Hellraisers Journal: At Cananea: “Fusilade of Bullets Meets the Humble Petition of Mexican Workingmen.”

Monday July 2, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: George Shoaf on Cananea Strike, Part II

Part 2 of 3 from the Appeal of June 30th:

THE CZAR OUTDONE
—–

Fusilade of Bullets Meets the Humble
Petition of Mexican Workingmen.
—–
CAPITALISM’S SHAME IN OLD MEXICO.
—–
Canaea Riots Not a Revolution
But Simply a Strike of
Under-Paid Labor.
—–
BY GEO. H. SHOAF, Staff Correspondent.

“Land of God and Liberty.”

Old Mexico, advertised as the “Land of God and Liberty,” has long been looked upon with covetous eyes as a promising field for capitalistic exploitation by American plutocrats. Aside from her wonderful mountains of mineral, the value of which lies beyond the richest dreams of avarice, Mexico contains some of the richest and most fertile agricultural lands that can be found anywhere on the map of the world. Her climate embraces every variety, from Greenland’s icy cold to the torrid heat of Vera Cruz. In addition to these natural resources, Mexico possesses a people whose character and training and habits and ambitions are just suited to the purposes of the corporation cormorant. At least, a cursory glance at their methods of life would appear to warrant this conclusion.

To look at the average Mexican peon as he quietly slips through life one would be willing to swear that his chief end and aim is to sit in the sun and smoke a corn-shuck cigarette. He takes things easily, is never in a hurry, and is content to abide by the established order of things. Naturally superstitious, the Mexican people are intensely devoted to the Catholic church, and are largely governed in their conduct by the advice and admonition of the priests. This religious ramification extends to every part of the republic and embraces even the wildest and most savage of the Mexican Indian tribes.

Peon Laborer Obedient and Humble.

There are two things, however, about the Mexican, or rather three things, that have been discovered by the adventurous capitalist from Yankeeland, that have endeared him to the heart of exploiting plutocracy. The Mexican peon can live on less than seven cents a day, and can stand the pressure of hard work for more than sixteen hours out of every twenty-four. The Mexican will not work fast or furious, like his American brother, nor is he capable of great skill, but he will do ordinary labor well and he will stay with his job when others have given out through sheer exhaustion. As railroad laborers, workers on the coffee and sugar plantations, or as miners, the Mexicans are unexcelled. There is only one race that can make a bid against them in successful competition, and that is the Japanese. On the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and other railroads running southwest, Mexican labor has long ago supplanted every other kind. As tireless and productive workers, the Mexicans have the negroes skinned forty ways.

Until recently Americans were welcome to visit any part of the Mexican republic and enjoy social and commercial intercourse with the common people. It has been no uncommon feat for a young man to ride a bicycle from Laredo to the City of Mexico armed with nothing more than an innocent hunting knife. A small family in a wagon could ramble through the mountains of Mexico for months and years, prospecting and exploring, and rest as safe and serene at night in the heart of a Mexican village as though encamped among the green hills of Virginia or Tennessee. All classes, from the lowest to the richest, vied with the other in extending the glad hand of hospitality to the strangers. It was only when the traveler repaid these acts of generosity with some act of treachery that the Mexican ire was aroused.

During the last five years, however, much of this attitude toward the Americans has changed. The grinding down of labor by the foreign corporations has embittered the peon classes, and the coarse brutality and wanton behavior of the adventurers from the states have tended to set the faces of all classes against new-comers. Only among the government officials, proper, do the American capitalists find favor. This class, of course, protects the big mine owners and agricultural exploiters in their operations for the reason that, like the senate of the United States, the Mexican officials have been bought off and are practically owned by the Wall Street thieves of New York.

Labor Unions Forbidden by Law.

In addition to the natural disposition of the Mexicans to docility, there is a law in Mexico which makes the organization of labor absolutely prohibitive. A labor organization is looked upon as an attempt at revolution, and a labor agitator is regarded as a traitor and a spy. This law was passed by the government officials at the instigation of American capitalists. At the time of its passage it received universal sanction because the working class did not know the meaning of union labor. It is needless to say that this law is the most strictly enforced one upon the Mexican statutes. Nearly all the so-called revolutions that have been put down by troops during the last few years have been incipient labor strikes by the peon toilers. It is said that in the gold territory south of the City of Mexico troops are farmed out to the big mine owners for the express purpose of quelling disturbances and keeping the peons in subjection. Occasionally tremendous massacres are pulled off and hundreds of Mexican miners are left to rot in the passes and on the mountain sides.

It will thus be seen that while the Mexican worker is naturally obedient and disposed to rest content with his lot in life, he is not altogether satisfied to live in slavery. With all his powers of endurance, combined with the influence of the Catholic faith, there is a limit beyond which he will not be pushed. That limit has been reached time and again among the mountains and on the plantations of his native heath, and every stand he has thus far taken against his masters has been suppressed with saber and rifle shot in the name of revolution. The recent uprising in Cananea is but a repetition of scores of similar strikes that have been made by the peons elsewhere in Mexico within the last five years.

Peaceful Petitioners Shot Down.

With reference to the Cananea affair, it will be seen that the Mexican miners quit work simultaneously and went in a body to Colonel Greene’s house to peacefully request an increase in wages. Surrounded by his thugs and gun men, Colonel Greene stood on the gallery of his residence and deliberately fired point-blank into the crowd of petitioners, killing scores and wounding hundreds of others. Is it any wonder that this savage attack infuriated the strikers and provoked them to acts of violence? With knives and stones the peons stormed the square of the town and tried to invade the premises and capture the person of Colonel Greene. While they outnumbered the enemy a hundred to one, their attacks were repulsed with frightful loss of life. Colonel Greene and his band had the guns and ammunition and the “revolution” was put down.

This carnage took place about forty-five miles from the Arizona line, in the midst of the great copper belt that runs through the state of Arizona down into Old Mexico. Similar to conditions that prevail in the other Mexican states, American capitalists have secured complete control of this copper district-the Greene Consolidated Mining Company-and have established “friendly relations” with the Diaz federal government and with the state authorities of Sonora.

[Emphasis added.]

SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-June 30, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66994223

IMAGE
Funeral of Cananea Striker, June 1906
http://cronicasdecananea.blogspot.com/2015/05/de-muertos-heridos-y-presos-la-huelga.html

See also:
Barbarous Mexico
-by John Kenneth Turner
C. H. Kerr, 1911
https://books.google.com/books?id=-7VmAAAAMAAJ
-on Cananea Strike
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=-7VmAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA213

One Big Industrial Union – The May Day Chorus of Asheville
Also known as “Paint ‘er Red” by Ralph Chaplin
http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/bisbee/docs/027.html#PAINT