The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

The Mexicans then played another card. They proclaimed their absolute authority over Eastern Yucatan, and granted concessions of the wood-cutting lands to Mexicans. Such proclamation was in direct breach of the Treaty rights of the Indians, and in contradiction of their own deliberate statement to the British Government that these Indians were independent. It was a Machiavellian scheme, and succeeded. The Indians naturally resented the companies' trespass, and, after due warnings, killed the trespassers. This was just what Mexico expected, and wanted. Talking blather about unprovoked outrages, cannibals, and a menace of savages to the Republic, she started a war of extermination. From the first it was as cowardly a war as it is now. Troops were sent before dawn to surprise defenceless villages. Men, women, and children were butchered as they slept. In one case, that of Chansenote, a settlement of many hundreds was so successfully wiped out that when we visited the district the inhabitants numbered about thirty. To the south of the Peninsula the same policy has been pursued. The Indians have been ruthlessly massacred, whenever a cowardly opportunity offered. The Mexican troops have invariably got the worst of it in such open fighting as the country permits.[5] Their actual invasions of the Indian strongholds have always resulted in their withdrawal without the slightest permanent success. The Indians are now concentrated at Tuloom, on the mainland opposite the island of Cozumel. Three times the Mexicans have taken this place, and three times have been obliged to evacuate it.

The position is a curious one. Scarcely any one probably in Mexico, even including the members of the Cabinet, knows the truth except President Diaz. The general who has had the conduct of the war throughout is an octogenarian, Ignacio Bravo, a ruthless, bloodthirsty old soldier who rejoices in the Gilbertian title of "Inspector-General of Primary Instruction." He is an old comrade-in-arms of Diaz, and he has probably his orders, though it is said that the President is most anxious not to have the Indians killed. If you ask officials, they tell you the war is long ago over; and when you ask them how they know, they say, "Why, Bravo says so!" It is very much indeed to Bravo's interest to say so. He has made the Territory of Quintana Roo, as Eastern Yucatan has been called since the war started, his pocket property. He has amassed there since he took over the command a fortune of many millions of dollars, and his methods can be guessed at from his own cynical confession that he is "the sleeping partner of every merchant in the Territory." For him everything is subordinated to £ s. d. A slight but very significant instance of this was his reception of a proposal by an archæologist that he should give his permission for the blowing up of old ruined Spanish churches in the Rio Hondu district. The request was dictated by the hope that in the foundations might be found, buried by the Franciscans, some ancient writings of the Mayans which would assist in the deciphering of the hieroglyphics. The General gave the characteristic answer that he would permit the demolition of the churches on the understanding that the "finds" were sold and he got half. Utterly unscrupulous, venal and self-seeking, the last thing Ignacio Bravo desires is any direct fighting which might lead to unfortunate defeats and eye-openers for the Mexican people. Under his able management the war has been whittled down to the occasional hanging of an Indian driven by starvation to surrender, or the "potting" of them in the bush. From Cape Catoche to Tuloom, he has no more authority than the man in the moon. We can give a good proof of this. While we were there he received a warning from the Indians that on the 16th of January they would attack and burn the chicle woods around Puerto Morelos. What did Bravo do? He feebly sends up a message to Puerto Morelos saying "The Indians will probably attack you on the 16th." As a matter of fact the Indians came that night, fired the woods, and we ourselves saw them burning for two nights. No! Bravo has given it up. He shirks all open fighting, and in his lifetime at least the subjection of the Indians will never be an accomplished fact. He skunks at Bacalar or Santa Cruz in the south, or, surrounded by a battalion of troops, gallops from Bacalar to Peto and travels thence by rail to Merida.

To this method of campaigning is due the disastrous state of the Territory, through a part of which we passed. The Mexican Government, presumably for economy's sake, sends the criminals from the Mexican gaols to fight the Indians. While we were in the islands a shipload of eighty of the worst specimens of half-bred Spanish gaol-birds passed on their way in a Government transport to Bravo's headquarters. Many of these men desert, and the forests around are infested thus with fellows who will murder you for a dollar. With these Mexican cut-throats come gangs of women, the most degraded and miserable manufactures of Mexican debauchery. The conditions of life in the barracks at Santa Cruz and Ascension Bay are such as literally defy description. The barracks are mere filthy sheds; the half-starved soldiers, their toes rotting off from jigger fleas, their skins foul with disease and vermin, and their miserable women companions, some dying of malaria or venereal disease, some far advanced in pregnancy, some mere girls not far in their 'teens, sleeping on sloping boarded benches all huddled together. There are no attempts at sanitary arrangements, and the details of the lives of these wretched men and women are really unfit for publication. Such men are not worthy of the name of troops; but they serve the Mexican purpose of hired slaughtermen in the Indian shambles which Mexico has created in Yucatan.

Starvation and starvation alone will bring about the absolute subjection of the Indians of the east coast. The Federal Government has been lavish with its concessions; but they are not worth the printer's ink expended on their gazetting in the official newspapers of Mexico City. One land company has smashed, and La Compañía Colonisidora is living simply on credit. So large a sum as 400,000 dollars has, it is said, been advanced by the National Bank of Mexico to keep it going. The deduction from this is obvious. The Government, having made worthless concessions, must take steps to hoodwink the shareholders by squandering the revenues. As we have said, we have it on the authority of the officials on the spot that out of the 4,000 square miles of their concession, they were at the time of our visit working but 15 square miles, and there was little hope of materially increasing this profitable area. The "war" is now as far as possible restricted to the occasional "potting" of an Indian and the burning of his milpas or maize-fields. In the extreme northeast, as we have stated in Chapter VII., the Indians have for the time being asserted their independence and are left in peace. The Mexican Government have no effective control of Eastern Yucatan, and they can never have save by a policy of merciless extermination unworthy of a Government which calls itself civilised.

And while this ruthless extermination of a noble race is being enacted in the extreme east of the Mexican territories, General Diaz's Government is disgracing itself by its cruel treatment of the Yaquis, a tribe of brave Indians in the State of Sonora. As lending complete corroboration to the story of horrors we have related, we think it worth while to quote the long and admirable account of this infamous campaign from a recent issue of a United States newspaper. It runs:

"Americans in Mexico have made a formal protest to President Diaz against the wholesale massacre of Yaqui Indians. They back this protest with affidavits asserting that shiploads of the unfortunate Indians, men, women and children, who are supposed to be deported are actually dumped into the sea as a means of riddance. In the present age of much-vaunted civilisation this seems incredible, but there is corroboration. Señor Rapael de Zayas Enrigues, a well-informed resident of Mexico, tells a story that bears the stamp of straightforward truth, and it is well worth perusal. It is evident he has deep feelings on this subject, for he exclaims: 'Poor Yaquis! poor race of heroes!'

"On the far north-west of the Mexican Republic is the State of Sonora; in the extreme south-east is the peninsula of Yucatan. There still exist in Yucatan the diminishing remnants of the most civilised nation of the pre-Columbian epoch of our continent. They are the Mayans, who for more than half a century have been forced to take up arms to defend themselves against the tyranny of the whites. In Sonora, in the small region lying between the Ihayo and Yaqui rivers, exists another race of Indians, the Yaquis, who have not builded magnificent monuments as have the Mayas, but who are intelligent, industrious, faithful, vigorous, and courageous.

"The Yaquis had always lived peacefully and submitted to the Mexican authorities, but without fusing with the whites. They conserved all their racial characteristics under the direct leadership of their own caciques. Both races, the Mayans and the Yaquis, are distinguished by their insuperable love for the small region they call fatherland, which has been from very ancient times their own, which they have defended against the invasion of other tribes and against the whites, to whom at last they submitted, retaining, however, always possession of the land. The Yaquis are a strong, useful, and industrious race. They furnish nearly all the 'peones' or land workers to the farmers of Sonora and Sinaloa. After the harvest these peones returned to their land and devoted the rest of the year to the cultivation of their own soil.

"The Yaqui region is favourably situated, well irrigated, and the soil is extremely fruitful. The white men coveted the region and tried to despoil the Yaquis of what they had owned for centuries. The red men naturally became angry, enraged, and finally they rose, not in rebellion, but to defend and safeguard their homes, property, and families. Thus the origin of the Yaquis' struggle—a real struggle for life—was a despoliation perpetrated by the white people.

"A few years ago President Diaz wanted to put an end to the long warfare, and he accomplished his purpose. A pact was signed with the Yaqui chiefs by which their properties were returned to them, with the guarantee that they should never more be molested or deported. Peace was re-established; but it was of short duration, being more a truce than a permanent peace, and it was so not because the Yaquis did not fulfil their obligations, but because the white men wanted to work their nefarious schemes again. With this end in view, they dexterously got rid of the chief Indian leaders and took every necessary measure to destroy the whole Yaqui race at the first sign of trouble. The Indians scented the plot a little late, but still in time to avoid being exterminated. They took the field again, forced to do so by the treachery of the whites.