is liable to pass into the hands of a henequen planter. Through debt, the dying slaves of the farms are replaced by the unsuccessful wage-workers of the cities."
Why do the henequen kings call their system enforced service for debt instead of by its right name? Probably for two reasons—because the system is the outgrowth of a milder system of actual service for debt, and because of the prejudice against the word slavery, both among Mexicans and foreigners. Service for debt in a milder form than is found in Yucatan exists all over Mexico and is called peonage. Under this system, police authorities everywhere recognize the right of an employer to take the body of a laborer who is in debt to him, and to compel the laborer to work out the debt. Of course, once the employer can compel the laborer to work, he can compel him to work at his own terms, and that means that he can work him on such terms as will never permit the laborer to extricate himself from his debt.
Such is peonage as it exists throughout all Mexico. In the last analysis it is slavery, but the employers control the police, and the fictional distinction is kept up all the same. Slavery is peonage carried to its greatest possible extreme, and the reason we find the extreme in Yucatan is that, while in some other sections of Mexico a fraction of the ruling interests are opposed to peonage and consequently exert a modifying influence upon it, in Yucatan all the ruling interests are in henequen. The cheaper the worker the higher the profits for all. The peon becomes a chattel slave.
The henequen kings of Yucatan seek to excuse their system of slavery by denominating it enforced service for debt. "Slavery is against the law." they say. "It is against the constitution," When a thing is abolished
