File:Barbarous Mexico (1911) (14782084182).jpg

Identifier: barbarousmexico00turn (find matches)
Title: Barbarous Mexico
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Turner, John Kenneth
Subjects: Mexico -- Politics and government 1867-1910 Mexico -- Economic conditions
Publisher: Chicago : C. H. Kerr & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
yet only three days previously he had beenworking all day in the hot sun ! We visited the plantation Santa Fe the followingday, as well as a half a dozen others. We found thesystem of housing, feeding, working and guarding theslaves alike on all. The main dormitory at Santa Fe consisted of onewindowless, dirt-floor room, built of upright poles set inthe ground an inch apart and held firmly together bystrands of barbed wire fencing. It was as impregnableas an American jail. The beds consisted of a single grassmat each laid crosswise on a wooden bench. There werefour benches, two on each side, one above another, run-ning lengthwise of the room. Tlie beds were laid soclose together that they touched. The dimensions of theroom were 75 by 18 feet and in these cramped quarters150 men, women and children slept every night. TheValle Nacional tobacco planters have not the decency ofslave-holders of fifty years ago, for on not one of theplantations did I find a separate dormitory for the women.
Text Appearing After Image:
IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH 97 And I was repeatedly told that the women who enterthat foul hole all become common to th.e men, not becausethey wish to become so, but because the overseers do notprotect them from the unwelcome advances of tlie men! On the Santa Fe ranch the mandador, or superin-tendent, sleeps in a room at one end of the slave dormi-tory and the cabos, or overseers, sleep in a room at theother end. The single door is padlocked, but a watch-man paces all night up and down the passageway betweenthe rows of shelves. Every half hour he strikes a clam-orous gong. In answer to a question Senor Rodriguezassured me that the gong did not disturb the sleepingslaves, but even if it had that the rule was necessary toprevent the watchman from going to sleep and permittinga jail-break. Observing the field gangs at close range, I was aston-ished to see so many children among the laborers. Atleast half were under twenty and at least one-fourthunder fourteen. The boys are just as good in th

Note About Images