them even relate deeds of the most bloodthirsty cruelty—relate them with gusto, condemning not at all, but treating the incidents as if they were merely some excusable eccentricities of genius! The wholesale killings carried out by the orders of Diaz, the torture perpetrated in his prisons, the slavery of hundreds of thousands of his people, the heart-breaking poverty which he sees every time he leaves his palace, and which he could greatly ameliorate if he wished, are of themselves sufficient proof of his inhumanity.
Cruelty was undoubtedly a part of his inheritance, for his father, a horse-breaker by trade, was noted for it. Horses which did not yield readily Chepe Diaz, the father, killed, and others he chastised with a whip tipped with a steel star, which he landed on the belly, the most tender part of the poor brute. For this reason the people of Oaxaca, the birthplace of Diaz, patronized the father but little, and he was poor. That inherited trait showed itself in Porfirio at an extremely tender age, for while only a child Porfirio, becoming angry at his brother over a trivial matter, filled his brother's nostrils with gunpowder while he was asleep and touched a match to it. From that time Felix was known as "Chato" (Pug-nose) Diaz. "For Porfirio Diaz"—in the words of Gutierrez De Lara, "the people of Mexico have been the horse."
As a military commander Diaz was noted for his cruelty to his own soldiers and to any portion of the enemy that happened to fall into his Hands. Several Mexican writers mention unwarranted acts of severity and executions of subordinates ordered in the heat of passion. Revenge is a twin brother of cruelty and Diaz was revengeful. Terrible was the revenge visited by the child upon his sleeping brother and terrible was the
