Barbarous Mexico/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
REPRESSIVE ELEMENTS OF THE DIAZ MACHINE
Americans launching upon business in Mexico are usually given about the same treatment at the hands of local authorities as they have been used to at home. The readier hand for graft is more than overbalanced by the easier plucking of the special privilege plum. Sometimes an American falls into disfavor and is cautiously persecuted, but it is seldom. And if he is there to get rich quickly, as is usual, he judges the Mexican government by the aid it gives to his ambition. To him the system of Diaz is the wisest, most modern and most beneficent on the face of the earth.
To be wholly fair to Diaz and his system, I must confess that I am not judging Mexico from the viewpoint of the American investor. I am estimating it from its effects upon the mass of Mexicans generally, who, in the end, must surely determine the destiny of Mexico. From the viewpoint of the common Mexican the government is wholly the opposite of beneficent; it is a slave-driver, a thief, a murderer; it has neither justice nor mercy—nothing but exploitation.
In order to impose his rule upon an unwilling people General Diaz found it necessary not only to reward the powerful of his country and to be free and easy with the foreigner, but also to strip the people of their liberties to the point of nakedness. He took away from them all governmental powers, rights and securities and all powers to demand the return of these things. Why do nations universally demand a popular form of government? Never until I saw Mexico did I appreciate to its full the reason why. The answer is that life under any other system is intolerable. The common interests can be conserved only by the common voice. Governments by individuals not responsible to the mass invariably result in robbery of the mass and debasement of the nation. The upbuilding of any people requires certain social guarantees which are not possible except under a government in which considerable numbers take part.
When General Diaz led his army into the Mexican capital back in 1876 he declared himself provisional president. Shortly afterwards he held a pretended election and declared himself constitutional president. By a "pretended election" I mean that he put his soldiers in possession of the polls and prevented, by intimidation, anyone from appearing as a candidate against him. Thus was he "elected" unanimously. And, except for one term, when he voluntarily relinquished the office, he has continued to elect himself unanimously in much the same way.
I do not need to dwell on the election farces of Mexico, since the warmest flatterers of Diaz admit that Mexico has not had one real election during the past thirty-four years. But to those who desire some statement of the matter it will only be necessary to point out the results of the Mexican "elections." Can anyone imagine a nation of some 15,000,000 with, say 3,000,000 persons of voting age, all preferring the same man for their chief executive, not only once, but year after year and decade after decade? Just picture such a condition obtaining in the United States, for example. Could anyone imagine Mr. Taft being re-elected by a unanimous vote? Mr. Roosevelt was undoubtedly the most popular president this country ever had. Could anybody imagine Mr. Roosevelt being re-elected by a unanimous vote? Moreover, could anyone imagine a country of 15,000,000 souls in which ambition never stirred the heart of more than one individual with the desire to stand before the people as a candidate for the highest office in the nation?
And yet this is exactly the condition we find in Mexico. Eight times Don Porfirio has been seated as "president." Eight times he has been elected "unanimously." Never has an opponent stood against him at the polls.
And the story of the presidential succession is repeated in the states. Re-election without contest is a rule which has seen exceedingly few exceptions. The governor of the state holds office for life, unless for some reason he loses favor with Don Porfirio, which is seldom. A member of the Mexican upper class once put the situation to me quite aptly. Said he: "Death is the only anti-re-electionist in Mexico." The chief reason why the states are not governed by men who have been in office for thirty four years is because those who were first put in have died and it has become necessary to fill their places with others. As it is, Colonel Prospero Cahuantzi has ruled the State of Tlaxcala for the whole Porfirian period. General Aristeo Mercado has ruled the State of Michoacan for over twenty-five years. Teodoro Dehesa has governed the State of Veracruz for twenty-five years. When deposed in 1909, General Bernardo Reyes had governed the State of Nuevo Leon for nearly twenty-five years. General Francisco Canedo, General Abraham Bandala and Pedro Rodriguez ruled the States of Sinaloa, Tabasco and Hidalgo, respectively, for over twenty years. General Luis Terrazas was governor of Chihuahua for over twenty years, while Governors Martinez, Cardenas and Obregon Gonzalez ruled the States of Puebla,
Diaz's system of government is very simple, once it is explained. The president, the governor, the jefe politico—these three names represent all the power in the country. In Mexico there is but one governmental power—the executive. The other two departments exist in name only. Not one elective office remains in the country. All are appointive. And through the appointive power the three executives mentioned control the entire situation. The word of these three officials in his particular sphere—the president in the twenty-seven states and two territories, the governor in his state, the jefe politico in his district—is the law of the land. Not one of the three is required to answer to the people for his acts. The governor must answer to the president and the jefe politico to the governor and the president. It is the most perfect one-man system on earth.
Of course such conditions were not established without a struggle. Neither can they be maintained without continued struggle. Autocracy cannot be created by fiat. Slavery cannot exist merely by decree of a ruler. There must be an organization and a policy to compel such things. There must be a military organization armed to the teeth. There must be police-and police spies. There must be expropriations and imprisonments for political purposes. And there must be murder—murder all the time. No autocracy can exist without murder. Autocracy feeds upon murder. It has never been otherwise, and, thanks to human nature as we find it, never can be.
The succeeding two chapters are to be devoted to sketching the extirpation of political movements having for their purpose the re-establishment of republican institutions in Mexico. But first it seems well to define the public powers and institutions which are employed in this unholy work. These consist of:
The army.
The rurale forces.
The police.
The acordada.
The Ley Fuga.
Quintana Roo, the "Mexican Siberia."
The prisons.
The jefes politicos.
In a published interview issued during the Liberal rebellion in 1908, Vice-President Corral announced that the government had more than 50,000 soldiers who were ready to take the field at an hour's notice. In these figures he must have included the rurale forces, for employes of the War Department have since assured me that the regular army numbered less, almost an exact 40,000, in fact. On paper the Mexican army is, then, smaller than ours, but, according to estimates of the actual size of our army published by American experts during the past three years, it is larger, and in proportion to the population it is at least five times larger. General Diaz's excuse for the maintenance of such a large army has always been a hint that the country might at any time find itself in danger of invasion by the United States. That his purpose was not so much to prepare against invasion as against internal revolution is evidenced by the fact that, instead of fortifying the border, he fortified inland cities. Moreover, he keeps the bulk of the army concentrated near the large centers of population and his best and most extensive equipment consists of mountain batteries, recognized as specially well adapted to internal warfare.
Mexico is actually policed by the army and to this end the country is divided into ten military zones, three commanderies and fourteen jefaturas. One sees soldiers everywhere. There is not an important city in the country that has not its army barracks, and the barracks are situated in the heart of the city, where they are always ready. The discipline of war is maintained at all times, the presence of the soldiers and their constant drilling are a perpetual threat to the people. And they are used upon the people often enough to keep always fresh in the memories of the people the fact that the threat is not an empty one. Such readiness for war as is maintained on the part of the Mexican troops is not known in this country. There is no red tape when it comes to fighting and troops arrive at a scene of trouble in an incredibly short time. As one example, at the time of the Liberal rebellion in the fall of 1906 the Liberals attacked the city of Acayucan, Veracruz. Despite the fact that the city is situated in a comparatively isolated part of the tropics, the government concentrated 4,000 soldiers on the town within twenty-four hours after the first alarm.
As an instrument of repression, the Mexican army is employed effectively in two separate and distinct ways. It is an engine of massacre and it is an exile institution, a jail-house, a concentration camp for the politically undesirable.
This second function of the army abides in the fact that more than 95 per cent of the enlisted men are drafted, and drafted for the particular reason that they are politically undesirable citizens, or that they are good subjects for graft on the part of the drafter. The drafter is usually the jefe politico. A judge—at the instance of the executive authority—sometimes sentences a culprit to the army instead of to jail, and a governor—as at Cananea—sometimes personally superintends the placing of considerable bodies of men in the army, but as a rule the jefe politico is the drafting officer and upon him there is no check. He has no system other than to follow his own sweet will. He drafts laborers who dare to strike, editors who criticize the government, farmers who resist exorbitant taxation, and any other ordinary citizens who may present opportunities for graft.
As a dumping ground for the politically undesirable, the conditions within the army are ideal, from the point of view of the government. The men are prisoners rather than soldiers and they are treated as such. For this reason the Mexican army has gained the title of "The National Chain-gang." While in Diaz-land I visited a number of army barracks. The barracks at Rio Blanco are typical. Here, ever since the Rio Blanco strike, 600 soldiers and 200 rurales have been quartered within the shadow of the great mill, in barracks and upon ground furnished by the company, an hourly menace to the miserably exploited workers there.
At Rio Blanco a little captain showed us about—De Lara and I—at the behest of an officer of the manufacturing company. El Senor Capitan informed us that the pay of the Mexican soldier, with rations, is $1.90 per month in American money and that the soldier is always expected to spend the major portion of this for extra food, as the food furnished is of too small a variety and too scarce a quantity to satisfy any human being. The captain confirmed the reports that I had often heard to the effect that the soldier, in all his five years service, never has an hour to himself away from the eye of an officer, that he is as much a prisoner in his barracks as is the life-termer in a penitentiary.
The proportion of involuntary soldiers the captain estimated at 98 per cent. Often, said he, the soldiers, crazy
But the thing that struck me most forcibly during my visit was that the little captain, in the hearing of half a company of men, told us that the soldiers were of the lowest class of Mexicans, were good for nothing, a bad lot, etc., apologizing thus in order to make us understand that in time of war the quality of the army would be much improved. The soldiers heard and failed to look pleasant and I decided right there that the loyalty of the Mexican army stands upon a very flimsy basis—merely fear of death—and that in case of any future rebellion against the dictatorship the army can be counted upon to revolt in a body as soon as the rebellion develops any appreciable strength—that is, enough strength to afford the deserters a fair chance for their lives.
The territory of Quintana Roo has been characterized as one of the "Siberias of Mexico," from the fact that to it, as convict-soldiers, are consigned thousands of political suspects and labor agitators. Sent there ostensibly to fight the Maya Indians, they are treated so harshly that probably not one per cent of them ever see their homes again. I did not succeed in penetrating personally to Quintana Roo, but I have heard accounts of it from so many authentic sources that I have no doubt whatever that my estimate of it is correct. One of these sources of information I shall quote at some, length, a distinguished government physician who for three years was Chief of Sanitary Service with the army in the territory.
"For thirty years," said this man, "there has been an army of from 2,000 to 3,000 men constantly in the field against the Maya Indians. These soldiers are made up almost entirely of political suspects and even many of the officers are men who have been detailed to duty in the territory only because the government has some reason for wanting to get rid of them. Quintana Roo is the most unhealthy part of Mexico, but the soldiers die from five to ten times as fast as necessary because of the grafting of their chief, General Bravo. During the first two years I was there the death rate was 100 per cent a year, for in that period more than 4,000 soldiers died of starvation and sickness induced by starvation!
"For month after month," said this physician, "I have known the deaths to average thirty a day. For every soldier killed by a Maya at least one hundred die of starvation or sickness. General Bravo steals the commissary money and starves the soldiers with the connivance of the federal government. More than 2,000 have died of acute starvation alone during the past seven years, since General Bravo took command. Not only that, but Bravo steals the cremation money. The soil of the peninsula, you must know, is rocky, the hard-pan is close to the surface and it is not practical to bury the dead. The government appropriates money to buy oil for cremation, but Bravo steals this money and leaves the bodies to lie in the sun and rot away!"
Because it would result in his imprisonment I cannot publish the name of this authority. I feel perfectly free, however, to name Colonel Francisco B. Cruz, chief deporter of Yaquis. Colonel Cruz told me that in three years General Bravo had saved $10,000,000 from money grafted off the army in Quintana Roo. The fact that nearly all the deaths of soldiers was the result of starvation was proven in the year 1902 to 1903, when General Bravo took a vacation and General Vega, had command. General Vega stole no food or medicine or oil money and as a result he reduced the number of deaths from thirty a day to an average of three a day.
"In its campaign against the Mayas," the former Sanitary Chief told me, "the government built a railroad sixty metres long. This railroad is known among the soldiers as 'The Alley of Death,' for it is said that every tie cost five lives in the building. When this road was built many prisoners were taken from the military prison of San Juan de Ulua to do the work. To encourage them to toil all were promised that their sentences would be cut in half, but after a few weeks in the hands of Bravo the majority begged—but in vain—to be returned to Ulua, which is the most dreaded of all houses of incarceration in Mexico. These unfortunate prisoners were starved and when they staggered from weakness they were beaten, some being beaten to death. Some of them committed suicide at the first opportunity, as did many of the soldiers—fifty of them, while I was there."
Fancy a soldier committing suicide! Fancy the cruel conditions that would lead fifty soldiers among 2,000 to commit suicide in the space of three years!
As to the graft features of the army drafting system, as I have suggested, the jefe politico selects the names in his own way in the privacy of his own office and no one may question his methods. Wherefore he waxes rich. Since—allowing for a high death rate—some 10,000 men are drafted every year, it will be seen that the graft possibilities of the system are enormous. The horror of the army is used by the jefe to squeeze money out of wage-workers and small property-holders. Unless the victim is drafted for political reasons, the system permits the drafted person to buy another to take his place—provided the drafting officer is willing. This option on the part of the jefe is used as a great moneygetter, since the jefe is never willing unless the victim buys the jefe as well as the substitute. Usually it is not necessary to buy the substitute, but only the ‘‘jefe politico’’. In some districts it is said to be a regular practice to keep tab on the higher-paid class of wage-laborers and when they are paid after a long job, to drag them to jail and tell them that they have been drafted, then, a day or two later, to send word that $100, more or less, has been fixed as the price of their liberty. I was told of an instance in which a carpenter was drafted in this way five times in the space of three years. Four times he parted with his money, sums ranging from $50 to $100, but the fifth time he lost courage and permitted himself to be led away to the barracks.
The rurales are mounted police usually selected from the criminal classes, well equipped and comparatively well paid, whose energies have been turned to robbing and killing for the government. There are federal rurales and state rurales, the total of the two running somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000. They are divided among the various states in about an equal proportion to the population, but are utilized most in the rural districts. The rurales are the special rough riders of the jefe politicos and they are given almost unlimited powers to kill at their own discretion. Investigation of wanton killings by rurales working singly or in squads is almost never made and the victim must stand well indeed with the government before punishment is meted out to the murderer.
In Mexico it is a small town that has no soldiers or rurales and a smaller town that has no regular gendarmes. The City of Mexico has over 2,000, or twice as many as New York in comparison to its size, and the other municipalities are equipped in proportion. At
While the "plain clothes" department of the Mexican police is a comparatively insignificant affair, there exists, outside of and beyond it, a system of secret police on a very extensive scale. An American newspaperman employed on an English daily of the capital once told me: "There are twice as many secret police as regular police. You see a uniformed policeman standing in the middle of the street. That is all you see, or at least all you notice. But leaning against the wall of that alley entrance is a man whom you take to be a loafer; over on the other side lounges a man whom you think is a peon. Just start something and then try to get away. Both of those men will be after you. There is no getting away in Mexico; every alley is guarded as well as every street!
"Why," said he, "they know your business as well as you do yourself. They talk with you and you never suspect. When you cross the border they take your name and business and address, and before you've reached the capital they know whether you've told the truth or not. They know what you're here for and have decided what they're going to do about it."
Perhaps this man overstated the case—the exact truth of these matters is hard to get at—but I know that it is impossible to convince the average Mexican that the secret police system of his country is not a colossal institution. The acordada is an organization of secret assassins, a sort of secret police, attached to the government of each of the Mexican states. It consists of a jefe de acordada and anywhere from a half dozen to a half hundred subordinates. Personal enemies of the governor or of the jefes politicos, political suspects and highwaymen or others suspected of crime but against whom there is no evidence, are frequently put out of the way by the acordada. The names of the marked men are furnished by the officials and the members of the society are sent about the state with orders to kill quietly and without noise. Two notable cases where the acordada are reported as having killed extensively are those of the days following the strikes at Cananea and Rio Blanco. Personally I am acquainted with a Mexican whose brother was killed by the acordada for doing no more than shouting "Viva Ricardo Flores Magon." I know also of a son of a general high up in the councils of the Mexican government who became a sub-jefe de acordada in the state of Coahuila. He was a wild young fellow who had been put out of the army for acts of insubordination toward a superior officer. But his father was a friend of Diaz and Diaz himself appointed the youth to the acordada job, which paid a salary of three hundred pesos a month. This man was given two assistants and was sent out with orders to "kill quietly along the border" any and all persons whom he might suspect of connection with the Liberal Party. No check whatever was placed upon him. He was to kill at his own discretion.
The acordada at times work extensively even in the Mexican capital, which more nearly approaches the modern in its police methods than probably any other city in the country. Before the Liberal rebellion of 1906 the government, through spies, secured the detailed plans of the rebels, as well as the names of hundreds of the participants, and a large number of these were killed. What was done by the acordada in Mexico City at that time may be guessed by a statement made to me by a well known newspaperman of Mexico City. Said he: "I have it from the most reliable source that during the week preceding September 16 not less than 2,000 suspects were made away with quietly by the secret police and special deputies—the acordada—so quietly that not a line in regard to it has ever been published to this day!"
I hesitate to print this statement because it is too colossal for me to believe, and I do not expect the reader to believe it. But I have no doubt whatever that it was partially true; that, say, several score were killed at this time and in this way. Liberals whom I have met have often spoken to me of friends who had suddenly disappeared and never been heard of again and many of these were supposed to have been done away with by the acordada.
The Ley Fuga, or law of flight, is a method of killing resorted to by all branches of the Mexican police power. It was originated by order of General Diaz, who decreed that his police might shoot any prisoners who should try to escape while under guard. While it may not have originated for that purpose, this rule came to be used as one of the means of putting to death persons against whom the government had not the shadow of another excuse for killing. The marked man is simply arrested, taken to a lonely spot and there shot. The matter is kept quiet, if possible, but if a situation should arise that demands an explanation, the report is given out that the victim had attempted to escape and had brought his fate upon himself. Thus it is freely asserted that thousands of lives have been taken during the past thirty-four years. Today instances of the Ley Fuga are frequently reported in the Mexican press.
Many political outlaws end their days in prison. Among the Mexican prisons there are two whose horrors stand out far above the others—San Juan de Ulua and Belem.
During both of my trips to Mexico made during 1908 and 1909 I put forth desperate efforts to secure admission as a visitor to Belem. I saw the governor of the Federal District; I saw the American ambassador; I tried to enter with a prison physician. But I was never able to travel farther than the inner door.
Through that door I could see into the central court, where ranged hundreds of human beings made wild beasts by the treatment they received, ragged, filthy, starving, wolfish wrecks of men—a sight calculated to provoke a raucous laugh at the solemn declarations of certain individuals that Mexico has a civilized government.
But farther than that inner court I could not go. I was permitted to visit other prisons in Mexico, but not Belem. When I pressed His Excellency, the Governor, he admitted that it was not safe. "On account of the malas condiciones, the vile conditions," he said, "it would not do. Why," he told me, "only a short time ago the vice-president, Senor Corral, dared to make a hurried visit to Belem. He contracted typhus and nearly died. You cannot go."
I told him that I had heard of Americans being permitted to visit Belem. But he was unable to remember. Doubtless those other Americans were too well known —they were too much involved in Mexican affairs—to leave any danger of their coming out and telling the truth of what they saw. My credentials were not satisfactory enough to permit me to see Belem.
But I know Belem fairly well, I think, for I have talked with persons who have seen Belem as prisoners and come out of its horrors alive. Editors, many of them were; and I have talked with others—officials, prison physicians, and I have read the newspapers of Mexico.
Suffice it, however, to put down some bare and naked facts. Belem is the general prison for the Federal District, which comprises the Mexican capital and some surrounding suburbs, approximating, in all, a population of 600,000 people. It is alike city jail, county jail and penitentiary, except that there is also in the district another penitentiary, which is distinguished from Belem by confining within its walls only criminals who have been sentenced to more than eight years confinement. The penitentiary—which is so designated—is a modern institution, decently built and sewered. The prisoners are few and they are fairly well fed. Visitors are always welcome at the penitentiary, for it is principally for show. When you hear a traveler extolling the prison system of Mexico put it down that he was conducted through the Federal District penitentiary only—that he does not know of Belem.
Belem is a musty old convent which was turned into a prison by the simple act of herding some thousands of person within its walls. It is not large enough decently to house five hundred inmates, but frequently it houses more than five thousand. These five thousand are given a daily ration of biscuit and beans insufficient in quantity to keep an ordinary person alive for many weeks. The insufficiency of this ration is so well realized by the prison officials that a regular system of feeding from the outside has grown up. Daily the friends and relatives of prisoners bring them baskets of food, in order that they may live through their term of confinement. Of course it is a terrible drain on the poor, but the system serves its purpose—except for those hundreds of unfortunates who have no friends on the outside. These starve to death without a finger being raised to help them.
"Within three days after entering Belem," a Mexican prison physician informed me, "every inmate contracts a skin disease, a terrible itch which sets the body on fire. This disease is entirely the result of the filthy conditions of the place. Every year," he continued, "the prison goes through an epidemic of typhus, which kills an average of at least ten per cent of the inmates. Within Belem there is no system of order among the prisoners. The weak are at the mercy of the strong. Immediately you enter as a prisoner you are set upon by a horde of half-crazed men who tear the clothes from your back, take away your valuables, if you have any, and usually commit nameless crimes upon your person, while officials of the prison stand grinning by. The only way to save yourself in Belem is to turn wild beast like the rest, and even then you must be strong—very strong."
Should I give the name of this physician every official at the national capital would instantly recognize him as a man of high standing with the government. I shall not name him only because if I did he also would go to Belem as a prisoner. Such stories as his I heard from too many widely different sources to be able to doubt them. The stories of the Belem epidemics always get more or less into the Mexican papers. I remember that during my first visit to Mexico, in the fall of 1908, the papers reported an epidemic of typhus. For the first three days the number of new cases were daily recorded, but after that the news was suppressed. The condition threatened to become too great a scandal, for on the third day there were 176 new cases!
According to an old prison director whom I interviewed, at least twenty per cent of the prisoners at Belem contract tuberculosis. This prison director spent many years in the prison at Puebla. There, he says, seventy-five per cent of the men who go into the place come out, if they ever come out, with tuberculosis.
Torture such as was employed in the Middle Ages is used in Belem to secure confessions. When a man is taken to the police station, if he is suspected of a felony he is strung up by the thumbs until he tells. Another method used is that of refusing the prisoner drink. He is given food but no water until he chokes. Ofter prisoners declare before the judge that they have been tortured into confession, but no investigation is made. There are—inevitably—records of innocent men who have confessed to murder in order to escape the torture of the thumbs or of the thirst. While I was in Mexico two Americans suspected of robbery were reported in the newspapers as having been arrested, their wrists strapped to the bars of their cells, and their finger nails jerked out with steel pincers. This incident was reported to our State Department, but no action was taken.
San Juan de Ulua is an old military fortress situated in the harbor of Veracruz—a fortress which has been turned into a prison. Officially San Juan de Ulua is known as a military prison, but in fact it is a political prison, a prison for political suspects, and so choice is the company that resides therein—resides, but is ever changing, for the members die fast—and so personal is the attention given to this place by President Diaz, that throughout Mexico San Juan de Ulua is popularly known as the "private prison of Diaz."
San Juan de Ulua is built of cement, the prison cells are under the sea and the salt water seeps through upon the prisoners, some of whom lie, half-naked and half starved, in dark dungeons too small to permit of a full grown man lying down in comfort. To San Juan de Ulua was sent Juan Sarabia, vice-president of the Liberal Party, Margarita Martinez, a leader of the strike at Rio Blanco, Lazaro Puente, Carlos Humbert, Abraham Salcido, Leonardo Villarreal, Bruno Trevino and Gabriel Rubio, a sextet of gentlemen handed over to Mexico by the United States government at the request of the former as "undesirable immigrants;" Caesar Canales, Juan de la Torre, Serrano, Ugalde, Marquez, and scores of other leaders of the Liberal movement. Since entering those grey walls few of these men or women have ever been heard of again. It is not known whether they are dead or alive, whether they were shot beyond the walls, whether they died of disease and starvation or whether they are still eking out a miserable existence there, hoping against hope that a freer government will come and set them free. They have never been heard of because no political prisoner in San Juan de Ulua is ever permitted to communicate in any way with his friends or with the outside world. They cross the harbor in a little boat, they disappear within the grey walls and that is all. Their friends never learn how they get on, nor when they die or how.
Of the official assassins of Mexico the jefe politico is the arch fiend. The jefe politico commands the local police and rurales, directs the acordada and frequently gives orders to the regular troops. While, because of government control of the press, comparatively few crimes of the jefes politicos become public, yet during my most recent visit to Mexico—during the winter and spring of 1909—two wholesale killings which were prompted by jefes politicos were widely reported in the newspapers of that country. One was that of Tehuitzingo, where sixteen citizens were executed without trial, and the other was that of Velardena, where, for holding a street parade in defiance of the jefe politico, several were shot down in the streets and a number variously estimated as from twelve to thirty-two were arrested, lined up and shot, and buried in trenches which they had been compelled to dig previously with their own hands.
A comment of El Pais, a conservative Catholic daily of the capital on the Tehuitzingo affair, published in April, was as follows:
"Terrible accounts have reached this capital as to what is taking place at Tehuitzingo, District of Acatlan, State of Puebla. It is insistently reported that sixteen citizens have been executed without trial and that many others will be condemned to twenty years' confinement in the fortress of San Juan de Ulua.
"What are the causes that have given rise to this barbarous persecution, which has dyed our soil anew with the people's blood?
"It is the fierce, infamous caciquismo which oppresses the people with a heavy yoke and which has deprived them of all the benefits of peace.
"We ask, in the name of law and of humanity that this hecatomb cease; we ask that the guilty parties be tried fairly and calmly according to the law. But among those guilty parties should be included those who provoked the disturbance, those who drove the people to frenzy by trampling their rights.This is about as violent an outburst as is ever permitted to appear in a Mexican publication, and there are few papers that would dare go this far. Had El Pais wished to charge the guilt to General Diaz as the founder and perpetuator of the little czardom of the jefes politicos, it would not have dared to do so, for in Mexico the king can do no wrong; there is no publication in the country so strong that it would not be suppressed at once did it directly criticize the head of the government. The comment of El Tiempo, another leading conservative daily of the capital, on the Velardena massacre, which appeared also in April, was:
"These irregular executions are a cause of profound dissatisfaction and ought to be put a stop to at once for the sake of the prestige of the authorities; and in order to attain that end it is necessary that the authors of such outrages should be severely chastised, as we hope that those who are responsible for the sanguinary scenes that have been witnessed at Velardena, and which have occasioned so much horror and indignation throughout the republic, will be.
"Let it not be said that Velardena is an isolated case without precedents. Only to mention a few of the cases that are fresh in the public memory, theer is the Papantla affair, the affair at Acayucan, the shootings at Orizaba at the time of the strike, the shootings at Colima, of which the press has been talking just of late, and the frequent application of the ley fuga, of which the most recent instance occurred at Calimaya, Tenango, State of Mexico."In closing this chapter perhaps I can do no better than to quote an item which appeared in The Mexican Herald, the leading daily published in English, February 15, 1910. Though the facts were perfectly well authenticated, the Herald dared to print the story only on the authority of another paper, and it presented the matter in such mild and cautious terms that it will require a careful reading to bring out the full horror of the deed. Here is the item:
"The Pais gives the following story, the details of which it qualifies as too monstrous for even Zelaya to attribute to Estrada Cabrera:
"Luis Villasenor, prefect of Cualcoman, Michoacan, recently shot without trial an old man because his son committed a murder. The victim in this case was Ignacio Chavez Guizar, one of the principal merchants of the place.
"Some days ago a member of the rural police (a rurale) arrived at the house of the deceased in a state of intoxication and began to insult and abuse the family. A quarrel succeeded, in which the policeman was shot by Jose Chavez.
"The prefect of police arrived on the scene of the trouble and arrested the father and another son, Benjamin, the slayer having made his escape, and took them to the police station. That was the last seen of them. Soon the people of the town began to inquire what had happened to them. The story was spread that they had escaped from prison. But a relative, a nephew of the deceased father, having a certain suspicion that this story was not true, opened what appeared to him a recently made grave, near the police station, and there found the corpses of the two men who had been recently arrested. The prefect, not having been able to capture Jose or to learn where he was, had made the father and brother suffer for his crime.
"Commenting on this story, the Pais calls for the punishment of the author and the guarantee of the carrying out of the laws of the country."