldering tree-trunks, which by another season will have been effectually dealt with by the broad-mandibled digging ant and the myriad woodlice. A second year is allowed to pass before the henequen is planted. Usually maize is sown on the clearing for the season, and then once again they set fire to it all and with this second conflagration the ground is ready.

But the planter must wait for the rains. These come towards the end of May. Dark clouds roll up, and between five and six o'clock each day a sharp shower may be expected. By the middle of June the floods of the sky break loose, and for hours each day and night the baked earth is deluged. Now the haciendado must get his plants ready. This is an easy matter if he has other plantations. In any of these where the agave is old and has had most of its leaves cut away, he can find what he wants. From some of the plants a long stalk-like stem will be seen shooting up from the centre, and this will have thrown out branches from which the seeds have grown and fallen to the ground. Thus around its base there will be young seedlings in plenty sprouting. The largest of these are taken. On the bigger haciendas there are regular nurseries for these seedlings, which are carefully fostered for a year or so that they may be of fair size when they are needed for planting out. These are planted in the new clearing in rows about fourteen feet apart, each plantling being eight feet from its neighbour.

Now there is a wait of five or six years before the first crop of leaves can be cut. But if this is rather a wearily long time for the planter to wait for his returns, at least it is not expensive. For the plants need little or no attention: all that is necessary is to keep the spaces between the rows fairly free from weeds which would otherwise smother the young cactuses. At the end of the fifth year the plants are ready for their first cutting, and the healthy ones will bear well for twelve or fifteen years. The cutting is begun at the base of the stem, where the leaves are more fully developed. Eight to ten are cut at a time, and usually three or four cuttings are made each year, so that the average yield of each plant is about thirty-two leaves annually. Slowly year by year the cutting creeps nearer the top, and the space between the leaves and the ground becomes greater. When the top is reached all the leaves which will ever grow have grown and the plant is useless unless the seed-stem has appeared, when it is left for the production of young plants. If it has not run to seed, then it is cut down and left to rot, the ground being ready again at once for replanting.

But the rearing and cutting of this "green gold of Yucatan" is not all. There is a long process before it is ready to be sold under the hammer of an American or European auctioneer, in much the same way as cotton is dealt with on the Liverpool or Manchester Exchanges.

Crossing and recrossing each henequen plantation, small toy-like two-foot gauge iron tracks are laid, on which small mule-drawn trolley-cars convey the henequen leaves to the hacienda buildings. On some of the larger of the haciendas these tracks often cover thirty or forty miles, and at first sight it would seem an unnecessarily expensive means of transit, and that it would be cheaper to cart it as an English farmer does his corn. But when you remember the cost of making level roads over miles of rock-strewn plantation, and that each fleshy leaf represents an average weight of four or five pounds, and that on a trolley-car drawn by one mule can be packed one thousand of these weighing about two tons and needing four or five carts with mules and men to match, you see that the trolley method, after the original outlay, is far cheaper. On the trolleys, then, the henequen leaves are conveyed to the hacienda buildings, where an elaborate machinery is waiting to crush out the gold-yielding fibre. The track runs right into the building, the mule is unhooked, and returns once more to the plantation with an empty car for another load of fodder for the crusher. And while the empty car is returning the leaves of the newly arrived laden car are being dealt with.

Three or four Indians set to work to arrange the leaves so that their black-pointed ends are all in one direction. Next these thorny points are severed by a machete and in small bundles of six or eight the leaves are handed to men who are feeding a sliding belt-like platform about a yard wide, and on this they are conveyed to the machine. Before they enter its great blunt-toothed, gaping jaws, they are finally arranged, as the sliding belt goes its unending round, so that they do not enter more than one at a time. Woe betide the Indian who has the misfortune to get his fingers in these revolving jaws of the gigantic crusher, and many indeed are there fingerless, handless, and armless from this cause. The leaves enter broadways, for the blunt-toothed rollers are a little wider than the longest leaves. On entering the first rollers the fleshy leaf is crushed like sugar-cane in a crusher. The sappy juices fly around, but the wet, dripping machine continues with its work and the thick, greeny water runs into a trough below to be carried away in a channel back to the fields. The leaf is passed from one to another, each crushing away more fleshy matter until the fourth or fifth roller has been reached, when it is no longer a leaf, but one mass of greeny-yellow threads in the hands of an Indian who is kept continually receiving it as it is thrown from the machine.