CHAPTER IV
THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL
Valle Nacional is undoubtedly the worst slave hole in Mexico. Probably it is the worst in the world. When I visited Valle Nacional I expected to find it milder than Yucatan. I found it more pitiless.
In Yucatan the Maya slaves die off faster than they are born and two-thirds of the Yaqui slaves are killed during the first year after their importation into the country. In Valle Nacional all of the slaves, all but a very few—perhaps five per cent—pass back to earth within a space of seven or eight months.
This statement is almost unbelievable. I would not have believed it; possibly not even after I had seen the whole process of working them and beating them and starving them to death, were it not the fact that the masters themselves told me that it was true. And there are fifteen thousand of these Valle Nacional slaves—fifteen thousand new ones every year!
"By the sixth or seventh month they begin to die off like flies at the first winter frost, and after that they're not worth keeping. The cheapest thing to do is to let them die; there are plenty more where they came from." Word for word, this is a statement made to me by Antonio Pla, general manager of one-third the tobacco lands in Valle Nacional.
"I have been here for more than five years and every month I see hundreds and sometimes thousands of men, women and children start over the road to the valley, but I never see them come back. Of every hundred who go over the road not more than one ever sees this town
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