Note 17 — Chapter IV · NICARAGUA

In a previous chapter, the author has stated it to be his opinion that the plantations of Guatemala could be operated successfully without a peonage system. The effect of the repeal of the labor laws in Nicaragua would seem to prove the contrary, were it not for the great difference between the Indians of the two countries. In Guatemala, the Indians depend upon the planters for a living, as they have little land of their own. They were, moreover, almost wholly an agricultural people before the Spanish conquest, whereas the Indians of Matagalpa have always secured at least a portion of their food by hunting, and have never been accustomed to any but spasmodic and irregular agricultural labor. They have also great tracts of land of their own, of which, unlike the tribes in Guatemala, they have never been dispossessed.