Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/153

Rh lands, but to select the most desirable lands in the country, register them, and evict the owners. This they did on a most tremendous scale. Thus hundreds of thousands of small farmers lost their property. Thus small farmers are still losing their property. In order to cite an example, I reprint a dispatch dated Merida, Yucatan, April 11, 1909, and published April 12 in the Mexican Herald, an American daily newspaper printed in Mexico City:

"Merida, April 11.—Minister Olegario Molina, of the Department of Fomento, Colonization and Industry, has made a denouncement before the agency here of extensive territory lying adjacent to his lands in Tizimin partido. The denouncement was made through Esteban Rejon Garcia, his administrador at that place.

"The section was taken on the ground that those now occupying them have no documents or titles of ownership.

"They measure 2,700 hectares (about 6,000 acres, or over nine square miles), and include perfectly organized towns, some fine ranches, including those of Laureano Breseno and Rafael Aguilar, and other properties. The jefe politico of Tizimin has notified the population of the town, the owners and laborers on the ranches, and others on the lands, that they will be obliged to vacate within two months or become subject to the new owner.

"The present occupants have lived for years upon the land and have cultivated and improved much of it. Some have lived there from generation to generation, and have thought themselves the rightful owners, having inherited it from the original 'squatters.'

"Mr. Rejon Garcia has also denounced other similar public lands in the Espita partido."

Another favorite means of confiscating the homes of small owners is found in the juggling of state taxes. State taxes in Mexico are fearfully and wonderfully made. Especially in the less populous districts owners are taxed inversely as they stand in favor with the