Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/219

Correo de la Tarde, was driven out of Mazatlan because he published the statement that in the so-called election in Sinaloa boys of ten and twelve were permitted to vote the administration ticket, while men of forty and fifty of the opposition party were turned away on the ground that they were too young to vote.

In October, 1909, Alfonso B. Peniche, editor of La Redencion, Mexico City, was arrested for "defamation" of a minor employe of the government. Despite his imprisonment, Peniche succeeded in continuing his publication for a time, although in order to do so he was compelled to smuggle his copy through the bars of the prison. After remaining in Belem a short time he published an article asking for an investigation into the conditions of Belem, alleging that an instrument of torture called "the rattler" was used upon the prisoners. This undoubtedly had something to do with the extreme severity of the punishment that was meted out to Peniche, for after remaining five months in Belem he was sentenced to banishment to the penal colony on the Tres Marias Islands for four long years.

Undoubtedly the charge against Peniche was only a subterfuge to get him out of the way. The story of his "defamation," according to Mexico Nuevo, the most conservative democratic daily, was:

In his paper Redencion, now suspended, he published a statement signed by various merchants, making charges against a tax collector of the federal district, relating to acts committed in his official capacity. The Bureau of Taxation took action in the matter, ordering an investigation, and, as a result, the charges were sustained and the tax collector was removed by the Secretary of Hacienda, with the approval of the President of the Republic, for "not deserving the confidence of the government;" moreover, he was arraigned before the first judge of the district, for an inquiry into the supposed fraud of the treasury, and this inquiry is now pending.