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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 15, 1910
Los Angeles, California – Mexican Political Refugees Arrive after Release
From the Appeal to Reason of August 13, 1910:
Refugees Released–Their Persecution.
[-by John Kenneth Turner.]
Story of the Release.
By Telegraph to Appeal to Reason.
Los Angles, August 5.-Magon, Villarreal and Rivera, the refugee leaders of the Mexican Liberal party, are free at last, free and resting with friends in this city preparatory to reassembling their forces and launching again upon their campaign against the “Perpetual President” Diaz.
In order to meet them as they came out of prison, to be present if they were rearrested, so that through the Appeal to Reason the story of the latest crime against these men might be given to the world, I undertook the journey into that human bake oven, Arizona. I found the sweltering town of Florence, and that walled institution wherein some five hundred unfortunates pant and fight flies throughout the burning summer days and nights, bunked like sardines four or more in a cell. The trip nearly finished me. What long drawn agony it must have been to these persecuted men!
When Wednesday morning the three refugees stepped out through the iron gates into the open air, they looked about them for a man with a star and handcuffs, and could hardly believe their eyes when they saw none.
Arriving down town, they looked again for such a man, and at the station they looked for him again. As the train pulled into Phoenix Magon leaned back, resigning himself as it were, to the inevitable. Villarreal bent toward me and said: “He can’t believe that we are to be free, he cannot believe it. I could not believe it myself.”
But the man with the star and the handcuffs did not appear, nor has he yet appeared. As we disembarked at Los Angeles we heard a cheer, then the three Liberals were surrounded by scores of men and women. Americans and Mexicans, who shook their hands, patted them on-the back, and hugged them…..
