Barbarous Mexico . n by about thirty largeplantations owned and operated almost exclusively_bySpaniards. Between El Hule and the head of the valleyare four towns, Tuztepec, Chiltepec, Jacatepec and ValleNacional, all situated on the banks of the river, all pro-vided with policemen to hunt runaway slaves, not oneof whom can get out of the valley without passing thetowns. Tuztepec, the largest, is provided with ten po-licemen and eleven ruralcs (mounted country police).Besides, every runaway slave brings a reward of $10to the man or policeman who catches and returns himto his owner. Thus it will
Barbarous Mexico . n by about thirty largeplantations owned and operated almost exclusively_bySpaniards. Between El Hule and the head of the valleyare four towns, Tuztepec, Chiltepec, Jacatepec and ValleNacional, all situated on the banks of the river, all pro-vided with policemen to hunt runaway slaves, not oneof whom can get out of the valley without passing thetowns. Tuztepec, the largest, is provided with ten po-licemen and eleven ruralcs (mounted country police).Besides, every runaway slave brings a reward of $10to the man or policeman who catches and returns himto his owner. Thus it will be understood how much the geograph-ical isolation of Valle Nacional accounts for its beingjust a little worse than most other slave districts ofMexico. Combined with this may be mentioned thecomplete understanding that is had with the governmentand the nearness to a practically inexhaustible labormarket. Just as in Yucatan, the slavery of Valle Nacional ismerely peonage, or labor for debt, carried to the extreme,. TYPE OF ENGANCHADO OU PLAXTATIOX SLAVE THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL 71 although outwardly it takes a slightly different form—that of contract labor. The origin of the conditions of Valle Nacional wasundoubtedly contract labor. The planters needed la-borers. They went to the expense of importing labor-ers with the understanding that the laborers would staywith their jobs for a given time. Some laborers triedto jump their contracts and the planters used force tocompel them to stay. The advance money and the costof transportation was looked upon as a debt which thelaborer could be compelled to work out. From this itwas only a step to so ordering the conditions of laborthat the laborer could under no circumstances ever hopeto get free. In time Valle Nacional became a word ofhorror with the working people of all Mexico. They re-fused to go there for any price. So the planters feltcompelled to tell them they were going to take themsomewhere else. From this it w
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