Class relations in Mexico in 1910

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Don Remigio left the men, who had been on the march since one in the
morning to get there from their last bivouac by midday, standing in the
tropical glare of the sun as if they were blocks of stone. Whether they
were seriously sunburnt or even collapsed or went off their head, that
didn?t seem to worry him. They cost so much of his money. He had to pay off
each individual?s debts, since it was on account of them that the man had
been sold or peddled to him. For each individual he had to pay the
president of the municipality of Hucutsin the tax on the labor contract at
a rate of twenty-five pesos, so that the authorities would arrest the man
if he ran away. What is more, he had to pay a high commission to the
advertising agents who bought out peons from the fincas, the estates and
the villages, who were in debt to their masters, as well as other Indians
whose police fines had to be paid in order to bring them here. No one could
expect that the enganchadores, the advertising agents, would work for
nothing, still less as they were in a business in which they hoped to get
very rich. Finally, a cash advance had been paid to every man recruited by
the agents, the better to tempt the men to confirm their contracts before
the municipal president and thus, in the eyes of the civilized world, give
the impression that it was a simple labor contract such as can be concluded
anywhere on earth. The old cacique knew far better than the newly fledged
dictators how to conceal the true conditions in his country from the
suspicions of the other nations, helped by a gagged and self-corrupting
press that groveled before him. What the workers themselves said or spread
abroad was nothing but lies and slander. Truth was only what was written in
the labor contracts, acknowledged by the workers, and stamped by an
official authority. That the Indian workers could neither read nor write
the dictator did not regard as his fault. Why didn?t they learn to read and
write? They were too stupid for it and just didn?t want to learn.

All the amounts and payments that the contratista [contractor] laid out for
a man he had recruited, that man had to earn back in the jungle. A
contratista could not be expected to pay out all those amounts for an
Indian, or even for two hundred of them, out of pure philanthropy, and then
tell the man: "Many thanks for your friendliness, allowing me to pay your
debts and give you an advance, which you take so you can get pissed and go
whoring. Go back to your father?s house, increase and multiply, and live
happy and contented to the end of your days!"

What would become of a contratista who did that sort of thing? In this
world, where everybody has to fight for a crust of bread, even a
contratista cannot give things away without there being something at the
other end. He has to work damned hard to be able to live and to make
something of it. If it happens that he has nothing once he is old, then he
can go begging. So he must take care of his welfare as long as he is in a
position to. Wife and children at home have to live too. And if he has to
work hard himself, why not the peons? They?re not used to anything else
anyway and do nothing but fool around. If they have no work to do, they
just get pissed. Instead of thinking of something else, most of all how
they can pay off their debts and escape from enslavement, they waste their
good strength on nothing but bringing a crowd of kids into the world.

Besides, the people in New York and London want mahogany furniture. Why
they want it has nothing to do with us contratistas. That is their
business. But there is money to be made from it, a lovely mountain of
money. Our jungles are full of caoba. We have no idea what to do with so
much caoba. We have such an infinite amount of it that we actually make our
railroad ties out of mahogany and ebony. Why shouldn?t we provide a few
tons of our rich excess of this handsome wood for suffering mankind? Of
course, it does have to be got out of the jungle. We contratistas can?t do
that by ourselves. I least of all. I get great blood-blisters on my hands
if I cut caoba just for three hours. Mahogany is as hard as iron, damn it.
But those Indians, boozy fuckers that they are, are lucky to be able to do
something for their fatherland and raise the exports figure.

This attitude of the contratistas is thoroughly comprehensible; it shows
reason and a profound insight into the confused laws of world economics. Of
course, the Indian thinks about it differently. But then he is only a
wretched proletarian, not a director of a bank. And it is simply
incomprehensible to any normal-thinking man that those goddamn proletarians
simply won?t ever grasp how reasonable and right and patriotic are the
ideas and opinions that are hatched out with so much trouble and worry and
sleepless nights by dictators and factory managers, for the good of the
fatherland. Goddamn it all, all those proletarians should just be shot,
then there would be peace in the country at last. Why is the miserable dog
a proletarian anyway? It?s his own fault after all. It certainly isn?t the
fault of the contratistas that the peons are permanently so deep in debt to
their masters. The master needs his money too, and if he finally loses
patience and wants to have his money, because he has to have it, and so
sells the peons to the contratistas for the amount of the debt, then there
is an outcry and a lot of screaming about the slave trade and slavery.

It is all so clear, so simple, so logical, so reasonable, that one has only
to wonder why the proletariat won?t understand it when they are dictated
to. Once they understand for the first time and fully accept that
everything done is done only for their good, that no dictator, no
shareholder, thinks or has ever thought of impinging on the value of the
worker or making him into a beast of burden, once they begin to see that
people only want their good, even their best, then the time will at last be
ripe when they may be counted among the reasonable, and every single
proletarian will have the prospect of actually becoming a factory manager
and chairman of a board of directors. But as long as he does not, or will
not, understand, he must keep his mouth shut and let himself be managed and
dictated to.

Everything here was therefore going right. No one was treated unjustly. No
one had any cause for complaint. All the business, that of the advertising
agents, of the contratistas and the companies, was carried on, always and
in all circumstances, within the framework of the law. If gaps showed in
the legal network, there was a dictator who mended those gaps with a
signature. And what the dictator did was always right, for all his
activities were confirmed by the Cámara de Diputados. If by chance one of
the Diputados raised an objection, he ceased to be a Diputado, because he
was hindering the order and the well-oiled progress of business. Only
yes-men were accepted in the Cámara and the Senate. It was a joy to live,
and anyone who didn?t like it had no right to live, and was shot. If there
were moderating circumstances, then he went to the concentration camp, El
Valle de los Muertos, an area fenced in with barbed wire, in the middle of
the best-chosen fever swamp in the south of the state of Veracruz. He went
there never to return. It was the golden age of dictatorship.

B. Traven, "Trozas" (Logs)


Louis Proyect
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