Excerpted from
A Detailed Description of Tyranny
within the United Mexican States
Broken Mill Press, 1930
Chapter Seventeen
The Yaqui Solution
[Editor’s note: A true understanding of Yaqui/Mexican relations cannot be contained within a single volume, let alone excerpts from only one source, but a basic understanding of the conflict between these cultures is necessary to comprehend the mind set of men like Ghost and Old Toad. For readers who wish to know more about early Spanish interaction with the Yaqui nation, two excellent sources of information are Evelyn Hu-DeHart’s Missionaries, Miners, and Indians: Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533–1820, and Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821–1920.]
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It should be noted that the often contentious entanglement of these two nations—one native; the other seeking new worlds to conquer and new wealth to claim—began as soon as the first Spaniard entered the Yaqui River Valley of Sonora in 1533, and was immediately ordered to leave … a battle ensued and the Spaniards withdrew, but the lines had been drawn, both figuratively and literally.
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Although largely agrarian and fiercely protective of their land, which the Yaquis believed was granted to them by their Creator, their relationship with Spanish authority didn’t begin to seriously deteriorate for another two hundred years, when civilians in search of new lands to farm and mineral wealth to mine, began to encroach upon the almost sacred Yaqui River Valley in ever larger numbers … [which] resulted in a revolt in 1740 between the Yaqui/Mayo alliance and the invading Spaniards, and the loss of thousands of lives on both sides.
[An] uneasy truce, marred by numerous skirmishes, existed between the two nations for another eighty years, until Mexican independence was won from Spain in 1821 … [after which] further attempts to control the Yaqui tribe led to increased hostilities.
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Brutality, always a hallmark of war, marred the conflict in Sonora from beginning to end. [As examples] in 1868, the army first shelled, then burned, a Catholic church with approximately one hundred and fifty Yaquis inside; in 1903, Yaquis reportedly sawed the feet off of scout “California Dan” Ryan, and made him walk on his bloody stumps until he expired.
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Thousands of Yaquis fled to the deserts and mountains during this time, waging guerrilla warfare against the government.
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By the end of the nineteenth century, [Porfirio] Díaz was rapidly increasing his efforts to modernize the more rural areas of the country … [by] openly seeking backers from the United States and Europe who were willing to invest in Mexico’s infrastructure.
By 1903, Díaz had grown impatient with the still-warring Yaqui resistance. Viewing it as a major obstacle to the progress he sought, and especially to the development of Hiakim (the Yaqui name for their homeland), he initiated what amounted to an eradication policy toward the Yaqui people. In 1904, Sonoran governor Rafael Izábal was ordered to oversee a series of statewide “round-ups” of the remaining Yaquis … [and by] 1909, between ten thousand and fifteen thousand Yaquis had been captured and deported. Some were sent to Bolivia or the United States, but most were sent to other parts of Mexico to work in near slave-like conditions on henequen, sugar cane, and sisal plantations in Yucatán and Oaxaca. An estimated sixty percent of these people died within their first year of confinement due to the harsh, unfamiliar climate and inhumane conditions of these plantations.