Barbarous Mexico/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE CRUSHING OF OPPOSITION PARTIES
Men and women on our continent are daily suffering death, imprisonment or exile for contending for those political rights which we have considered as ours since the birth of our country, rights of free speech, of free press, the right of assembly, the right to vote to decide who shall hold the political offices and govern the land, the right to be secure in person and property. For these things hundreds of men and women have died within the past twelve months, tens of thousands within the past thirty years, in a country divided from ours only by a shallow river and an imaginary geographical line.
In Mexico today are being lived life stories such as carry one's imagination back to the days of the French Revolution and the times when constitutional government, that giant which was destined to complete the change from the Middle Ages to Modernity, was being born. In those days men yielded up their lives for republicanism. Men are doing the same today in Mexico. The repressive part of the Diaz governmental machine which I described in the last previous chapter—the army, the rurales, the ordinary police, the secret police, the acordada—are perhaps one-fifth for protection against common criminals and four-fifths for the suppression of democratic movements among the people. The deadly certainty of this repressive machine of Diaz is probably not equaled anywhere in the world, not even in Russia. I remember a trusted Mexican official once summing up to me the feeling of the Mexican people, taught them by experience, on this thing. Said he: "It is possible that a murderer may escape the police here, that a highwayman may get away, but a political offender never—it is not possible for one to escape!"
I myself have observed numerous instances of the deadly fear in which the secret police and the government assassin are held even by those who would seem to have no cause for fear. Notable among these is the panic which overtook the family of a friend with whom I was staying—his brother, sister, sister-in-law and nephew and niece—when the secret police surrounded their house in the capital and waited for my friend to come out. They were middle-class Mexicans of the most intelligent sort, this family, very well known and highly respected, and yet their fright was pitiful. Now they dashed this way and that, now to a window and now to a door, wringing their hands. Now they huddled together, verbally painting the dire calamities that were sure to descend not only upon the hunted one, but upon their own heads because he had been found with them. My friend had committed no crime. He had not been identified with the revolutionists, he had merely expressed sympathy for them, and yet his family could see nothing but death for him. And after the fugitive had escaped by jumping through a window and climbing over house-tops, the head of the family, speaking of his own danger, said to me: "I myself may go to jail for a time while they try to compel me to tell where my brother is hiding. If I do not go it will be only because the government has decided to respect me for my position and my influential friends, yet hourly I am expecting the tap on the arm that will tell me to go."
The case of most extreme fear which I observed was that of a wealthy and beautiful woman, wife of an official of the Rio Blanco mills, with whom De Lara and I took dinner one day. The official drank deeply of wine, and as the meal was near an end his tongue loosened and he spoke of matters which, for the sake of his own safety, he should have guarded. The wife sat opposite him, and as he spoke of government murders of which he knew her face blanched and with her eyes she tried to warn him to be more careful. Finally I turned my face away, and, glancing sidewise, saw her take the opportunity to bend forward over the table and shake a trembling, jeweled finger in his face. Again and again she tried skilfully to turn the conversation, but without success, until finally, unable to control herself longer, she sprang forward, and, clapping a hand over her husband's lips, tried to dam back the fearsome words he was saying. The animal terror on that woman's face I can never forget.
Fear so widespread and so extreme as I met with cannot be the result of imagined dangers. There must be something behind it, and there is. Secret killing is constantly going on in Mexico, but to what extent no one will ever know. It is asserted in some quarters that there are more political executions going on right now than ever before, but that they are more cleverly and secretly done than ever before. Whether that is true or not I do not know. Certainly the press is better controlled than ever before. The apparent quiescence of Mexico is entirely forced by means of club, pistol and knife.
Mexico has never really enjoyed political freedom. The country has merely had the promise of it. However, the promise has undoubtedly helped to keep patriotic Mexicans fighting for a fulfillment, however great the odds against them. When Porfirio Diaz captured the Mexican government in 1876 the Mexican battle for political freedom seemed won. The last foreign soldier had been driven out of the country, the throttling grip of the church on the state had been broken, the country had inaugurated a system of universal suffrage, it had adopted a constitution much like that of the United States, and finally, its president, one of the authors of the constitution, Lerdo de Tejada, was in the act of putting that constitution in operation. The personal revolution of General Porfirio Diaz, made successful by force of arms only after it had failed twice, put a sudden stop to the progressive movement, and ever since that time the country has gone back politically, year by year. If it were humanly possibly to put a stop to the movement for democracy in a country by killing the leaders and persecuting all connected with it, democracy would long ago have been killed in Mexico, for the leaders of every political movement in opposition to President Diaz, however peaceful their methods, however worthy their cause, have either been put to death, imprisoned or hunted out of the country. And as I shall show in the next chapter, this statement is literally true down to the present day.
Briefly I will sketch some of the more important of these opposition movements. The first occurred toward the close of President Diaz's first term in office and was a movement having for its purpose the re-election of Lerdo, who, upon Diaz's capture of the power, had fled to the United States. The movement had not time to gain any headway and come out in the open before it was crushed in the most summary manner. The leaders were considered as conspirators and were treated as if they were guilty of treasonable acts—worse, in fact, for they were not even given a semblance of a trial. On a night in June, 1879, nine men, prominent citizens of Veracruz, were dragged from their beds, and on an order telegraphed from General Diaz, "Matalos en caliente," "Kill them in haste," Governor Mier y Teran had them lined up against a wall and shot to death.
While this incident happened thirty years ago, it is perfectly authenticated, and the widow of General Teran exhibits to this day the yellow paper upon which are inscribed the fatal words. The killing is now known as the Massacre of Veracruz and is noted because of the prominence of the victims rather than for the number of those who lost their lives.
During the ten years following the Massacre of Veracruz two Mexicans aspired at different times to oppose Diaz for the presidency. One of these was General Ramon Corona, governor of Jalisco, and the other was General Garcia de la Cadena, ex-governor of Zacatecas. Neither lived to see "election day." While on his way home from a theatre one night Corona was stabbed to death by an assassin, who was in turn stabbed to death by a company of police which, by a strange coincidence, was waiting for him around a near corner. Cadena heard that assassins were on his trail and took flight. He tried to reach the United States, but was caught at Zacatecas and shot to death, being pierced by many bullets from the pistols of thugs, all of whom escaped. No one can prove who ordered the killing of Corona and Cadena, but it is easy to draw conclusions.
In 1891 Mexico was thrown into a ferment by the A Typical Mexican Military Execution.
The only movement which Diaz ever permitted to gain much headway in the matter of organization was the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party sprang into birth in the fall of 1900, after all danger of effective opposition against the dictator's entering upon a sixth term had been obviated. A speech delivered in Paris by the Bishop of San Luis Potosi, in which the priest declared that, in spite of the constitution and the laws of Mexico, the church in that country was in a most flourishing and satisfactory condition, was the immediate cause of the organization. Mexicans of all classes saw greater danger to the national welfare in the renascence of a church heirarchy than they did even in a dictatorship by a single individual, for death must some day end the rule of the man, while the life of the church is endless. They therefore once more took their lives in their hands and attempted to launch still another movement for the restoration of the republic.
In less than five months after the bishop's speech 125 Liberal clubs had arisen in all parts of the country, a half hundred newspapers were started, and a call was issued for a convention to be held in the city of San Luis Potosi on January 5, 1901.
The congress was held in the famous Teatro de la Paz. It was jammed with delegates and spectators, among the latter being many soldiers and gendarmes, while in the street below a battalion of soldiers was drawn up, ready to deal with the assembly should its voice be raised against the dictator.
Anything so radical as an armed rebellion was not spoken of, however, and the various speakers steered carefully away from any direct criticism of President Diaz. On the other hand, resolutions were adopted pledging the Liberals to pursue the campaign of reform only by peaceful means.
Nevertheless, as soon as it became evident that the Liberals were planning to nominate a candidate for the presidency, three years later, the government began operations. By Russian police methods, the clubs all over the country were broken up and the leading members were arrested on fictitious charges, imprisoned or forced into the army. A typical case was that of the club "Ponciano Arriaga," of San Luis Potosi, which formed the national center of the federation. On January 24, 1902, although other clubs had been violently broken up for doing so, "Ponciano Arriaga" made bold to hold a public meeting. Here and there among the people were distributed soldiers and gendarmes in citizens' clothing, under the command of a prominent lawyer and congressman, an agent provocateur, who had been commissioned by the government to destroy the organization.
At a given moment, according to Librado Rivera, who was vice-secretary of the club, the agent provocateur jumped to his feet to protest against the work of the club, and at the signal the disguised soldiers and gendarmes feigned to join in the protest, smashing the chairs to pieces against the floor. Their leader fired some shots into the air, but the genuine audience and the members of the club did not make the least move lest they give some pretext for an attack, for they knew that the agent provocateur and his assistants were but staging a comedy in order to invite violence to themselves from some members of the club. Nevertheless, hardly were the shots fired when a crowd of policemen invaded the hall, striking right and left with their clubs. Camilo Arriaga, president of the club; Juan Sarabia, secretary; Professor Librado Rivera, vice-secretary, as well as twenty-five other members, were arrested and accused of fictitious crimes, such as resisting the police, sedition, and so on. The result was that they were all imprisoned for nearly a year and the club was dissolved.
Thus were dissolved the majority of the other clubs in the Liberal federation. The Liberal newspapers, public spokesmen of the clubs, were put out of business by the imprisonment of their editors and the destruction or confiscation of the printing plants. How many men and women lost their lives in the hunt of the Liberals which extended over the succeeding years will never be known. The jails, penitentiaries and military prisons were filled with them, thousands were impressed into the army and sent away to death in far Quintana Roo, while the ley fuga was called into requisition to get rid of men whom the government did not dare to execute openly and without excuse. In the prisons tortures such as would almost shame the Spanish Inquisition were resorted to.
Upon the organization of the Liberal Party some fifty newspapers sprang up to support it in different parts of the country. Every one of them was suppressed by the police. Ricardo Flores Magon once showed me a list of more than fifty newspapers that were suppressed and a list of more than a hundred editors that were jailed during the time he was struggling to publish a paper in Mexico. In his book Fornaro gives a list of thirty-nine newspapers that were persecuted or subjected to trial on trivial excuses in the year 1902 for the purpose of providing against any public agitation against a seventh term for President Diaz. During 1908 there were at least six outright suppressions, the newspapers to be put out of business being "El Piloto," a daily of Monterey; "La Humanidad" and "La Tierra," two weeklies of Yucatan; "El Tecolote," of Aguascalientes, and two of Guanajuato, "El Barretero" and "El Hijo del Pueblo." During the period while I was in Mexico at least two foreign newspaper men were deported for criticizing the government, two Spaniards, Ross y Planas and Antonio Duch, editors of the paper "La Tierra," in Merida. Finally, in 1909 and 1910 the story of the suppression of the Liberal Party and its press was repeated in the suppression of the Democratic Party and its press—but I must reserve that for another chapter.
During the Liberal agitation many of the best-known writers of Mexico fell by the assassin's hand. Among them were Jesus Valades of Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Having written articles against the despotism, while walking home from the theatre one night with his newly wedded wife he was set upon by several men, who killed him with daggers. In Tampico in 1902 Vincente Rivero Echeagarey, a newspaper man, dared to criticize the acts of the president. He was shot down at night while in the act of opening his own door. Jesus Olmos y Contreras, a newspaper man of the state of Puebla, about the same time published articles exposing an alleged licentious act of Governor Martinez. Two friends of the governor invited Contreras to supper. In the street the three walked arm in arm, the writer in the middle. Suddenly thugs fell upon him from behind. The false friends held Contreras tight until he had been struck down, when a heavy rock was used to beat the head of the victim into a pulp so that his identification might be impossible.
In Merida, Yucatan, in December, 1905, the writer, Abalardo Ancona, protested against the "re-election" of Governor Olegario Molina. Ancona was thrown into jail, where he was shot and stabbed to death.
In 1907 the writer, Augustin y Tovao, died of poison administered in Belem prison. Jesus Martinez Carrion, a noted newspaper artist, and Alberto Arans, a writer, left Belem to die in a hospital. Dr. Juan de la Pena, editor of a Liberal newspaper, died in the military prison of San Juan de Ulua. Juan Sarabia, another well known editor, was also imprisoned there and for a long time was supposed to be dead, until recently, when his friends got word of him. Daniel Cabrera, one of the oldest Liberal editors, was a cripple, and many times he was carried to jail on a stretcher.
Professor Luis Toro, an editor of San Luis Potosi, was imprisoned and beaten in prison so severely that he died. In the same prison Primo Feliciano Velasquez, a lawyer and publisher of "El Estandarte," was beaten so severely that he became a life-long cripple. Another attorney and editor, Francisco de P. Morelos, was beaten in the city of Monterey for writing against the government in his paper, "La Defensa." In Guanajuato, Jose R. Granados, editor of "El Barretero," was beaten for writing against the government. In Napimi, a lawyer, Francisco A. Luna, was beaten and wounded with knives for writing against the government.
And so a list could be given pages long. Ricardo Flores Magon, Jesus Magon, Enrique Magon, Antonio J. Villarreal, Librado Rivera, Manuel Sarabia and many others spent months in prison for publishing opposition papers. Others were assassinated. As I said before, autocracy feeds on murder, and the rule of Porfirio Diaz has been one long story of murder. When assassination, imprisonment and countless forms of persecution had destroyed their organization in Mexico, the leaders who still retained their lives and liberty fled to the United States and established their headquarters here. They organized the Junta, or governing board of the Party, established newspapers, and it was only after the agents of the home government had followed them here and succeeded in so harassing them with false charges which resulted in their imprisonment that they abandoned all hope of doing anything peaceful for the regeneration of their country and decided to organize an armed force for the purpose of overthrowing the Mexican dictator.
The story of the persecutions visited upon the Mexican refugees in the United States I will detail in another chapter. It is sufficient here to pass over them and point merely to the result of their attempts to bring about a change in their government by revolution. Briefly, the Liberal Party has launched two armed revolutions against Diaz. Both of these have come to grief at an early stage; first, because of the efficiency of the government in putting spies in the midst of the revolutionists and thus being able to anticipate them; second, because of the severe methods used in repression; and, third, because of the effective co-operation of the United States government, since the uprisings were necessarily directed from this side of the line.
The first Liberal attempt at revolution was to have been launched in September, 1906. The rebels claim to have had thirty-six military groups partially armed within Mexico and ready to rise at one signal. They expected that at the first show of strength on their part the army would desert to their standard and that the civilians would receive them with open arms.
Whether they judged the army and the people correctly will never be known, for they never succeeded in making any great show of strength. Government spies betrayed the various groups, and when the appointed hour struck the majority of the leaders were already dead or domiciled in San Juan de Ulua. The revolution was to begin on the national independence day, September 16, and the way the government prepared for it generally may be imagined from the report which I previously quoted of the large number of secret killings in Diaz's capital.
Liberal groups in two cities succeeded in making a start. One group captured the town of Jiminez, Coahuila, and another laid siege to the army barracks at Acayucan, state of Veracruz. Civilians joined them in these two cities, and for a day they enjoyed partial success. Then trainloads of troops got into each town, and in a few days what was left of the rebel force was on its way to prison. The concentration of troops into those towns was nothing short of wonderful. As before stated, though Acayucan is comparatively isolated, 4,000 regular soldiers reached the scene within twenty-four hours after hostilities began.
The second rebellion was scheduled to come off in July, 1908. This time the Liberals claimed to have forty-six military groups ready to rise in Mexico. But, as it turned out, nearly all the fighting was done by Mexican refugees, who recrossed from the United States at Del Rio, Texas, and other border centers, armed with guns purchased here. The Liberal leaders here claim that every military group in Mexico was anticipated by the government and the members arrested before the appointed hour. This certainly occurred at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, and the affair, being given much publicity, caused the groups from the United States to act prematurely. It is also claimed that some of the strongest groups were betrayed by a criminal who, because of his facial resemblance to Antonio J. Villarreal, secretary of the Liberal Junta, was freed from the Torreon jail and pardoned by the authorities on condition that he go among the revolutionists, pass himself off as Villarreal and betray them. I personally know of two cases in which emissaries who left the Liberal headquarters in the United States carrying orders for the rising of certain groups fell into the clutches of the government soon after they crossed the line.
Nevertheless, the rebellion of June, 1908, profoundly shook Mexico for a time. The fighting in Coahuila furnished the American press with a week's sensation, and it was a month before the last of the rebels had been hunted down and shot by the superior forces of soldiers and rurales. Such was the "Rebellion of Las Vacas," as it has come to be known both in the United States and Mexico. As a result of this rebellion and the previous one, the Mexican agents in the United States at last succeeded in breaking up the Liberal organization here almost as effectively as it was broken up in Mexico. Up to the time of the Congressional hearing on the persecutions in June, 1910, all the Liberal leaders in the United States were either in prison or in hiding, and no Mexican dared openly espouse the cause of the Liberal Party for fear that he, too, might be thrown behind the bars on a charge of having been in some way connected with one of those rebellions.