Upon the plantations the Indians are in reality slaves, notwithstanding the Mexican laws prohibit slavery. This condition is produced chiefly by two causes. The Mexican Indian who cherishes, as we have seen, a remarkable devotion to his old habits, customs, utensils and implements, is gifted with an equal tenacity or adhesiveness for the place of his birth. Nomadic as were his ancestors, the modern Mexican Indian is no wanderer. The idea of emigration, even to another state or district, never originates in his brain, or is tolerated if proposed to him as a voluntary act. So helpless is his condition if placed beyond the limits of his habitual neighborhood or hereditary haunts, that he feels himself perfectly lost, abandoned and cast off, if compelled to change either his residence or his occupation. He has no variety of resources. He knows nothing of alternatives. The operations of his mind, as well as of his hand, are perfectly mechanical. The utter helplessness of such an individual, if suddenly transferred from the midst of his companions and all the scenes of his life-long associations or duties, may be easily conceived, and consequently the greatest punishment that a _haciendado_, or Mexican planter, can inflict upon his Indian serf is to expel him from the estate upon which he and his ancestors have worked from time immemorial. When other punishments, which elsewhere would be thought severe, fail to produce reform or amendment in the Indian's conduct, it usually happens, that the serious threat of expulsion from the estate, made by the owner himself, or his authorised representative, to the native, reduces the refractory individual to subjection. Thus it is, that this peculiar territorial and local adhesiveness contributes to making the Indian's condition not only _menial_ but _servile_. The second cause may be found in the habits of wild and extravagant indulgence which we have already described. These licentious outbursts of recklessness create a pecuniary bond between the proprietor and his laborer. The Indian becomes his debtor. It is the policy of the landholder to establish this relation between himself and the Indian, and consequently he affords him every facility to sell himself in advance, even for life, to his estate. The Indian, is thus at least completely mortgaged to the landed proprietor, and as that personage usually possesses considerable influence in his neighborhood, the laborer finds it extremely difficult or nearly impossible to enforce his freedom even by appeals to the legal authorities. Such is the origin and system of _peonage_, which still curses Mexico although the _repartimientos_ and slavery have been abolished by fundamental laws.