In South Texas in the 1920s, a Mexican laborer looking for work could find himself picking cotton for a farmer he had never agreed to work for.
The mechanism was remarkably simple.
Arrest him for vagrancy. Fine him. Have a farmer pay the fine. Now the man owed the farmer money. Send him into the cotton fields to work off the debt.
Sometimes an armed guard made sure he stayed there.
It was called peonage, or debt slavery. It was already illegal under federal law. But in Willacy County, centered around Raymondville, it became part of the machinery used to supply farmers with cheap labor.
The workers caught in it were overwhelmingly Mexican. Black and white workers could also be caught in the system, but the central story in Raymondville was the control of Mexican labor in a region where Mexican workers formed the great majority of the agricultural workforce.
A federal investigation eventually discovered more than 400 vagrancy cases filed in the Raymondville court. (tshaonline.org)
The Law Became Part of the Labor System
This wasn’t simply one farmer mistreating his workers.
The people eventually charged included Willacy County Sheriff Raymond Teller, Deputy Sheriff William Hargrove, Justice of the Peace Floyd Dodd and several farmers.
During labor shortages, authorities could arrest people as vagrants. Farmers paid their fines. The prisoners then worked off the resulting debt by picking cotton.
The result was almost perfect for the employer.
A worker normally has one fundamental power: he can walk away.
If another farmer pays more, he can leave. If working conditions are terrible, he can quit. If enough workers refuse the offered wage, employers eventually have to offer more money.
Peonage took that power away.
The worker wasn’t simply poor anymore.
He owed somebody.
And the sheriff stood behind the debt. (tshaonline.org)
Hundreds of Mexican Laborers — Until Two Different Men Were Caught
For years the system operated with little effective interference.
Then, in 1926, it made a mistake.
It caught Allen Nichols and Leonard Swanson.
They were not Mexican cotton pickers. They were white men from Washington, D.C. Nichols had even worked as a page in the United States House of Representatives.
They were arrested and subjected to the same system.
And something changed.
The federal government intervened.
The Handbook of Texas says federal prosecutors were able to build their case using Nichols and Swanson because the two were considered credible witnesses.
That sentence deserves to sit there for a moment.
Federal investigators found more than 400 vagrancy cases.
The people most commonly trapped by the system were Mexican laborers.
Then two white men from Washington were caught in it.
They were considered credible witnesses.
And now the sheriff was going to federal court. (tshaonline.org)
We cannot look inside the minds of federal officials nearly a century later and prove exactly why those two witnesses made the difference.
We don’t have to.
The facts can stand beside one another.
Readers can decide what they mean.
Five Mexican Men Were Dead, Too
There was something even darker happening in Willacy County.
In September 1926, Mexico formally protested the deaths of Tomás Núñez and his sons at Raymondville. Contemporary reporting described allegations that a mob had entered the jail, tortured and shot the men, and beheaded the elder Núñez. (texashistory.unt.edu)
Ultimately, Teller and farmer Frank Brandt were tried as accessories in connection with the murder of Tomás Núñez and four other men.
The cases became entangled with the peonage controversy. Witnesses were harassed. An attorney who had helped build the case against the defendants was beaten. (tshaonline.org)
Even after the peonage convictions, federal authorities charged four Willacy County men, including two deputy sheriffs, with intimidating witnesses. One witness said he had been driven out of the county. Attorney H. B. Hart appeared in Brownsville with his face bruised and cut after saying he had been ordered to leave Raymondville. (texashistory.unt.edu)
This wasn’t merely an argument over agricultural wages.
People were frightened.
People were beaten.
People were dead.
The Sheriff Explained Himself
Sheriff Teller denied that he had participated in an illegal peonage operation.
But something he said during the controversy may reveal more than a confession ever could.
Teller argued that if he had formally charged the Mexicans arrested for “loafing” and simply allowed them to sit out their fines in jail at state expense, he wouldn’t have gotten himself into such trouble. (tshaonline.org)
Think about what that argument accepts.
Poor Mexican men could be arrested because authorities considered them loafers.
The problem, from Teller’s perspective, wasn’t necessarily the arrest.
The problem was what happened afterward.
The arrested men became labor.
A Federal Jury Finally Said No
The federal peonage trial was held in Nueces County in 1927.
The jury convicted Sheriff Raymond Teller, Carl Brandt, Frank Brandt, Justice of the Peace Floyd Dodd and L. K. Stockwell.
Sentences ranged from one month to eighteen months. (tshaonline.org)
But conviction in a courtroom did not necessarily mean condemnation back home.
The convicted men received considerable community sympathy. Teller was even given a celebration when he was released from jail.
The Handbook of Texas describes a widely held attitude in Willacy County: farmers needed some kind of law to protect their investments. (tshaonline.org)
Their investments.
That is worth remembering.
Because the “investment” being protected required preventing another human being from deciding where he would work.
The Freedom to Walk Away
It is tempting to put stories like Raymondville into a box labeled “racism” and move on.
But that misses something important.
This was about race.
It was also about money and power.
Poor workers are most valuable to powerful employers when the workers have few alternatives. A man who can leave can demand better treatment. A man who can find another employer can demand better wages.
A man who owes you money, cannot leave, and knows the sheriff may come looking for him is a very different kind of worker.
The peonage system understood that perfectly.
And in Raymondville, that system fell most heavily on Mexican laborers.
When America Finally Looked
There is another reason Raymondville belongs in Brown but Proud.
American history contains moments when injustice suffered for years by minorities suddenly became impossible for the larger country to ignore after white Americans experienced it too.
Raymondville gives us a particularly uncomfortable example.
More than 400 vagrancy cases were uncovered.
Mexican laborers had been forced into servitude.
Five Mexican men died in a separate episode connected to the same sheriff and the same political environment.
Then the labor system caught Allen Nichols and Leonard Swanson.
Two white men from Washington.
They could testify about what had happened to them.
They were considered credible.
And the federal government finally had its case.
The Trial Ended. The Story Didn’t.
Sheriff Teller went to prison.
Federal law prevailed.
Peonage was illegal before Raymondville, and it remained illegal afterward.
But the Handbook of Texas ends its account with perhaps the most important fact of all:
The lives of the farmworkers changed little. (tshaonline.org)
That is why Raymondville matters almost a century later.
Freedom isn’t only something written in a Constitution.
For a working man, one of its simplest expressions is the ability to look at the person employing him and say:
No.
I’m leaving.
In Raymondville, Texas, there was a time when Mexican workers discovered that saying those words could bring the sheriff.
Sources: Texas State Historical Association — Raymondville Peonage Cases; UTRGV Digital Exhibits — Raymondville Peonage Collection; contemporary Texas newspaper reporting preserved by the Portal to Texas History.
