# Mexico and its reconstruction/Chapter 10

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CHAPTER X
THE MEXICAN LABORER: HIS CONTRACT
One of the greatest handicaps to the progress of the laboring classes especially among the less advanced populations is the "lack of wants." In highly developed industrial communities a sudden increase of income for the laborer does not result immediately in a wise expenditure of his surplus for the general betterment of his standard of life. But where the examples of those who have had greater opportunities and greater income are constantly before the worker and his family, the transit from the old to a new standard comes with no great delay. New desires are felt which demand all the increase of income and more. Thus occurs the constant and insistent pressure from below for a better standard of living, which is so marked a characteristic of the civilization of Western European peoples.
But in tropic or semitropic lands, such as Mexico, the conditions that surround the laborer do not produce, or at least have not heretofore produced, that wholesome unrest which is the dynamic element in countries less favored by nature. Life is too easy. Poverty is always near but actual starvation is known hardly by report. Contrasts in habits of life outside the larger towns are not so great as to furnish incentive to enterprise. The working man feels himself a part of the community and occupies a traditional position within ​it. He is not conscious of great wrongs nor disposed to question the fitness of things as they are.
Nominally all labor in Mexico has been free during the entire life of the republic, but the desire of employers to secure a lever by which the Indian could be induced to work brought the continuance of a system inherited from colonial times which, while not legally slavery, had to a large degree the economic effects of a slavery system.
In this as in many other matters of public policy political theory outran practice. The constitution of 1857 under which the republic continued to live until the adoption of that of 1917 provided that "nobody should be obliged to render personal service without proper compensation and his full consent," and prohibited laws that sought to recognize contracts involving the "loss or irreparable sacrifice of the freedom of man through work, education, or religious vows." These clauses were considered to abolish the prevailing peonage system. On September 25, 1873, the rule was made to read: "The State cannot allow the fulfillment of any agreement, contract, or covenant which may, in any manner impair, destroy, or irrevocably sacrifice man's liberty either through work, education, or religious vows.
Neither clause brought a change in fact. Local efforts to make the law square with practice did not ​uproot the well established characteristics of the employment contracts. It is true, of course, that labor conditions during the Diaz régime varied widely in different parts of Mexico. The men were not uniformly good workers, they were not uniformly content with their lot as they found it, and the conditions of their employment varied with the traditional arrangements observed and with the degree to which foreign influences had come in to upset the unprogressive but generally contented habits of the slow-moving local life. But none of these influences created a general demand for betterment of the condition of the laborer. The labor problem was in the greater part of the republic one which, to the employer, meant how to get labor, not how to satisfy the demands of an organized labor class.
The Mexican government has never had a thorough study of the labor conditions among its own people. It does not know officially to-day in more than the most general way the usual terms of contract, the wages, or the living conditions of the laboring classes. The best picture that can be given must be based on incomplete official surveys supplemented by the observations of travelers, the experience of the many foreigners who, in their enterprises, have come into contact with the Mexican peon, and the testimony of those who have been prominent in support of the recent labor movement or in its opposition. In the years 1885-8 the government published the results of a labor survey of Mexico which is even up to the present time the most comprehensive effort of the sort that has been made in the republic. Though the answers to the questionnaires ​sent out are by no means of even merit, they give a fair picture of the status of the Mexican laborer in the early part of the Diaz period.
Complaints concerning the condition of the laborer were even at this early time frequent. The discussion shows that the desire for change did not come from the peons, who were, in fact, then and later as a class un-protesting and fairly well satisfied. The labor system was criticized rather as a factor in the national life which was neither economically efficient nor one which promoted the creation of an independent citizenship.
The reports that were asked from the officers of all the states and their subdivisions reveal a surprising variety of customs affecting the labor contract. There was no generally accepted system of peonage. Rates of pay often varied greatly in communities at short distances from each other. As a rule the contract was for shorter periods in the south and the wages were better in the north. The enterprises in some districts furnished only seasonal employment for a few men and employers found it difficult to secure help even on these short-term contracts. In other cases there were two, three, and even four different kinds of servants recognized, each with their separate wage arrangements.
In some communities pay was by the task or by the day in advance, in others by the week in advance. In others, payment came at the end of the period of ​service. There were year, two-year, and even five-year contracts. There were share farmers of various kinds and casual laborers. The longer contracts might or might not involve such elements as ration, the furnishing of tools, clothes, medicine, housing, and a large number of other elements. To speak of Mexican peonage as a system was to use a misnomer. Nothing less deserved the name. It was a tissue of widely varying rules partly resting on state legislation but largely on local custom, the origin of which was not found in written law even in the colonial régime.
Study of wage rates, though they are carefully reported in the inquiry referred to, does not allow definite conclusions. Actual income in one district as compared to another was not measured by the money wage. Ration allowances, land for the peon's use, and hunting privileges modified conditions. A centavo had a very different value in Chiapas from that which it possessed in Durango, the wants of the peon in the one case were fewer than in the second and he would stop working sooner, no matter what the wage offered.
It is also impossible to give any intelligent discussion of the hours of labor in a country where presence on the job has such an indefinite relation to the work done. This is true in all non-industrial countries in which there are wide variations of climatic conditions. The peon started work in many districts at four in the morning. He finished at eight at night or later. The working hours were variously reported within the 16-hour period. Yet the number of Mexican laborers who worked straight through the reported working period or straight ​through the day, except for meal hours, was small indeed. There were rests, lunch periods, siestas, periods for smoking, and the unavoidable interruptions that seem to be inherent in the work of any aboriginal or semi-aboriginal labor group. All these made the actual effective labor hours much less than their nominal total.
There were so many variations in labor conditions that no average standard can be discussed without destroying the most distinctive feature of the picture, its variety. Illustrations from the south, the center, and the northern part of the country at various periods give a fair idea of the sort of contrasts encountered.
In Chiapas in the Department of Pichucalco in the middle '80s the laborers were of three classes: free and debt servants and intermittent workers. The first received 25 centavos and subsistence, or 38 to 50 centavos without subsistence. Such servants were hard to find. Few "liked to work by the day."
The debt worker presented himself to the intending employer and received an advance of wages and a so-called card account, carta cuenta, stating the amount owed. This was recognized before a legal authority, before whom was also drawn up a statement of the term—regularly one or two years—for which the man agreed to work every day but feast days. The proprietor promised to pay the wages agreed upon, furnish stipulated food, and make the necessary advances in cash, clothing, and tools. Often the formal legalization of the contract did not take place, the card account being issued and both relying on custom to determine their rights and duties. The services of the wife might ​or might not be included in the laborer's contract. When the laborer wished to move to another farm, he made arrangements with its owner by which the latter would pay the former employer the amount of the laborer's card account. The man was then transferred. The advances on card accounts often reached 500 pesos or more. The wage of the debt laborers in cash was four pesos a month, in addition to which they received 500 ears of corn, 20 pounds of beans, salt, house rent, medicines, and two bottles of alcohol.
The intermittent workers were bound to work only four days out of each week. They received lodging and four pesos a month without any supplemental allowances.
In other parts of Chiapas still other variants were found. In some districts there were meseros, or month workers, usually Indians who owed more than they could pay. Their contracts differed from those of the debt servant above described in that they worked one month for the master and one for themselves. They did not live on the farm but in their own homes, which were often distant from the place of work. As in the case of the other debt peons the master assumed their debt and paid them their wages and a ration of corn. Another class were the baldios, who lived on the place but worked land for themselves, built their own houses, and paid from two to four days' labor per month for their privileges. They were under obligation to work for the master for a peso or nine reales a week when he called upon them. Occasionally there were share workers and advance-payment week workers. The best paid ​laborers on the haciendas were a class called punteros, a sort of foremen found only on the larger places. They distributed the tasks of the day and themselves worked with the group of men of which they were given charge.
The labor difficulty in the south was then what it is to-day. Life was too easy to encourage habits of industry. The great majority of the population were Indians who felt no necessity to work. Only a few of the native towns furnished laborers. The people of the rest of the towns relied on their corn patches and hunting for their livelihood. In the average case, there was little oppression possible on the haciendas, since the Indian could escape and the arm of the administration was not strong enough to hold him to his duty. The landowner had to do the best he could to keep peace with his laborers and by various expedients try to induce them to work. The scarcity of voluntary labor made the temptation to force the Indian to work greater and, where the employer could get the effective aid of the authorities, abuses of this sort were not infrequent. Some of the worst wrongs of the peonage system occurred in the southern states.
A very large share of the population in the southern states worked for no master and but little for themselves. They were satisfied with their native villages in which there were few social necessities. They lived in palm leaf houses, they needed almost no clothing. What little they used the women wove from local cotton in the hot lands. Those from the colder plateau districts ​obtained cotton by trading fruit or other natural products for it. A few had flocks of sheep.
The diet of these people was chiefly corn, beans, fruits, and game. They bought salt and occasionally beef. The chief indulgence was alcohol. They were all but self-sufficient, they were almost untouched by taxes, unaffected by commerce and industry. Among such a population labor was scarce though potential laborers many.
In some of the southern states work by the task, the so-called faena, or tarea, was frequent in the middle '80s and in some municipalities it was the only way of hiring labor. In Cuaatla, Morelos, in one of the sugar districts there were day and task laborers. The latter did a set amount for 25 centavos. An active man could do three tasks but most stopped after doing one or one and a half, although the day laborers might still be at work. Those who worked by the day were of two classes. Both worked all day. Those of both classes were required to do a certain amount of work before sunrise. In the afternoon those who did not live on the estate had to do another equal task completed by eight o'clock on regular week days without increase in pay. On the other hand, they could come to work at noon on Monday and stop Saturday afternoon at two or three. All the men were paid twice a week, on Tuesday what they had earned to that time, called the socorro, and on Saturday the raya.
Farther north in the State of Puebla some laborers worked by the day or week for 31¼ centavos a day during the unusual stress of hay or wheat harvest. Those ​who worked by the year, the contract regularly beginning with Holy Week, were paid at the rate of 25 centavos a day. At the beginning of the contract the employer took over the laborer's previous debts, gave him clothing for the season—an act repeated on the first day of November—and a certain amount in cash. He was obligated to give the laborer 50 centavos a week for spending money and one cuartilla, about 1.38 liters, of corn for subsistence. The employer paid the unusual expenses of the peasant for such items as medicines, wedding and saint's day celebrations, and the like. The peon received the use of a quartern of land, seed, and the tools needed to work the land. Fuel for his domestic use was also furnished.
The lot of the debt laborer in the north appears to have been less favorable than in the south. In Coahuila the harsh legislation formerly in force was nominally softened by the provisions of the constitution of 1857 and by a new servant law of January 28, 1868, which forbade advancing to a servant in a year more than he could pay back in six months. This was intended to protect the peon against his own improvidence. The rule was not obeyed. The masters continued to advance large sums to hold the men as before. On the 20th of February, 1881, another servants' law was passed. The master could not dismiss the servant without eight days' notice nor could the servant leave without paying his debts. An increasing number of disputes involved this latter provision. For the servants it was claimed that it was contrary to article five of the Constitution of the republic, but in practice the authorities required a ​runaway servant to return to the employ of his creditor on the ground that to abandon employment violated articles of the penal code and the law of servants. If a trial resulted, the servant appealed to the Constitution for protection. Efforts were then regularly made to settle the case by compromise. Masters feared that if the Constitution was held to apply all servants might repudiate their debts. Servants were indisposed to run the chance of having the criminal sentence declared against them.
There were many variant contracts in the north as well as in the south. For example, in the district of Comonfort, municipality of Chamacuero in Coahuila, three sorts of share farmers were found. Renters might receive from the hacienda owner the use of the land, the seed, a yoke of oxen, and a load of grain to be paid back at harvest time. The renter paid one-fifth of the expenses in harvesting and received from the harvest one-fifth less than his half. By another plan the yield was shared equally, the owner furnishing the land, the seed, an ox, and half of all expenses including those of the harvest. If the laborer received land, seed, a yoke of oxen, one peso 50 centavos in cash, and a load of corn, these last not to be paid back, and did all the work, he received one-fourth of the crop.
During the progress of the Diaz régime there were, ​of course, marked changes in labor conditions. No great economic transformation such as that which marked the period could occur without disturbing the entire network of human relations upon which the national life rested. Nevertheless, the change in the labor contract was less fundamental than apparent. Cities grew, commerce increased, and the nascent industry of the '80s achieved an importance in the public economy never before known. On the routes most visited by foreigners there were many evidences of the passing of the old and the coming of a new economic day. But in the back country life was still stirred from the accustomed routine only in a secondary way. Local customs continued, legislation intended to bring the nation into line with the developments in the Western World was added as an embroidery or flourish, but it did not replace the habits of generations. It was not fundamental in character. The position of the average Mexican laborer was still one of status not of contract.
The labor arrangements found in later periods in different parts of the country indicate the degree to which the relations of employer and employee remained unaffected by the developments which were transforming the life of the nation. They show also modifications which the new conditions introduced in the labor contract.
In Yucatan, at the end of the Diaz régime, debt service was still a characteristic of the labor system. It was still illegal but seldom questioned. The large hacendados, or owners of haciendas, aimed to keep as many laborers living on their plantations as they could. Many ​of the servants on the better managed places had been born there as had their fathers. They were paid, in some cases, at a fixed rate under period contracts; in others, a daily wage according to the number of henequen leaves cut and piled—the raising of henequen being practically the single local industry. The laborers received houses, garden plots, and medical attendance free. The masters, in some cases, supplied rations of corn free; in others it was sold to the laborers at less than the market price. It appears that there was little dissatisfaction with the system in this state on the part of either the men or their employers. The state was but little stirred by the revolution when it came, in fact it took no part in the effort to overthrow the old régime. It was not until after 1914 that the revolution affected the laboring population. Even then they were roused against their employers only by insistent propaganda backed by those in control at the capital.
Chiapas, in the latter part of the Diaz régime, was still without a sufficient labor supply for its development. An American manager for one of the large plantations declares that his company and all those surrounding were so anxious to have labor available that they were willing to give a plot of land to any Indian family that would work it. Any land hunger on the part of the native could thus easily be satisfied. About 150 families were settled on the estate in this way. Generally the Indian in that region did not want a definite piece of land, he wished only to burn over a field and get one or two crops from it by planting directly in the unplowed soil. When grass and brush began to ​appear, he abandoned the field for another, which he could prepare by burning it over, a process easier than plowing.
Whether given land on a plantation or living in his own village, the Indian was loath to work. Reliance still had to be on a system of induced labor. In this region the majority of the Indians had to be secured from communities in which the men had their own corn patches, wheat fields, pigs, chickens, and perhaps even their own cotton and sugar. The plantation owner had no legal authority to force these men to work for him, but by long-established custom every able-bodied man could be called on to work one week in four. Laborers had to be summoned to work and in this the civil authority gave its support to the requests of the plantation owners.
In actual practice in this region the plantation owner hired a man who could speak Spanish and, preferably, the native dialects to do recruiting. A man representing the civil authority would accompany this person on his rounds or the jefe politico might give him a letter to the head men of the native villages from which the labor was to be drawn. These head men and the jefe politico knew how many men there were in each village, how many had been requisitioned, and whether there was a balance. Notice was served on the head man and he would see that the Indians promised reported. If he were reluctant, he was sometimes given a tip. Those from each village arrived together, worked together on the plantation, and left together. Once on the plantation they would usually stay from four to ten weeks ​under special inducements, but they were free to go after one week. Payment was made directly to the man at the end of each week—by the piece system or at one dollar Mexican per week, if employed on that basis.
The day's work bore a strong contrast to that in industrial communities. The men were rousted out between six and seven in the morning, they came to a central house where they received a drink of sugar cane rum "forty drinks to the liter and so strong you could burn it in a lamp." Each man got all the beans he could eat, half of a large corn cake, and a ball of boiled hominy, which latter he took to the fields with him for his three lunches at nine, twelve, and four o'clock. At noon there was a two-hour rest. Work was, as a rule, by the tarea system. There were frequent interruptions. Though they were paid by the piece, the men had to be followed up constantly or they would loaf and play. On the average the work day was about nine hours. Returning at night each man received another drink of rum, all the beans he could eat, and the other half of his corn cake.
Along with these Indian laborers there were often employed in Chiapas another group, generally with some mixture of Spanish blood, who worked under contracts more nearly approaching the peonage system as usually reported. The man who wished to become a peon came to the employer and asked for a loan under the usual employment contract. This was given. Then, if the relation was newly established and the man was without family, he disappeared for an agreed period. This time passed and the money gone he reappeared, ​settled down on the ranch, and became a fixture. Soon he had a wife, a garden plot, some chickens, and a pig or two. He worked during the week and on Saturday night appeared for his wage balance, if any, which he proceeded to spend on the simple but powerful luxuries to which his generation was accustomed. Generally he did not try to pay his debts but to increase them. To have a heavy debt was for many a sign of standing in the community, an evidence that the employer had confidence in the employee.
In the latter part of the Diaz régime, in some of the sugar and coffee plantations of Vera Cruz the day labor, task and share-rent systems were apparently gradually displacing the classic form of peonage. A French plantation operator employing between 700 and 1,000 workmen in the low lands worked his fields by means of men recruited chiefly from the higher altitudes. Many of his neighbors had adopted the share-rent system of employment. He himself preferred to get his labor through capitanes to whom he paid five per cent of the wages of the day laborers as premium. Of these laborers about one-fourth were induced to live on the estate, the rest were casuals paid 50 cents Mexican per tarea or from 56 to 72 cents Mexican, if on a day labor basis. In this district, as elsewhere, the lack of ambition was alleged to be a prominent characteristic of the laborer. He would not do more than one tarea though he could easily do two. Those who lived on the estate, though they were given garden plots, seldom cultivated them efficiently and the share renters, when the return for the season's harvest was paid them, almost without ​exception squandered their earnings in the most improvident manner.
An engineer formerly employed by the Mexican government reports that labor conditions in Tamaulipas were practically the same in 1910 as they were a generation before. The money wage had risen to from six to nine pesos a month but the historic system controlled the labor contract. The laborer could not leave until he paid his debt. Once in debt, he could only with great difficulty get out and, if not in debt, he could only with great difficulty remain so. Peons were given a credit account which, on account of advances usually made at the beginning of the contract, always showed a debit balance. They sometimes received the right to live in a house owned by the employer, sometimes they built their own bush shacks. If they were ambitious, they could regularly have land for a garden, but they seldom did so.
These illustrations for both the earlier and the later period of the Diaz régime are samples of widely varying practices in which there was an underlying similarity in that the contracts were not free will engagements. In this sense they are typical of the conditions under which a large part of the laboring population worked. They are not typical in other respects, because the labor contract in different parts of the country and even within the same region was of such varied character that there was no type.
Though peonage was found in widely separated parts of Mexico, both at the beginning and at the end of the Diaz régime, it is a mistake to consider it to have involved all the population at either period. A ​considerable number of the natives were never touched by it and, especially with the development of the economic resources of the country, there came into existence, in the larger cities, along the railroads, in the mines, textile working communities, oil fields, and elsewhere a class dependent upon the wage system such as it is known in other countries. These workmen lived, as a rule, under conditions less favorable than those found in the United States. They were better off, however, in both living conditions and wages, than the average Mexican laborer. They seemed to be the beginning of a labor class similar to those found in more advanced communities.
The pictures that have generally been drawn in the United States of labor conditions in Mexico at the end of the Diaz régime are unfair. A great deal of sympathy has been wasted on that portion of the Yaqui tribes that was transferred from the northwest to Yucatan and Campeche, though there were undoubted abuses committed in the process. There were, in certain regions in the southern states, labor conditions altogether indefensible but they were not general. The "shanghaiing" of men from the cities, especially the capital, for work on plantations on the isthmus of Tehuantepec seems to have occurred in a large number of cases but such practices were not a real part of the peonage system. The worst abuses of this sort, roundly denounced by all responsible Mexicans, appear to have occurred in the Valle Nacional of Oaxaca. Such conditions involving the herding of the victims into barbed wire ​enclosures and various methods of inhuman treatment were exceptional, probably not more typical of Mexican conditions than the story of Simon Legree was typical of conditions in the southern United States in slavery days.
That the labor system in force in Mexico was a drag upon the development of the country was frankly recognized by forward looking Mexicans. None have been its more acrid critics. Many are the telling contrasts which they have painted of the conditions to be found north and south of the Rio Grande. Representative of these criticisms are the following: "On the border there is decent labor, supported by justice, with the rights of man vibrating in every nerve and in every drop of blood; the agriculturist with his hide boots and his wage of two dollars gold; the laborer who works in the fields by the day, who upon his return home at night, clean and happy, takes to his arms a flock of strong children." South of the river "is savagery, dark and brooding, a silent barbarity. . . which asks nothing of light, a surrendered right which asks nothing of happiness, a weakened constitution which asks nothing more than a drink of alcohol. . . and five ounces of caustic stuff in the stomach; a paternity without sovereignty, a home without rights, an unhappy wife; a nominal country, slavery—at the price of 100 to 200 pesos. . . ." "The peon is a drunkard because of hunger; by custom, by exploitation, ignorance, dissimulation of the authorities, and because of his tendency to laziness.,. . The family of the day laborer. . . does not exist. . . the children if. . . they escape tuberculosis, hardly reach ​the age of maturity before they. . . inaugurate. . . . . . the. . . life. . . that they learned from their parents." "The world has never known a school before a home. . . and if we are to believe our eyes, that among the jornaleros, or day laborers, the family does not exist, the first thing that we must do is to create it." Under the unfree labor system economic independence is impossible. "As long as the jornalero cannot eat meat, as long as he cannot support his children through school age, as long as he is a legal slave. . . he will not be a civilized man. . ."
There have been apologists for peonage both in and out of Mexico. By them the system is pictured as not only an essential for the economic development of the country but as a kind paternalism which is a positive benefit to the native. Through it he is taught the habits of industry, he is introduced to the wants that will make for his own betterment, he is given advances when his necessities are greater than his slender means, he receives assistance when crops fail and medical attendance when his family falls ill. Instances are cited in which the laboring classes have protested against a change to a daily wage system that would break the relationship of protector and protected and throw the latter out upon the mercies of the world.
It is unnecessary to prove that there are cases in which the employer has made his relation to his Mexican employees a means for improving their lot. But though ​the induced labor system as an economic instrument has many defenders among employers of both Mexican and non-Mexican nationality, there can be no doubt that it lent itself to serious abuse, and that it encouraged the defects with which the laborer was charged. The wrongs committed are not confined to any single region. The better class hacendados, as a whole, themselves deplored the labor conditions, which they apparently took no determined steps to remedy.
The arguments of the defenders of peonage do not convince any large percentage of those who have observed the practices it developed. They are the same as those used in the United States before the Civil War to defend negro slavery. No social institution is entitled to be judged by what it might be if human nature were other than we find it or by the beneficent results obtained under it in isolated cases. Peonage is a survival in Mexico and an unwholesome one. Even if, as its defenders insist, its abolition will bring a slower rate of economic development than would otherwise be possible, there are nevertheless few in the more enlightened countries of the world who will hesitate to declare in favor of its abolition. No nation can afford to sacrifice the individual liberties of its people to secure greater economic advantage. Unfree service is a contradiction in the twentieth century and no effort to bring it to an end can fail to have the sympathy of those who hope to see the growth of true self-government among the nations of the world.
* ↑ The above quotations are from Matias Romero, "Wages in Mexico," published in Commercial Information Concerning the American Republics and Colonies, 1891, Bulletin No. 41, Washington, 1892.
* ↑ These reports were published in great detail in a series of documents with slightly varying titles in 1885-7. The general title is Informes y documentos relativos a comercio interior y exterior, agricultura e industrias.
* ↑ See Wallace Thompson, The People of Mexico, New York, 1921, p. 325 et seq.
* ↑ Penal Code, Art. 407; Law of Servants, Article 10.
* ↑ The description of the labor contract in Coahuila is well detailed in Informes y documentos relativos a comercio interior y exterior, agricultura é industrias. Number 10, April, 1886, Mexico, p. 92 et seq. From this series the other illustrations given above are taken. A very excellent discussion of wage conditions in Mexico in 1891 is given in Matias Romero, op. cit., pp. 125-45.
* ↑ See Wallace Thompson, op. cit., p. 326, et seq.
* ↑ Quotations from speeches in the agricultural congress of the diocese of Tulancingo reported in Bolétin de la secretaria de fomento. Numero especial de propaganda, Julio, 1906, Mexico, 1906.