———-
Hellraisers Journal: Monday January 25, 1909
Los Angeles, California – Mexican Revolutionaries Languish in Jail
From the Appeal to Reason of January 23, 1909:
BROTHERS AND COMRADES: From the bastile of capitalism in Los Angeles comes the cry of our brave brothers, calling on you to stand for freedom, right and justice. I know and feel that the cries will not be in vain. You responded cheerfully to the needs of our comrades of the industrial revolution as they were voiced from Idaho, and I know you will be none the less responsive now, in behalf of our Mexican comrades.
If ever there was a time in history when it was imperative that men and women should promptly rally to the banner of freedom and justice, that time is now. Before, it was the power of the state and the nation that the capitalists were using for the destruction of the working class. Now, it is the United States government seconding the murderous despotism of Russia and the irresponsible dictatorship of Mexico. The fight has become international; yet it centers in the United States. If these foreign vultures of oppression win now, then our liberty goes.
For Diaz and American capitalism are partners, even as American capitalism and the Russian czar are partners. Pierpont Morgan goes to Russia and shakes hands with the czar; and now the czar comes to America demanding the surrender of political refugees. Mrs. Diaz, when visiting in Texas is entertained by members of the Copper Queen syndicate whose headquarters are at 95 John street, New York, and Elihu Root, of New York, is wined and dined by the tyrant dictator, Diaz, when in Mexico.
This tyrant, this fiend, beside whom King George was a gentleman and lover of the poor, has given to American capitalists concessions that are worth millions of dollars, and guarantees them peon labor that dare not ask higher wages under penalty of being shot for violating the law; and in return he asks that if political refugees escape to America, or if a Mexican dare to come to America and criticise him, they must be returned to him, that they may be shot.
Some sixty years ago the fugitive slave law was enacted, requiring slaves that escaped to free territory to be returned to their masters. This was all in the United States of America. Yet the people refused to obey that law and arose in such a mighty protest that within ten years the institution of slavery was swept from the earth. Now we have the dictator of Mexico, and the czar of Russia, tyrants both, both foreigners, trying to enforce a fugitive slave law in the United States of America-a law infinitely more vile than that of the fifties-and the federal government lends its aid to the outrage. It is time that the people arose in all their sovereign power and said their say.
In 1906, two brave leaders of the strike of Cananea, Diegues [Manuel Macario Diéguez] and Caldreom [Esteban Baca Calderón], were sentenced to fifteen years in a dungeon by the sea. A deserter from the American army, Kosterlitsky, waited with his troops across the border line for any strikers who might be handed over to him by agents of the Standard Oil company, and other reptile combinations. Already the prisons of Mexico are filled with men who were merely suspicioned of favoring the strikers, while the children of the victims are left to struggle and starve.
I happened to be in Douglas, Ariz., inAugust, 1907 [late June 1907], when they kidnaped young Sarabia, threw him into an automobile, and, as he screamed for help, muzzled him, ran him across the line, and handed him over to the devourers of human flesh. Kidnaping seems to be becoming very fashionable with the members of the American oligarchy of wealth.
In this connection I wish to say a good word for Governor Kibbie [Kibbey], who took quick action and had Sarabia brought back. He also would not furnish troops to the Copper Queen company during the strike at Bisbee, Ariz. He had a clear view of the economic conflict, and understood that it was not labor that was riotous, but the minions of capitalism. During my stay in Arizona I also had the pleasure of meeting Captain Wheeler on several occasions, and believe he wants to do as nearly right as the powers that be will permit him. I must give him credit for the part he played in the strike at Bisbee. Yet, after doing full justice to all who deserve credit, the fact remains that the federal government is allied with the masters of the big corporations in trying to enforce international absolutism and to make slaves of the workers who shall be unable to escape their chains.
All honor to you, my brave comrades, Magon, Villarreal and Rivera, for the gallant fight you are making for human liberty. In days to come your names will be inscribed on the temple of liberty. When the wolves of capitalism shall have disappeared from the cities of our nation, when men shall be able to walk forth free without Oscar Lawlers and detectives dogging their footsteps, than the three Mexican comrades shall have their names written large as lovers of their race.
But, let me ask you, Attorney Lawler, of Los Angeles, if you can reconcile your conscience to the crushing out of liberty and the human desire for justice. The class you represent has murdered and oppressed men, women and children in the interests of cursed greed. They have jailed the men who fed them; they have maligned us, vilified us, buried us in dungeons, hung us on scaffolds, chopped us to pieces, nailed us to the cross of profits as they did the Laborer of Palestine nineteen centuries ago. Have you not, Attorney Lawler, of Los Angeles, nursed from your mother’s breast the milk of human kindness? Will you stoop to stain your hands with the blood of these four brave lovers of liberty, by handing them over to that brutal dictator called Diaz?
Permit me, Attorney Lawler, of Los Angeles, to serve notice on you and your class that the working people of America are awake. You cannot make them slaves as are the peons of Mexico, slaves of the dictator whom you serve. Let me hand you the edict of the One you pretend to honor-“Thou shalt not kill.”
We are serving notice on you. Your dungeons shall yet be turned into club rooms. We want peace, we want justice, we want that which is justly our’s.
By all that is good and holy we shall have them.
Men of America, women of America, rouse as you never roused before. Wipe from our jurisprudence the infamous fugitive slave a law of this later day. Tear from our statute books the modern and most wicked Dred Scott decision which makes of your government a hunter of the oppressed and persecutor of the helpless.
———-
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Jan 23, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66981597/
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Dnv Pst p2, July 19, 1908
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
Tag: Mexican Revolutionaries
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mexican-revolutionaries/
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
Tag: Cananea Copper Strike of 1906
https://weneverforget.org/tag/cananea-copper-strike-of-1906/
Manuel Macario Diéguez
http://enciclopedia.udg.mx/biografias/manuel-macario-dieguez-lara
Esteban Baca Calderón
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esteban_Baca_Calder%C3%B3n
For more on Kosterlitsky-scroll down to:
CANANEA RIOTERS EXECUTED Eight Men Instantly Killed by Rifle Bullets Mexican Commander Orders Prisoners Shot Down Like Dogs
re June 1907, Douglas AZ , Kidnapping of Manuel Sarabia:
Hellraisers Journal, Friday August 16, 1907
Mother Jones News for July, Part II: Found in Arizona
-scroll down to
Mother Jones and Manuel Sarabia-1907-Douglas, Arizona
For more on Joseph Henry Kibbey:
Forging the Copper Collar
Arizona’s Labor-Management War of 1901–1921
-James W. Byrkit
University of Arizona Press, May 26, 2016
(search: kibbey)
https://books.google.com/books?id=1BkZDAAAQBAJ
Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
https://www.cornellcollege.edu/politics/courses/allin/365-366/documents/dredscott_v_sandford.pdf
Transcript of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=29&page=transcript
From Opinion of the Court by Chief Justice Taney:
In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.
* * *
They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of mechandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HUELGA DE CANANEA
Solidaridad Pa’ Siempre