BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
they are born, and Don Enrique Camara Zavala told
me that two-thirds of the Yaquis die during the first year
of their residence in the country. Hence the problem
of recruiting the slaves seemed to me a very serious one.
Of course, the Yaquis were coming in at the rate of
500 per month, yet I hardly thought that influx would
be sufficient to equal the tide of life that was going out
by death. I was right in that surmise, so I was informed,
but I was also informed that the problem of recruits
was not so difficult, after all.
"It is very easy." one planter told me. "All that is
necessary is that you get some free laborer in debt to
you, and then you have him. Yes, we are always getting
new laborers in that way."
The amount of the debt does not matter, so long as
it is a debt, and the little transaction is arranged by men
who combine the functions of money lender and slave
broker. Some of them have offices in Merida and they
get the free laborers, clerks and the poorer class of
people generally into debt just as professional loan sharks
of America get clerks, mechanics and office men into
debt—by playing on their needs and tempting them.
Were these American clerks, mechanics and office men
residents of Yucatan, instead of being merely hounded
by a loan shark, they would be sold into slavery for all
time, they and their children and their children's children,
on to the third and fourth generation, and even
farther, on to such a time as some political change puts
a stop to the conditions of slavery altogether in Mexico.
These money-lending slave brokers of Merida do not
hang out signs and announce to the world that they have
slaves to sell. They (10 their business quietl y, as people
who are comparatively safe in their occupation, but as
people who do not wish to endanger their business by
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