Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/98

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92
A MONOPOLY OF CRIME.

criminal. It is a satisfaction to know that the brute got his deserts, and was killed like a wild beast at Seyula, at last.

Rojas came from the district of Tepic, where he was employed for many years by one foreign importing house, to oppose by fraud, violence, and blood-shed, Manuel Lozada, who was in the pay of a rival house. Lozada finally triumphed, and has for years carried on a sort of independent monarchy, with Tepic for its capital, in the Northern corner of the State of Jalisco. He styles himself "Manuel Lozada, Natural Chief of the district of Tepic," permitting no one to share the cares and responsibilities of office with him. San Blas serves as an importing or smuggling port for his kingdom, and as he has a mountain district which is impenetrable to an opposing force if defended at all, his army, of devoted followers like those of Lopez in Paraguay, which can be swelled to eight thousand or ten thousand in a few days, enables him to bid defiance to the Federal Government, and carry things all in his own way. He was originally a muleteer, and is too ignorant to write his own name, but has much capacity for governing, with an energetic, cruel, and unforgiving nature. Skinning the feet of his enemies and forcing them to walk over live coals, is one of the mildest of the practical jokes in which he sometimes indulges. To do him justice, he keeps excellent order in the district of Tepic, allowing no one else to murder or rob within his jurisdiction. The republic has been forced to tolerate him for many years, because unable at any time to send a sufficient force against him to crush him at a blow. Should a period of entire peace in all other parts of the Republic come within his time, the Government would make