Analysis uncovers how emancipation disrupted debt peonage and improved labor conditions in Northern Mexico.
Runaway servants who fled Mexico for Texas in large numbers after the US-Mexico War caused a significant transition in the relationship between masters and servants on the Mexican frontier. Because of their escapes, many people on both sides of the border began to see debt peonage as comparable to slavery. Ultimately, the emancipation of slavery in the United States deeply disrupted the institution of debt peonage in Mexico. Mexican masters sought the extradition of their servants, but those efforts failed because US authorities refused to return them. By the 1880s, labor conditions in Northern Mexico had liberalized because of the erosion of debt peonage.
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James David Nichols (2025) studied this question.
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