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Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Alan Knight
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Extract

Our knowledge of Mexican agrarian history has been greatly enhanced by hacienda studies, based on original hacienda archives. Inter alia, these have finished off for good the old notion of ‘feudal’ hacendados who spurned profit for prestige. But if – thanks to their reliance on hacienda accounts – these studies have shed light on hacienda marketing and profit-maximizing, they have told us less about the hacienda's internal workings. The hacienda's relations of exchange are, therefore, better understood than its relations of production. And, from some theoretical perspectives, it is the latter which are primary (which, in grand terms, determine whether the hacienda is to be termed ‘feudal’, ‘capitalist’ or something else again).

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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , May 1986 , pp. 41 - 74
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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32 San Antonio Tochatlaco archive, on microfilm, Museo de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

33 Bellingeri, ‘L’economia del latifondo’, acutely analyses events; Katz, La servidumbre agraria, pp. 40, 100–1 also refers to this case but misses out the reintroduction of debts.

34 Katz, La servidumbre agraria, pp. 89, 91, quoting Galindo's 1905 report to the Tulancingo Catholic Agricultural Congress.

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48 Thompson's statements appear in the Cambridge Tribune (Mass.), 23 Oct. 1909: Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit. Emp. G309; they are quoted by Turner himself, London, Barbarous Mexico, p. 223; see also pp. 226–7. Wells, ‘Family Elites’, p. 225, finds Turner's picture of the plantocracy ‘decidedly one-dimensional’: muckrakers, it seems, should strive for Solomonic balance!

49 Louis Mallet to Anti-Slavery Society, 9 Aug. 1910, Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit. Emp. G309; my italics in the second quotation.

50 Baerlein, Mexico, p. 12: ‘the worst of Mr Turner is that he is pretty full of truth’; and pp. 87, 144, 148, 154 (life-long debts and peon sales); pp. 20, 25–6, 28–9, 150, 180–5 (floggings); pp. 148–9, 194–5, 198 (slave hunters).

51 Fred J. Smith, Peniel Mission, Progreso, Yucatán, to J. H. Harris, 11 May 1910, Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit. Emp. G309.

52 Benjamin, ‘ Passages’, p. 66.

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54 Baerlein, , Mexico, 161–2.Google Scholar

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58 Domar, ‘The Causes’, p. 30.

59 Domar concludes his interesting article with an appeal for further research, adding ‘after all, the land/labour ratio is readily quantifiable’: p. 32.

60 Alatas, Syed Hussein, The Myth of the Lazy Native (London, 1977)Google Scholar; and, for a succinct, critical résumé of the ‘backward-sloping supply curve’, Bernstein, Henry, ‘Concepts for the Analysis of Contemporary Peasantries’, in Galli, Rosemary E. (ed.), The Political Economy of Rural Development (Albany, 1981), p. 10.Google Scholar

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63 Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System (New York, 1974), pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

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67 Ibid., p. 78;cf. Thomas H. Hlloway, ‘The Coffee colono of São Paulo, Brazil: Migration and Mobility, 1880–1930’, in Duncan, and Rutledge, , Land and Labour, especially pp. 307–8Google Scholar, where the intermediate colono contract is described.

68 Enrique Rau, German vice-consul San Cristóbal, to Governor of Chiapas, 27 Sept. 1915, Archivo Jorge Denegri, on microfilm, Museo de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, arguing the consensual character of anticipos and the ‘serious upheavals’ threatened by misguided reforms.

69 E. González Salas, Compañía Chiclera y Maderera, Cayo Obispo, to V. Carranza, 11 Feb. 1915, Archivo Jorge Denegri; that this was not special pleading is borne out by Reed, , Caste War, pp. 252–3Google Scholar. Incentives, rather than coercion, had to be used, since the region was frontier territory, still partially controlled by the independent Maya. Its cowboy character is illustrated by the Alonzo Lewis correspondence (1902–5) in FO 50/547 and Russell, Phillips, Red Tiger: Adventures in Yucatán and Mexico (London, 1929), pp. 113–14.Google Scholar

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73 Marx, Karl, Capital (2 vols., London, 1957), vol. 1, p. 191Google Scholar n. 1; cf. Manuel Moreno, FraginalsThe Sugarmill: The Socioeconomic Complex of Sugar in Cuba 1760–1860 (New York and London, 1976), pp. 132, 134.Google Scholar

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75 Evaluations of the climate and work regime of Soconusco differ; but even the more unflattering concede that these were preferable to the equivalents in the monterías: cf. Romero, Matías, Coffee and India-rubber Culture in Mexico (New York, 1898), p. 290Google Scholar; Traven, , March to Caobaland, p. 5Google Scholar; Benjamin, ‘Passages’, pp. 88, 103.

76 Benjamin, ‘Passages’, p. 36–7.

77 Spanish planters were prominent in the Valle Nacional, and a few of Yucatán's more notorious landlords were also Spanish; otherwise, the Yucateco landed elite–the ‘Divine Caste’–was Mexican. Scant, impressionistic evidence suggests that the management of the monterías was Mexican. Evidence that pay and conditions were somewhat better in Anglo-American companies is widespread, but clearly does not rule out their (less systematic) resort to peonage.

78 Hernández Chávez, ‘La defensa de los finqueros’; Benjamin, ‘Passages’, pp. 73, 75–6, 111ff.

79 Stephens, John Lloyd, Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (2 vols., New York, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 83, 91, 118, 120Google Scholar; Reed, , Caste War, pp. 10–11, 44.Google Scholar

80 Stephens, , Incidents, pp. 86, 91, 116Google Scholar; cf. Pearse, Andrew, The Latin American Peasant (London, 1975), pp. 124–30, 149.Google Scholar

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82 Ibid., p. 120; Joseph, , Revolution from Without, pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

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84 Ibid., pp. 147, 230–1; Joseph, , Revolution from Without, pp. 26ff.Google Scholar

85 Knox, A. J. Graham, ‘Henequen Haciendas, Mayan Peones and the Mexican Revolution Promises of 1910: Reform and Reaction in Yucatán’, Caribbean Studies, vol. 17 (1977), p. 64Google Scholar; Navarro, Moisés González, ‘La guerra de castas en Yucatán y la venta de Mayas a Cuba’, Historia Mexicana, vol. 18 (1968–1969), p. 23.Google Scholar

86 Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 19–20, 182.Google Scholar

87 Ibid., p. 181. The American consul E. H. Thompson (see n. 48) asserted that reports of whippings were ‘bogey tales of a past generation’; this is refuted by Turner, Baerlein, Barbarous Mexico, pp. 23–4, 56–60Google Scholar, Joseph, , Revolution from Without, pp. 75–6, 190Google Scholar, and Smith (n. 51) who comments that ‘the mayas are whipped every day’. Deportees and contract workers fared no better.

88 T. E. Dutton, Merida, to J. H. Harris, 3 July 1910, Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit. Emp. G309.

89 Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 19, 150, 197.Google Scholar

90 Kaerger, quoted by Katz, , Servidumbre agraria, p. 59Google Scholar; Dutton (n. 88) concedes the fact of debt servitude but, he adds, ‘the worst feature is that (the peons are kept in the darkest ignorance… (and) the little children are but taught some Romish Catechism in a language they do not understand…’

91 Baerlein, , Mexico, 187, 189Google Scholar; Flores, ‘La vida rural’, p. 478; Cantú, García, Elsocialismo, p. 393.Google Scholar

92 Kaerger, quoted by Katz, , Servidumbre agraria, p. 59Google Scholar; Flores, ‘La vida rural’, p. 479, who makes the plausible observations (a) that conditions had improved in recent years (up to 1914) and (b) that conditions were worse on more remote plantations. Catmis, notorious for maltreatment and scene of a famous rebellion in 1911, lay in the far south-east of the state.

93 Baerlein, Mexico, p. 143.

94 F. Frost and C. Arnold to Porfirio Díaz, n.d., Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit. Emp. G309.

95 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 28–9Google Scholar; Kaerger, quoted by Katz, , Servidumbre agraria, p. 59.Google Scholar

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97 Benjamin, , ‘Passages’, p. 103Google Scholar. The concluding clause should perhaps be added: ‘much more so since the authorities have connived to imprison peons for debt’.

98 Joseph, , Revolution from Without, p. 186.Google Scholar

99 Flores, ‘La vida rural’, p. 472; Baerlein, , Mexico, p. 189.Google Scholar

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101 Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 148–9, 194–5, 198, 203.Google Scholar

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104 Flores, ‘La vida rural’, pp. 479–80.

105 Katz, , Servidumbre agraria, pp. 41–2Google Scholar, ponders the problem of the survival of debt-peonage in (central Mexican) circumstances of surplus labour. The answer partly lies in the (voluntary) debt-peon's ability to secure credit, as already mentioned: landlords preferred to concede on this front rather than to force through thorough proletarianization which – apart from its social repercussions – could have led to a faster turnover of employees as well as higher (money) wages. The presence of a stable (and in Yucatan sizeable) nucleus of resident peons guaranteed social stability and economic continuity; it also enhanced profits by cutting the hacienda's cash expenditures, as Bellingeri has convincingly shown (n. 1). The durability of comparable systems – Chilean inquilinaje, Peruvian yanaconaje – which did not face agrarian revolution and reform, and which only declined in response to sustained demographic growth, is instructive.

106 Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 154, 165–6Google Scholar, Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 25–6Google Scholar, reckoned that on about half the henequen plantations peons had access to plots (‘barren garden patches’); in one case, 380 married men, out of a total 700 peons, enjoyed this privilege.

107 Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 47, 162Google Scholar; González Navarro, ‘La guerra de castas’, p. 16; Arnold and Frost, The American Egypt, p. 335; for similar allegations of clerical connivance in Chiapas: Cantú, García, El socialismo, p. 393.Google Scholar

108 ‘The pressgang operates on those who are without protector’: Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 30, 153Google Scholar; a sanction that was particularly effective, given the Maya's loathing of military service (see Governor of Yucatán to Carranza, 14 Jan. 1915, Archivo Jorge Denegri), and which was both long-established (Reed, , Caste War, pp. 22, 147Google Scholar) and common to other Latin American labour recruitment systems (Baretta, Silvio R. Duncan and Markoff, John, ‘Civilization and Barbarism: Cattle Frontiers in Latin America’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 20 (1978), pp. 601–2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

109 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 38–52Google Scholar; Wells, ‘Family Elites’, p. 248; Jordan, Seoul, to Foreign Office, 6 April, 11 July 1905, and attached correspondence justifying the Korean trade in terms of the planters’ ‘great need of labour’ hence munificent treatment of workers: it is ‘not (that) the Koreans are our slaves’, declared an agent in best Yucateco Newspeak, ‘but we landed proprietors are practically their slaves and the slaves of all our labourers…’: FO 50/546. On the Yaqui trade: Hu-Dehart, Evelyn, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for hand and Autonomy, 1821–1910 (Madison, 1984), pp. 163–200.Google Scholar

110 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

111 Ibid., gives a cost of 400–1,000 pesos for a Maya peon (prices fluctuated with the henequen market) compared with only 65 pesos paid to the government for a Yaqui deportee; the latter price undercut the market considerably, however, since Yaquis were also sold for up to 400 pesos.

112 Kaerger, quoted by Katz, , Servidumbre agraria, p. 59Google Scholar (Kaerger's figures date from the late 1890s). On Yaqui mortality and resistance: Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 19, 62Google Scholar; Knight, , Mexican Revolution, vol. 1, p. 226.Google Scholar

113 Frost and Arnold to Díaz (n. 94) quote Augusto Peón's opinion of Olegario Molina, ‘whom he declared to be an illbred parvenu’. On Molina's operations see Wells, ‘Family Elites’; Joseph, , Revolution from Without, pp. 40–1, 46–54Google Scholar. Baerlein, , Mexico, pp. 19, 164, 166, 168, 174, 180, 185, 189, 194Google Scholar, presents evidence of a certain seigneurial ethic which informed Peón, but not Molina, family business, partially justifying Don Augusto's declaration: ‘I am an illustrated man.’

114 Despite the influx of Yaqui and other ‘foreign’ labourers – the Yaquis at a rate of 500 a month in 1908 – they remained a small minority on the plantations (Turner reckoned 8,000 Yaquis, 3,000 Koreans and 100–125,000 Maya, : barbarous Mexico, p. 15, and p. 26Google Scholar for a sample hacienda). Flores, ‘La vida rural’, p. 480, encountered few non-Maya peons in 1914: further proof of the outsiders’ high mortality.

115 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 67–107Google Scholar, where outright prison deportees are reckoned to comprise only 10 % of the total labour force, the rest being enganchados or kidnapped children. Baerlein, , Mexico, p. 333Google Scholar is not at his most convincing.

116 Stewart, , Chinese bondage, pp. 30–76Google Scholar, reveals a similar combination of outright coercion (such as kidnapping) and pseudo-voluntary recruitment – e.g. of hungry, drugged or indebted Chinese. Even those who signed up ‘willingly, though stupidly ignorant’, as an observer put it, usually changed their minds in the barracoons of Macao or the holds of pestilential merchant ships; by the time they reached the quays of Callao and the guano islands or coastal plantations that were their final destinations strict supervision was necessary – to prevent not only escape or mutiny but also suicide, op. cit., p. 98.

117 See the complaint of two women (‘que no saben firmar’) transmitted to the Department of Labour, 29 Jan. 1914, Trabajo, 31/2/1/29, by S. Ferrer, alleging that their menfolk, recruited for a month by a Tuxtepec plantation at a promised peso a day, received only; 50c and were held for seven months ‘as if they were criminals, locked up in barracoons, maltreated and abused’.

118 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, p. 67Google Scholar; and p. 230 for corroborative evidence from the (scarcely radical) Mexican Herald of Aug. 1909.

119 Ibid., pp. 71, 89–102. Cf. n. 117 above.

120 A. H. Harrison, British vice-consul Guadalajara, to Anti-Slavery Society, 28 March 1910, Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit. Emp. G309. Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 95–6Google Scholar, cites the example of a Tampiqueño who returned, after six months in the Valle Nacional, a ‘human skeleton’.

121 Gruening, Ernest, Mexico and its Heritage (London, 1928), p. 139.Google Scholar

122 Elkins, Stanley, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1959).Google Scholar

123 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, p. 71Google Scholar; striking dockers alleged that the Veracruz wharves had become ‘a Valle Nacional’ in 1912: R. Hernández to A. Pérez Rivera, 7 Dec. 1912, Archivo de Gobernación, Mexico City, legajo 889.

124 Benjamin, ‘Passages’, p. 102, quoting an eye-witness.

125 All six of which have recently been republished by Allison, and Busby, (London, 1981: Government, The Carreta, March to the Montería, Trozas, The Rebellion of the Hanged, General from the jungle.Google Scholar

126 Hexter, J. H., Doing History, (London, 1981), p. 8.Google Scholar

127 Traven, , March to Caobaland, pp. 28, 44, 60.Google Scholar

128 Ibid., p. 59.

129 Ibid., pp. 96–7.

130 Ibid., pp. 27, 66, 86; Traven, B., The Carreta, London, 1984, pp. 253–4Google Scholar; and, for an ‘historical’ case, Domingo Magaña to Madero, 11 Nov. 1911, ‘Convención Revolucionaria’, Archivo de Gobernación, describing the plight of 50 Indians of Paraíso, Tabasco, purchased (by virtue of their debts) along with a plantation, whose new, corporate owners ‘subject and deceive them with some documents which represent nothing more than a device to render them exploitable’.

131 Traven, , March to Caobaland, pp. 30, 39–40Google Scholar, which illustrates how the jungle inhibited, rather than facilitated escape.

132 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, p. 33.Google Scholar

133 Harrison, Guadalajara (n. 120).

134 Traven, , March to Caobaland, pp. 53, 103Google Scholar; Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 72–3, 76, 85Google Scholar; Benjamin, ‘Passages’, p. 103, on prison labour in the monterías.

135 Turner, , Barbarous Mexico, pp. 76, 89, 92–3Google Scholar, on the prevalence of Spaniards; Kaerger, quoted by Katz, , Servidumbre agraria, p. 77Google Scholar, who is talking about production techniques rather than labour systems. Nevertheless, it is worth noting the close familial and commercial links between southeast Mexico and Cuba, where, of course, slave, patrocinado and indentured labour were recent phenomena.

136 Traven, , March to Caobaland, p. 60.Google Scholar

137 Ibid., p. 110; cf. Patterson, H. Orlando, ‘The General Causes of Jamaican Slave Revolts’, in Foner, and Genovese, (eds.), Slavery in the New World, pp. 212–13Google Scholar; Genovese, Eugene D., From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge, 1979), pp. 6, 18–19.Google Scholar

138 Benjamin, ‘Passages’, p. 132; Joseph, , Revolution from Without, pp. 103–5Google Scholar; Gruening, , Mexico and its Heritage, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

139 Benjamin, ‘Passages’, p. 249.

140 Joseph, , Revolution from Without, pp. 214, 298Google Scholar; Gruening, , Mexico and its Heritage, p. 140Google Scholar, concurred: ‘whatever else the agrarian revolution has failed to do it has wiped out the horrors of hacienda slavery’.