and argued "that the laborers were not "free" as a result of various practices that originated in colonial times and that kept the indigenous people in a state of degradation." Although slavery had been prohibited by the Federal Constitution of 1824, the serfs continued to live in conditions akin to slavery. They were prohibited from leaving the farms where they worked because they were subject to debt mechanisms, those who protested were whipped and imprisoned by their employers. Pino Suárez pointed out that the use of whipping was a "degrading practice" and proposed establishing a minimum wage for day laborers and guaranteeing their mobility and ability to seek employment elsewhere and negotiate their employment conditions. Having trained as a lawyer, Pino Suárez pointed out that serfdom in Yucatán, in addition to being unfair, violated the Federal Constitution of 1857 that prohibited slavery and guaranteed the rights of transit (article 11), education (article 11) and labor (articles 3 and 4). He also accused "the Molinista regime of having disregarded its obligation to integrate of the indigenous people into public life and promoting the installation of schools on the haciendas which could provide compulsory secular education." Pino Suárez's articles have been criticized, either because he disseminated an "idealized image of the Yucatecan indigenous peoples" or, according to contemporary Molinista newspapers, because by placing the rights of the indigenous peoples above the interests of the white population (criollo), he showed that he did not "love Yucatan." In the context of the Caste War of Yucatán, the ethnic conflict between the maya people and the criollos that had just ended in 1901, this criticism was particularly damaging in the eyes of predominantly white newspaper readers in Mérida, a city that had historically been inhabited almost exclusively by people of European descent. Although Pino Suárez was the son of meridano parents and had been raised, educated and married in Mérida, the Molinista newspapers did not miss any opportunity to remind their readers that he had been born in Tabasco and was, therefore, alien to Yucatán. Dominated by a powerful criollo oligarchy, known as "the divine caste", the Yucatán Peninsula had long considered itself autonomous from the rest of Mexico and had a long history of separatism. The newspaper also criticized the role of Olegario Molina in his two facets as a leading politician and businessman: "State officials were so wary of criticism of any kind