Yucatan

yoo-ka-tan', a peninsula of Central America. It forms the point of division between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Yucatan is not a country. It is a region divided up between Mexico, British Honduras, and Guatemala. It is a limestone plain resting on coral. It is practically an open prairie without timber, streams, or lakes. Any water that falls is absorbed by the soil. Water for domestic purposes may be found by excavating. The ancient inhabitants constructed huge pits in which to store rainwater. The climate is warm. The country is subject to fever. The natives raise Indian corn and rice, but the principal product is henequen, or sisal. The limited forests yield logwood. There are salt works and fisheries on the coast.

The inhabitants are descendants of the ancient Mayas, an aboriginal people who surpassed both the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru in architectural ability. The ruins of their ancient buildings are still the wonder of antiquarians. Uxmal, the most splendid of these cities, is situated about seventy miles from the coast. The remains are scattered over several square miles. Some of the walls are still standing. The principal buildings were raised on terraced foundations constructed of huge, dressed rocks, fitted together with great skill. Many of these walls were elaborately ornamented with sculpture. These huge blocks were doubtless hauled to the site and lifted into place by Indians under the direction of the priests. If a hundred men and a dozen sisal ropes were not enough a thousand men and half a hundred ropes were at hand. In an article written for the American Magazine on the slaves of Yucatan, Mr. Kenneth Turner has considerable unfavorable comment to make on the administration of President Diaz and disagreeable things to say of peonage as he found it in Mexican Yucatan:

The farms are so large that each has a little city of its own, inhabited by from 500 to 2,500 people, according to the size of the farm. The owners of these great farms are the chief slave-holders of Yucatan; the inhabitants of the little cities are the slaves. The annual export of henequen from Yucatan is said to be about 250,000,000 pounds. The population of Yucatan is 300,000. The slave-holders' club numbers 250 members, but the vast majority of the lands and the slaves are concentrated in the hands of fifty henequen kings. The slaves number probably more than 100,000.

The planters do not call their chattels "slaves." They call them "people" or "laborers," and ostensibly they are working off indebtedness to their masters. As the president of the Yucatan Chamber of Agriculture put it:

"We do not consider that we own our laborers: we consider that they are in debt to us. And we do not consider that we buy and sell them; we consider that we transfer the debt, and the man goes with the debt."

"You get the photograph and identification papers with the man," said one, "and that's all." "You get the identification papers and the account of the debt," said another. "We don't keep much account of the debt," said a third, "because it does not matter after you've got possession of the man." "The man and the identification papers are enough," said another; "if your man runs away, the papers are all the authorities require for you to get him back again." "Whatever the debt, it takes the market price to get him free again," a fifth told me.

One of the first sights that we saw on a henequen plantation was the beating of a slave,--a formal beating before the assembled toilers of the ranch early in the morning just after the daily roll-call. The slave was taken on the back of a huge Chinaman and given fifteen lashes across the bare back with a heavy wet rope, lashes so lustily delivered that the blood ran down the victim's body. This method of beating is an ancient one in Yucatan and is the customary one on all the plantations for boys and all except the heaviest men. Women are required to kneel to be beaten, as sometimes are men of great weight. Men and women are beaten in the fields as well as at the morning roll-call. Each foreman, or capataz, carries a heavy cane with which he punches and prods and whacks the slaves at will. I do not remember visiting a single field in which I did not see some of this punching and prodding and whacking going on.