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Nunca Olvidamos: Tomás Martínez, 1893-1921, Class-War Prisoner
-Died October 23, 1921, after Deportation to Guadalajara, Mexico
Photograph of Tomás Martínez, sent to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, shortly before his death.
From Iron in Her Soul by Helen C. Camp, page 95:
Thomas Martinez was deported to Mexico after he left the Kansas penitentiary in the spring of 1921. He arrived there very ill, suffering from tuberculosis-“which I suppose I took from the jail of Free America”-and the effects of a botched appendectomy. The Mexican IWW gave him a little money, as did [Elizabeth Gurley] Flynn, and the Workers’ National Prison Comfort Club branch in Milwaukee sent him two union suits and a pair of shoes. A friend of Martinez sent Elizabeth a photograph taken of him shortly before he died in October of the same year.
[Emphasis added.]
From “Red Scare Deportees” by Kenyon Zimmer:
Tomás Martínez (Thomas Martinez)
Born 1893, Mexico. Miner. 1905, a founding member of La Unión Liberal Humanidad in Cananea, which was affiliated with the new Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and helped lead the 1906 Cananea miners’ strike. Member of several more PLM-affiliated groups. Migrated to the US circa 1907; active in Morenci, Arizona; helped plan and joined the PLM’s cross-border invasion of Baja California in 1910. Taken prisoner by Carranza’s forces and ordered executed, but escaped. 1914 organizing miners in Cananea; denounced and expelled as a “Huerta supporter,” leading to a strike of 2,500-3,000 miners until he was allowed to return. 1915-1918 active in IWW and PLM activities in Arizona and Los Angeles. Wrote numerous articles for the IWW’s paper El Rebelde (1915-1917). Arrested Miami, Arizona, March 1918; convicted to two years in Leavenworth Penitentiary and a $500 fine for violation of the Espionage Act [convicted of having literature of seditious nature]. Contracted tuberculosis while in prison, and a botched operation resulted in septicemia. Upon his release, detained for deportation but he petitioned to be allowed to leave what he called “the Jail of Free America” to another country at his own expense for fear that he would be executed for his past revolutionary activities if returned to Mexico; his petition was denied and he was deported in 1921; according to one report, “When he was finally shipped across the border he was more dead than alive.” Furthermore, he wrote to a friend in the US, “When I arrived at the border, they left me naked, they burned my clothes and shoes.” He never recovered, and died in Guadalajara, October 23, 1921. Comrades buried him with a headstone reading: ¡Nunca olvidamos! (We Never Forget!).
[Emphasis added.]
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