BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

48 BARBAROUS MEXICO
that the deportations would never stop until the last
possible dollar had been squeezed out of the business.
The company of officials who have rotated in office in
Sonora for the past twenty-five years would see to that,
he said.
These little confidences of the colonel were given me
merely as bits of interesting gossip to a harmless foreigner.
He had no notion of exposing the officials and
citizens whose names he mentioned. He expressed no
objection whatever to the system, rather gloried in it.
"In the past six months," the fat colonel told me, "I
have handled three thousand Yaquis—five hundred a
month. That's the capacity of the government boats
between Guaymas and San Bias, but I hope to see it increased
before the end of the year. I have just been
given orders to hurry 1,500 more to Yucatan as quickly
as I can get them there. Ali, yes, I ought to have a comfortable
little fortune for myself before this thing is
over, for there are at least 100,000 more Yaquis to come!
"One hundred thousand more to come!" he repeated
at my exclamation. "Yes, one hundred thousand, if
one. Of course, they're not all really Yaquis, but—"
And President Diaz's chief deporter of Sonora working-people
lolling there upon the deck of the freight
steamer passed me a smile which was illuminating, exceedingly
illuminating—yes, terribly illuminating!