I settled these difficulties several times, but as this correspondence
discloses they recur. I have intimated to Mr. Barrios, as you will
observe in my last note, that an illegal interference with labor might
lead to claims against his Government.
I trust that they will take warning and put an end to this form of
annoyance.
[Inclosure 1.]
Kensett Champney &
Co. to Minister Combs.
Sir: You know that we have been troubled
for a long time by the local authorities catching our Indian tenants
for work of the Northern Railway. Mr. Brown, when he was with us
some time ago, told us that you had already asked the authorities in
Guatemala to put an end to this vexation, and we are greatly obliged
to you.
We are very sorry to have to say, however, that the vexations went on
as before and still go on. We wired you on the 14th of April that
men of ours were seized in Senahú the day before and put in jail to
be sent to the railway. A day or two later we wired you that the
same thing had been done in Cahabin. Senahú and Cahabin are the two
towns which have jurisdiction in our lands. The men were locked up
for several days before being marched to the railway, and we wired
you on the chance of there being time to get an order back to loose
them. The men had to go; but we are glad to hear that our wires
reached you, and we appreciate your kindness in seeing Mr. Barrios
and getting his undertaking to give the matter his prompt
attention.
We are now afraid that he is not very prompt. We inclose you a
warrant that came from Senahú, dated the 1st of May, and signed by
the alcalde de la Cruz. This warrant, you will see, does not stop at
demanding men from us for the railway, but authorizes the bearer to
trespass and seize the men wherever they may be in our land.
We refused, of course, to consider the order, and on the 4th, as a
consequence, we had notice to appear at the jefatura política in Coban, two days’ journey from here.
Of this notice (antedated May 1) we can only inclose you a copy. The
notice reads as a circular to various plantations, ours included,
but it is directed only to us.
It was made out as a circular, apparently, so that it might not
remain in our hands. In view of these orders it was plain that
nothing was being done for us from Guatemala, that in fact things
were looking worse for us; and we wired you yesterday, the 5th.a
We hope that you will state our grievances again, and that tangible
results will follow. We simply want to see that we are let alone at
our own business. We are planting coffee; we are not building
railways; we have nothing to do with the Northern Railway Company.
They are a private concern, like our own, and no matter what public
or private influence they may enjoy, we have no notion of doing
other people’s work gratis with the very laborers that we have
lawfully paid and contracted for our own work. The United Fruit
Company might as reasonably ask us to plant bananas for them.
We have no men to spare; quite to the contrary. Mr. Barrios is from
the Alta Vera Paz and should understand perfectly the state of
things here. The plantations are not worked as they are in the
Pacific coast, by gangs of Indians from the other provinces.
They are worked by tenants of the land, and if tenants are taken off
we have no way of making up the lost work. And the loss is no
trifle. When a man is taken for the railway it means, with going and
coming, a loss of six weeks to begin with. But it mostly means more.
It is very likely to mean six months lost, and often it means a dead
Indian. You see the man comes back sick. It is next to impossible
for Indians of this climate to cross the Polichic Valley without
getting fever—a bad sort of fever, and apt to be rapid. A week or so
after a man is back we ask for him and learn that he is buried. [Page 826] At the best he is an
invalid—no good to us and no good to his family for a long time.
Our Indians are farmers. They live where they please in our land and
grow their own crops. They have to cut forests and make ready the
ground for their crops, and sow them, and hoe them, and reap them,
and everything, between their times of work for the plantation; if
they don’t there is a famine. Just now they are all trying to sow;
now is the time; it is a question of now or not at all. Yet they see
themselves caught and sent to the railway for a month or more, then
come back sick, seed time past, and no crop for a year.
These are the things that the Indians here can not stand. It is the
sort of thing that is driving them out of the country and leaving us
without hands; estates which, in our case, we have been twenty-five
years building up. In the Alta Verapaz it is only a step to the
inaccessible regions of the Sartoon. That is the land of freedom for
these Indians, and once there, there is no getting them back, and
others continually follow them. It is a growing stream.
The southwest of British Honduras, that used to be empty, is now a
hive of Indians, runaways from Alta Verapaz; and of all the Alta
Verapaz there is no plantation from which this exodus is easier than
from ours. We are in the very edge. There are no plantations beyond.
Our specially precarious situation in this respect is extremely
serious; it is badly understood in Guatemala.
We have dwelt a good deal in this letter on the unfairness of what is
being done, and on the consequent hardships and losses to us. But we
realize of course that our final plea is that of illegality. This
you know already. We only ask for law. We have paid the taxes and
kept the laws of the country for a quarter of a century now, without
offense or complaint, and we expect to have the laws protect us.
We remain, etc.,
Kensett Champney & Co.
