Debt peonage (indentured servitude) was a system by which a laborer went into debt to a patron by borrowing money or taking advances to pay for basic living expenses. The indebted laborer (peon) then worked for the patron to pay off the debt. Such debt was often impossible to pay off.[1]
In New Mexico and Chihuahua, the most pernicious form of peonage was when a person was taken captive, then sold to a patron, who would then require the captive to work to pay for being “rescued.” The people most vulnerable to captive-taking were peasants who worked in agricultural fields. Captive-peonage, a form of slavery, was not unusual in this region.[2]
One rich man went too far: Pablo Melendres, the Juez de Paz of the Pueblo of Doña Ana.[3]
In 1858, while on the road to New Mexico with his mule train, Pablo Melendres and his workers encountered a group of Apaches. The Apaches held a captive woman and her child. Melendres purchased the child from the Apaches. But Melendres declined to purchase the woman, despite her desperate plea and the Apaches offering to sell her for only a few blankets. Melendres separated the woman from her child, and took the child to be used as a peon. This act by Melendres so shocked his workers that they reported Melendres to a Prefect in Sonora, who then reported the act to U.S. military authorities. The U.S. military then escalated the matter to the Governor of New Mexico.
Here is a transcription of the report:
Pablo Melendrez a New Mexican from somewhere about Doña Ana had bought a Mexican captive from the Indians. It seems while on the road to N.M. with a train he met some Apaches with a captive Mexican woman and her child, which latter he bought leaving the mother in spite of her entreaties in the hands of the Indians, although they offered to sell her for a few blankets.
This report was brought by two Mexicans who belong to Sonora and at the time were employed by Melendrez. I promised to do all I could … and have the honor to request of you to lay the matter before the Governor of … as it is understood that Melendrez bought the captive for a peon & the restoration would have an excellent effect on the Mexicans, who have it in their power to be of service to us and have already shown every disposition to do so.[4]
See a copy of the report HERE.
[1] In the U.S., by an Act of the U.S. Congress, debt peonage was finally outlawed in New Mexico, and other Territories and States of the United States in 1867. See An Act to Abolish and Forever Prohibit the System of Peonage in the Territory of New Mexico and Other Parts of the United States, 39th Congress, 2d Session, March 2, 1867, in New Mexico Historic Documents, ed. Richard N. Ellis (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1975), 55. In Mexico, the inequities of debt peonage contributed to the start of the Mexican Revolution. See generally, John M. Hart, Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987). See also, John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (University of Texas, Austin, reprinted 1969) (reporting on the entrenched system of peonage in Mexico in the early years of the Mexican Revolution).
[2] For more on the practice of captive-taking, captive-peonage and slavery, see James F. Brooks, Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2008); Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Mariner Books 2017); William S. Kiser, Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle Over Captivity and Peonage in the American Southwest (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2017).
[3] Pablo Melendres gained much of his wealth and influence by marrying one of the richest women in the region, Guadalupe Orcasitas. Melendres and his wife moved to Doña Ana to increase their landholdings near the trade route, El Camino, and to be near Brazito. Orcasitas inherited the lands of Brazito from her grandfather. (See Will of Pablo Melendres, Exhibit No. 10 to Petition of Numa Raymond et al, U.S. Land Records of New Spain, 1682-1916, Land Grant Case Files, Serial 10351, PLC Cases, 23-24. ) Most of the other setters of Doña Ana were very poor farmers and peons. For more on the early Pueblo of Doña Ana, see Mary Daniels Taylor, A Place as Wild as the West Ever Was: Mesilla, New Mexico 1848-1872(New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces, 2004), 7-9; Sonja Sonnenburg, Historical Background, The Doña Ana Sphere at https://donaanasphere.com/historical-background/
[4] Report of Dragoon Captain R. P. Ewell dated August 10, 1858, Fort Buchanan, N.M. [Arizona], National Archives of the United States, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands, 1821-1920, Record Group 393, Reel 7 at 0507-0509. See HERE.
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