BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH 95
"You will find this a healthy country," the municipal
secretary told us a little later in the evening. "Don't
you notice how fat we all are? The laborers of the plantations?
Ah, yes, they die—die of malaria and consumption—but
it is only because they are under-fed. Tortillas
and beans—sour beans at that, usually, is all they
get, and besides they are beaten too much. Yes, they die,
but nobody else here ever has any sickness."
Notwithstanding the accounts of Juan Hernandez, the
policeman, the secretary assured us that most of the dead
slaves were buried. The burying is done in the town and
it costs the bosses one and one-half pesos for each burial.
By charity the town puts a little bamboo cross over each
grave. We strolled out in the moonlight and took a look
at the graveyard. And we gasped at the acres and acres
of crosses! Yes, the planters bury their dead. One
would guess by those crosses that Valle Nacional were
not a village of one thousand souls, but a city of one
hundred thousand!
On our way to our beds in the house of the Presidente
we hesitated at the sound of a weak voice hailing us. A
fit of heart-breaking coughing followed and then we saw
a human skeleton squatting beside the path. He wanted
a penny. We gave him several, then questioned him and
learned that he was one who had come to die in "The
1-louse of Pity." It was cruel to make him talk, but we
did it, and in his ghastly whispering voice he managed to
piece out his story between paroxysms of coughing.
His name was Angelo Echavarria, he was twenty
years old and a native of Tampico. Six months previously
he had been offered wages on a farm at two pesos
a day, and had accepted, but only to be sold as a slave
to Andres M. Rodriguez, proprietor of the plantation
"Santa Fe." At the end of three months he began to