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
