The Capitals of Spanish AmericaCurtis, William Eleroy
History
The Capitals of Spanish America
Curtis, William Eleroy
Capitals (Cities) -- Latin America; Cities and towns -- Latin America; Latin America -- Description and travel
Farming in Chili is conducted on the old feudal system, very much as it
is in Ireland. The country is divided into great estates owned by people
who live in the cities, and seldom visit the haciendas. There are only
two classes of people, the very rich and the very poor, the landlords
and the tenants. On each estate are a number of cottages with garden
patches around them, which are occupied by the tenants, and in payment
for which the landlord is entitled to so many days’ labor each year at
his option. Should more labor than is due be required of the tenant, he
is paid for it, not in money, but in orders upon the supply store or
commissary of the estate, where he can get clothing or food or
rum--especially rum. Tenants are usually given small credits at these
stores, and are kept in debt to the landlords. As the law prohibits them
from leaving a landlord to whom they owe money, the poor are kept in
perpetual slavery, like the party in mythology who was always rolling a
stone uphill. Even under this cruel system of peonage master and slave
usually get along pretty well together, but old-fashioned feudal wars
are kept up between estates, as was the case in England centuries ago.
The peon will always fight for his landlord, and bloody encounters are
constantly occurring. There are in Chili to-day the same old family
feuds that existed in the Middle Ages of Europe between the Montagues
and the Capulets. Somebody stepped upon the coat-tails of somebody else,
or kicked his poodle dog, away back in the early history of the country,
and the two families have been slashing and hacking at each other ever
since, while nobody can explain what it is all about. The tenant will
always cut a throat in his master’s honor, but he can never get any
richer in Chili than he is to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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