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  Napoleon III strove to re-create the glory of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, and he particularly wanted to achieve something great in military terms. As a result, the army of Napoleon III never had a moment’s rest. The same went for Menem’s father, George. Napoleon III, being the meddler he was, became involved in the various problems in the New World. When the American Civil War broke out, he supported the South and stood against Lincoln and the North. The feudal nature of the South’s cotton plantations were more suited to his temperament.

  In Mexico, Benito Juárez had become the minister of justice and devoted himself to confiscating the idle lands owned by the Catholic Church and establishing a new civil law, a law that would apply equally to all citizens. The Church, landowners, and aristocracy banded together. Civil war erupted. After three years, when their defeat became certain, the conservatives requested the aid of Napoleon III. Flush with his recent conquest of Indochina, and hearing his Spanish wife, Eugénie, urge him to build a Latin American empire every time she opened her mouth, he was elated when the conservatives of Mexico came to him. He named Archduke Maximilian as his representative; the Mexican aristocrats begged Maximilian to become emperor of Mexico, and so he traveled across the Atlantic with the army of Napoleon III and landed at the port of Veracruz. Menem’s father, George, sailed with them.

  As soon as he arrived in the Mexican capital, Maximilian forgot who had invited him. To be precise, he realized that the conservatives were not very popular with the citizenry. He unexpectedly declared his support for Juárez’s liberalist policies. The wrath of the betrayed conservatives rent the heavens. And yet Juárez had no love for him either.

  These were trying times for Menem’s father George as well. The Mexican peasant fighters seemed to lurk everywhere. They would appear suddenly, attack the French troops, and vanish again like ghosts. The massive cannons that the French had brought from west of the Alps were of no use in such guerrilla warfare. George’s only goal was to stay alive, though he began to realize that this new nation of Mexico was a fine place for white people such as himself. Mexico welcomed Latino immigrants, so if he settled down, he could build a house like a fortress on a vast hacienda, work the Indio slaves, and live like a king. If he returned to France, he would have no other choice but to live out his life as a career soldier. Furthermore, Napoleon III was nearing the end of his fortune. Having at last grown weary of the antiwar sentiment in France, he decided to withdraw his troops. The final days of his puppet Maximilian were approaching.

  Standing before his troops as they wearily retreated to the port of Veracruz, George delivered a speech: “We may retreat now, but this is because of the powerlessness of Maximilian and the Mexican aristocracy. Emperor Napoleon will not forget the New World. The day will surely come when the Tricolore will fly from Quebec to Panama. Soldiers, we are not defeated. Let us return with our heads held high.”

  When he finished his speech the troops erupted in thunderous applause. Some of them were so excited that they began to sing La Marseillaise. That night, George calmly packed the gold ingots that had been kept in the regimental headquarters and quietly left. The money had been offered to France as war funds by the privileged classes of Mexico, so he felt no guilt about taking it. He made the sign of the cross and prayed a short prayer: “Lord, gold is too precious a metal to be used for killing people.” Do not the thieves of Mexico give thanks to the Blessed Mother every time they take their cut? He took off his uniform, buried it, and disguised himself as a Mexican. Wearing a poncho and a broad-brimmed sombrero, he returned to Mexico City, where he took a train to the Yucatán. He changed his name to Don Carlos Giorgio. With his Spanish name he bought a house in Mérida and then married a mestizo woman who was one-sixteenth Spanish, and she bore him a son. This son was Menem.

  Giorgio first tried his hand at raising chicle before branching out into henequen also. The main ingredient of gum, chicle was a specialty of the Yucatán. He spent all of his days among his chicle trees, and one day before his sixtieth birthday, he was struck by a poison arrow shot by a disgruntled Mayan perched in a chicle tree, and died. As his mouth succumbed to paralysis, he called out to his son and made two dying wishes. First, Menem was not to give up the henequen hacienda, and second, he was to bury Giorgio in Nice, next to his first wife. The first request was relatively easy. He couldn’t have sold the hacienda even if he wanted to. But the request to bury his father in Nice was troublesome. What will become of the hacienda while I go all the way to Nice to dig a hole in the ground? Menem simply ignored the second request.

  Instead of searching for Giorgio’s murderer, Menem drove off almost all of the Mayan Indios. In their place he hired the Koreans, who had just arrived in Mérida. The contract was for four years, and they came at a much cheaper price than the Indios. They also had no ill will toward him, so he wouldn’t have to worry about uprisings or revolts. Yet now that he had met them himself, he found that they had fierce eyes and were rebellious, contrary to what he had heard. They were also much larger than the Mayans. So Menem determined to compromise. Providing them with corn and tortillas would not hurt him badly. And he had absolutely no desire to be struck dead by a poison arrow shot by a serf. The golden age of haciendas was over. He was more interested in the world of politics. Juárez’s successor, Porfirio Díaz, who had shot Emperor Maximilian to death and ascended to power, was an ignorant and uncouth man. This former guerrilla had transformed himself into a pro-American dictator who supported the elite and the landowning class. It was Díaz who turned all the farmlands into haciendas, stealing property from the petty farmers and giving it to the great landowners. As a result, a single hacienda owned by the famed Teresa family in the state of Chihuahua was larger than Belgium and the Netherlands put together, and it took a full day by train to cross it. Ninety-nine percent of Mexico’s farmland became haciendas, and ninety-eight percent of the peasants were robbed of their lands. Of course, Menem had no complaint with the hacienda system itself. He was simply displeased that President Díaz and a few families controlled everything. How could they not hold democratic elections? If Díaz held elections, as he had publicly pledged that he would, Menem had a mind to try his luck and run for governor of the Yucatán. Who knew how far he could go from that springboard, but at the very least he did not went to spend his entire life in this dusty wasteland.

  34

  TWO MONTHS PASSED. It was now July. The Koreans had changed greatly in appearance. Now almost none stuck themselves on the thorns of the henequen and bled. The women made leggings and gloves from pieces of cloth and sticks. The speed at which they worked also gradually increased, and after only two months they had caught up with the Mayans. They cut the henequen in silence. Laughter had disappeared. The women and children went out to the fields and worked twelve hours a day. There were suicides at a few of the haciendas. No one was surprised to see that someone had hanged himself from the crossbeam in a bathroom. The henequen juice got into their wounds and their flesh rotted from a skin disease; they caught malaria and hovered on the brink of death. No one batted an eye. Doctors were stationed at the plantations of Hawaii, if only as a formality, but at the haciendas there was not a single decent drugstore, let alone a doctor. In the Koreans’ minds, there was only one way to survive: to work like ants—even three-year-old children—save money like misers, and return to Korea when their contracts ended.

  The Mayans occasionally gazed vacantly at the Koreans. They had no place to save money and return to. This was their home. One day, strange people barged in, drew lines in their land, and began to call those places haciendas. Then these people told the Mayans to come work for them if they wanted to make a living. The overseers lashed out ceaselessly with their whips at these people who could not find any reason to work.

  When the day’s work ended, the men drank. Even though they had worked just as hard as the men, the women could not rest after going home. They lit the fires and cooked the food. They mended clothing, cleaned the house, and prepa
red the tools they would take with them the next day. “What I wouldn’t give to do laundry just once in a cold stream,” said a woman from Chungcheong province as she looked to the west, and the other women cried. Laundry was just as much of a luxury as bathing. The well was far away and water was scarce. They had no choice but to wait for the rainy season to begin.

  Occasionally the hacendado would slaughter a cow or a pig, and the women would race to the spot and quarrel with each other over the still warm intestines or tail. The Mexicans of the hacienda snickered and called these women pek—bitches. With blood on their hands, the women returned with their spoils and boiled soup, and the children were so intoxicated by the smell of meat they would not leave the kettle’s side. Even on days above 90 degrees, the women could not take off their skirts or short jackets; their shirtless husbands drank and beat them. Some men had started gambling. Gambling and liquor were deep-rooted vices for Korean men and were not easily remedied. Bickering and crying, shrieking and yelling continued all night long. The Yucatán was hell for the men, but it was far worse for the women.

  At Ijeong’s hacienda a Korean man from Pyeongan province violated a Mayan woman, and in retaliation his throat was slit. The police did not come. Directly after this, a Mayan man was stabbed to death with a machete. The hacendado seized the two Koreans whom the Mayans pointed out as the culprits, stripped off their shirts, threw them on a pile of henequen, and whipped them. The thorns on the henequen stems were more painful than the whip, and the two murderers writhed like worms on a pile of salt. When the whipping was over they were imprisoned in the hacienda’s jail. The henequen thorns lodged in their chests stung with every breath they took. They wanted to pull out the thorns, but no light came in, so it was not easy. Their wounds festered and vilely reeked. Only when ten days had passed did the door open and light shine in. Now that the jail was bright with dazzling tropical sunlight, they cleaned up their feces. The piles of dung were completely dry and crumbled like cookies to the touch. Worms wriggled and fell out of them.

  The two murderers returned to their paja and lingered in illness. Ijeong, who shared the paja, gave them food and water, with kimchi made from chili peppers and Western cabbage on the side. It was a delectable feast, but neither of them could eat much. They wobbled with every step, as if they had lost their sense of direction and time during their dark imprisonment; one of them passed away after only three days. As soon as the one died, the other rose as if it had all been a dream. It was almost as if the two of them had made a bet and agreed that the loser would give his remaining life force to the winner and take his leave. As the survivor stuffed his swollen face with corn gruel, he said to Ijeong, “Somehow I feel as if I will meet my end here. It’s just too hot.”

  Ijeong shut his mouth tight and said nothing. In the space of only a few days, two of the four men who had slept under his roof had died. Ijeong wondered if maybe he was alive merely because he was lucky. When the man from Pyeongan went to attack the Mayan woman, Ijeong had been next door playing chess with pieces carved from stone. When the man’s body was discovered, Ijeong had just gone to the cenote to draw water. The two enraged men did not look for Ijeong but went straight to where the Mayans lived, doggedly pursued a man who fled, and stabbed him to death. While the Mayan’s blood seeped into the ground, the two men stood in a daze and stared at each other. Only then did they realize the gravity of what they had done, and they raced back madly on weakened legs, were arrested by the hacienda guards, stripped of their clothes, and beaten on the pile of henequen.

  The one who had survived was called Dolseok; he was the son of a government slave. After the Reform of 1894, this slave had risen in status to become a commoner and sent his son to Seoul to make him a soldier. Dolseok did not follow his father’s will, but boarded the Ilford at Jemulpo. He did not know how to write, so he had left without sending his father a letter. And within two months he had killed a man. “What on earth happened?” he said, shaking violently. It felt as if the Mayan men were going to rush in and take his head. Ijeong told him not to worry and tried to calm him down, but it was no use. The next day, Ijeong went to the overseer and pointed to the money in his pocket, then at himself, and then at Dolseok. Then he pointed at the Mayan village and made a slicing motion with his hand across his neck. He could not speak the language, but his meaning was understood. The Mexican overseer decided to sell them, a source of trouble, to another hacienda. Dolseok’s involvement in the murder would reduce their price, so it naturally remained a secret. They were bound hand and foot to a column on a carriage. The weather was unusually cool. From afar, Ijeong saw black storm clouds moving in. Finally it would rain. He stared at the sky to the east and fell into a deep sleep.

  35

  HO HUI, a Chinese living in Mérida, met a group of Korean immigrants not far from the city’s downtown. He wrote an article about how shocked he was upon seeing them and sent it to the Wenhsing Daily, a Chinese newspaper published in San Francisco:

  Once, they deceived and bought people in China, but then rumors spread and there were no more applicants, so now they are purchasing slaves in Korea . . . They are all dressed in tattered clothing and wear straw sandals that are falling apart. During a heavy rain that lasted for days, the Koreans were scattered to various henequen farms. When they work, the women hold their children in their arms and carry them on their backs as they wander through the streets. The sight of them was so like cattle and beasts and I could not witness it without tears . . . If they do not work properly on the farms they are brought to their knees and beaten, their flesh torn from their bodies and blood spattered everywhere. I could not contain my lamentation at this hideous sight.

  Two Korean exchange students living in the United States, Jo Yeongsun and Sin Jeonghwan, read the article and hurriedly sent a letter to the Young Men’s Christian Association in Seoul. Jeong Seongyu, a young evangelist at the YMCA, reorganized this information and sent it on to the Capital Gazette, and on July 29, 1905, the article was published, with the title “Our People Have Become Slaves, So How Shall We Rescue Them?” In this roundabout way, the truth about the bond slaves in the Yucatán was made known to the Korean Empire.

  Two days later the Capital Gazette urged that measures be taken, saying, “We cannot bear hearing about the plight of the emigrants to Mexico.” Emperor Gojong issued an imperial mandate the very next day, August 1. “Why did the government not prevent this when the companies were soliciting emigrants in the very beginning? We must devise a way to swiftly bring these thousand or so people home.” It was an extremely direct and forceful declaration for the emperor of a Confucian nation known for skirting all subjects. The one who had become their lord was shaking with shame. After this, the Korea Daily News attacked the government’s emigration policy. Public opinion around the nation condemning the impotent government had reached a boiling point. But Mexico was too far away, and the two countries had no diplomatic relations. Yet Yi Hayeong, the Korean foreign minister, sent a telegram to the Mexican government: “Although we have never established friendly relations with your honored nation, we request that you protect our citizens until we dispatch an official.”

  The Mexican government sent this reply: “Stories of people being treated like slaves have been falsely reported. The Asian workers are in the Yucatán, but they are being treated very well, and an article on this was published in the Beijing Times, so please refer to this.”

  36

  ON AUGUST 12, 1905, the Korean vice minister of foreign affairs, Yun Chiho, was drinking coffee in Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. A meeting had been arranged by the pro-Japanese Durham Stevens, an American who worked as an adviser for the Korean Empire. Stevens began with a word of condolence. “I am sorry I could not visit you during your time of sorrow.” Yun Chiho observed etiquette and bowed his head. “There is no need for such a busy man to concern himself with every such matter, is there?” Yun Chiho had lost his Chinese wife, Ma Aifang, that February.

  Stevens introduced
the two Americans sitting next to him. One had a white face, and the other’s face was tanned dark by the sun. The white one was Heywood and the dark one was Swinsy, a representative of the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association. Swinsy had an affable personality and appeared to know much about Yun Chiho. “The Hawaiian plantation owners are very displeased with the measures the Korean Empire has taken. The owners say that Koreans are more than welcome there, as they work far harder than either the Japanese or the Chinese, and are well behaved, but if they are suddenly forbidden from going, where are the owners to find such a labor force?”

  Yun Chiho replied, “Is that so?” Swinsy pulled his chair forward and asked, “Is there any possibility that this measure may be rescinded?” Yun Chiho pushed his glasses up. “Well, both government and public opinion on emigration is quite negative, so it will not be easy.”

  At this, the diplomatic adviser Stevens interrupted. “Why don’t you visit Hawaii? If you go and see for yourself how the peasants are working, give them some encouragement, and put in a good word with His Majesty when you return, it will greatly help to foster friendly relations between Korea and the United States as well. The Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association has said they will cover your expenses.” Swinsy nodded at this, suggesting that they had already agreed.

  Yun Chiho was the ideal person for this job. He was a Christian who had studied in the United States, at Vanderbilt and Emory universities, and had an excellent command of three foreign languages: he spoke fluent English, was skilled in Chinese, and had learned Japanese when he had fled to Japan during the Coup of 1884. But he raised his hand and refused the offer to pay his expenses. “I cannot very well accept money privately while working for my country.”