BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL 77
is the debt, the $5 advance fee usually paid by the labor
agent to the laborer. It is unconstitutional, but it serves.
The /'rcsidente of Valle Nacional told me, "There is not
a police official in all southern Mexico who will not
recognize that advance fee as a debt and acknowledge
your right to take the body of the laborer where you
will."
When the victim arrives in the valley of tobacco he
learns that the promises of the labor agent were made
merely to entrap him. Moreover, he learns also that
the contract—if he has been lucky enough to get a peep
at that instrument—was made exactly for the same purpose.
As the promises of the labor agent belie the
provisions of the contract, so the contract belies the
actual facts. The contract usually states that the laborer
agrees to sell himself for a period of six months, but
no laborer with energy left in his body is by any chance
set free in six months. The contract usually states that the
employer is bound to furnish medical treatment for the
laborers; the fact is that there is not a single physician
for all the slaves of Valle Nacional. Finally, the contract
usually binds the employer to pay the men fifty
ccntavos (25 cents American) per (lay as wages. and the
women three pesos a month ($1.50 American), but I
was never able to find one who ever received one copper
centavo from his master—never anything beyond the
advance fee paid by the labor agent.
The bosses themselves boasted to me—several of them
—that they never paid any money to their slaves. Yet
they never called their system slavery. They claimed
to "keep books" on their slaves and juggle the accounts
in such a way as to keep them always in debt. "Yes,
the wages are fifty centavos a day," they would say,
"but they must pay us back what we give to bring them