is the debt, the $5 advance fee usually paid by the labor agent to the laborer. It is unconstitutional, but it serves. The presidente of Valle Nacional told me, "There is not a police official in all southern Mexico who will not recognize that advance fee as a debt and acknowledge your right to take the body of the laborer where you will."
When the victim arrives in the valley of tobacco he learns that the promises of the labor agent were made merely to entrap him. Moreover, he learns also that the contract—if he has been lucky enough to get a peep at that instrument—was made exactly for the same purpose. As the promises of the labor agent belie the provisions of the contract, so the contract belies the actual facts. The contract usually states that the laborer agrees to sell himself for a period of six months, but no laborer with energy left in his body is by any chance set free in six months. The contract usually states that the employer is bound to furnish medical treatment for the laborers; the fact is that there is not a single physician for all the slaves of Valle Nacional. Finally, the contract usually binds the employer to pay the men fifty centavos (25 cents American) per day as wages, and the women three pesos a month ($1.50 American), but I was never able to find one who ever received one copper centavo from his master—never anything beyond the advance fee paid by the labor agent.
The bosses themselves boasted to me—several of them—that they never paid any money to their slaves. Yet they never called their system slavery. They claimed to "keep books" on their slaves and juggle the accounts in such a way as to keep them always in debt. "Yes, the wages are fifty centavos a day," they would say, "but they must pay us back what we give to bring them
