BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

CHAPTER IV
THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL
Valle Nacional is undoubtedly the worst slave hole in
Mexico. Probably it is the worst in the world. When
I visited Valle Nacional I expected to find it milder than
Yucatan. I found it more pitiless.
In Yucatan the Maya slaves (lie off faster than they
are born and two-thirds of the Yaqui slaves are killed
during the first year after their importation into the
country. In Valle Nacional all of the slaves, all but a
very few—perhaps five per cent—pass back to earth
within a space of seven or eight months.
This statement is almost unbelievable. I would not
have believed it; possibly not even after I had seen the
whole process of working them and beating them and
starving them to death, were it not the fact that the
masters themselves told me that it was true. And there
are fifteen thousand of these Valle Nacional slaves—
fifteen thousand new ones every year!
"By the sixth or seventh month they begin to die off
like flies at the first winter frost, and after that they're
not worth keeping. The cheapest thing to do is to let
them die; there are plenty more where they came from."
Word for word, this is a statement made to me by
Antonio Pla, general manager of one-third the tobacco
lands in Valle Nacional.
"I have been here for more than five years and every
month I see hundreds and sometimes thousands of men,
women and children start over the road to the valley, but
I never see them come hack. Of every hundred who go
over the road not more than one ever sees this town
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