I 



The Passing of Don Luis 



{Extracts from " The Unpopular Review," Vol. Fill, No. 15, 

 July, 1917, page 157.^) 



Not long since, in the "Hotel Paso del Norte" on the Rio 

 Grande, the writer saw a gray little man, courteous and un- 

 obtrusive, plainly a "gentleman," and as plainly not at home 

 in El Paso. ' 



Three years ago and more, Don Luis Terrazas ruled without 

 question over a tract larger than our smaller states, over six 

 million acres from mountain to plain, fifty miles across — 

 or maybe sixty, for the Don never measured it and he does 

 not stand on trifles. On this enormous holding thousands of 

 people, his devoted servants and employees, worked for him 

 patiently after their fashion at a few — a very few — • centavos 

 a day. Their food and clothes they bought at the hacienda 

 store, and their debts amounted to more than their wages. 

 Among them, therefore, the inheritance passed on from father 

 to son was one of indebtedness only, swelling from generation 

 to generation, and never to he lifted. Citizens of a republic in 

 name, they were slaves in fact under a social system inherited 

 from medieval Spain and older than any existing republic. 



On the great rancho they lived in squalor and ignorance. 

 No schools were provided, and their religious teachers felt it 

 unsafe that they should think for themselves. Strong drink 

 tended to stupefy them, and a scanty diet garnished with red 

 pepper, cigarettes, and black cofi^ee does not stimulate effi- 

 ciency; efficiency, moreover, had never been for them a racial 

 ideal. And to leave the rancho to better oneself was impossible, 

 it being the height of discourtesy for one landowner to employ 

 the former servants of another. Thus to step out of his place 

 made the peon an outlaw. The mountains around have long 

 swarmed with fugitives — "bandits," "brigands," "patriots," 

 " cahalleros," in the changing terminology of the times. 



Justice lay in the hands of Don Luis alone; his it was to 

 pardon or to punish. Men without ambition, living only in 



• With a few verbal changes. 



: 813 3 



