BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN
the Civil War. And always the result has been in favor
of the black man. Our slaves of the South were almost
always well fed, as a rule they were not overworked, on
many plantations they were rarely beaten, it was usual to
give them a little spending money now and then and to
allow them to leave the plantation at least once a week.
Like the slaves of Yucatan they were cattle of the ranch,
but, unlike the former, they were treated as well as cattle.
In the South before the War there were not so
many plantations where the negroes died faster than
they were born. The lives of our black slaves were not
so hard but that they could laugh, sometimes—and sing.
But the slaves of Yucatan do not sing!
I shall never forget my last day in Merida. Merida
is probably the cleanest and most beautiful little city in all
Mexico. It might even challenge comparison in its white
prettiness with any other in the world. The municipality
has expended vast sums on paving, on parks and on
public buildings, and over and above this the henequen
kings not long since made up a rich purse for improvements
extraordinary. My last afternoon and evening
in Yucatan I spent riding and walking about the wealthy
residence section of Merida. Americans might expect
to find nothing of art and architecture down on this
rocky Central American peninsula, but Merida has its
million dollar palaces like New York, and it has miles of
them set in miraculous gardens.
Wronclerf il Mexican palaces! Wonderful Mexican
gardens! A wonderful fairyland conjured out of
slavery—slavery of Mayas, and of Yaquis. Among the
Yucatan slaves there are ten Mayas to one Yaqui, but
of the two the story of the Yaquis appealed to me the
more. The Mayas are dying in their own land and
with their own people. The Yaquis are exiles. They
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