Hellraisers Journal – Monday June 14, 1909
Tombstone, Arizona – Citizens Protest Conviction of Mexican Revolutionaries
From the Appeal to Reason of June 12, 1909:
CITIZENS’ PROTEST.
—–
Monster Mass Meeting in Tombstone, Ariz.,
Petitions Taft for Pardon for Mexican Patriots.
Had it not been for the corporation influences in Arizona it is very unlikely that Magon, Villarreal and Rivera would have been convicted of the charge of conspiring to violate the neutrality laws of the United States. The organized miners and the unprejudiced farmers and stockmen were quite certain that the neutrality laws had not been violated by anybody-not even by Mexican peons who occasionally crossed the line into the United States for the purpose of buying arms and ammunition with which to prosecute the revolution against Dictator Diaz-and clearly not by the leaders of the junta of the Mexican liberal party, who admittedly were in Canada when the conspiracy was alleged to have been made. With the exception of mine managers, superintendents, shift bosses and corporation hirelings, including Pinkerton and Furlong detectives, virtually every persons in Arizona was in sympathy more or less pronounced with the cause for which Magon and his associates stood.
In Tombstone at the beginning of the trial there was some division of public sentiment, though the majority of those who expressed themselves were convinced of the innocence of the prisoners. As the trial progressed and the weakness of the prosecution became manifest expressions of sympathy for the Mexican prisoners were more frequent. The last day of the trial virtually every person in Tombstone declared the Magon, Villarreal and Rivera were innocent and that the jury ought not to have to leave the box to make up a verdict of acquittal. There were no bets made the last day, as there were no takers. The detectives, Mexican consuls, spies, thugs and gunmen employed by the United States government in its prosecution of the defendants kept together and stayed close around their headquarters; these were the only fellows who desired the conviction of the Mexicans.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 11, 1909
Manuel Sarabia Tells Story of Illegal Arrest and Deportation
During the month of July 1907, Mexican Patriot Manuel Sarabia was arrested without warrant from off the streets of Douglas, Arizona, driven across the border, and handed over to Mexican rurales. We offer Part I of his telling of that event below, and will complete the story of his ordeal tomorrow.
From the International Socialist Review of May 1909:
—–
How I Was Kidnaped
STORY OF MY ESCAPE FROM THE RURALES AND
HERMOSILLO PENITENTIARY
—–
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 6, 1909
John Murray on the Horrors of the Private Prisons of Diaz, Part III
From the International Socialist Review of April 1909:
[Part III, Conclusion]
[John Murray’s interview with the escaped prisoner, Antonio, continues:]
The sick man’s pauses in this narrative were frequent. At times the old lady give him water to drink, and then again he would take two puffs at a cigarette rolled by the president, all of which kept him going to the end of his story.
We were accused of participating in the rebellion started in September, 1906, by the Junta Revolucionaria Mexicana in Jimenez, and in Acayucan. Chained in gangs with two hundred others, we were brought to the fortress and political prison of San Juan de Ulua.
Some of us were betrayed by that Judas, Captain Adolfo Jimenez Castro, an officer of the post at Cuidad Juarez, while others were betrayed by Trinidad Vasquez at Cananea.
Among the number were persons entirely innocent of any participation in the rebellion, but they received neither consideration nor mercy, and, like many of us, saw their homes burnt by the soldiery and their families left to starve.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 5, 1909
John Murray on the Horrors of the Private Prisons of Diaz, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of April 1909:
[Part II]
[John Murray at San Juan de Ulua Prison, continues speaking with the sympathetic soldier…]
Without a word the soldier turned and walked towards the archway. I followed at his heels and we made our way around outside the walls, entered the arsenal and climbed an inner staircase to the battlements of the fortress.
Pointing out to sea, my guide showed me a small man-of-war coming into the harbor.
“That’s the ‘General Bravo’—look at it. Keep looking at it, senor, and while we are here alone I will stand behind your back and tell you all I know of the martyrs imprisoned in Ulua.
“The friends of Magon in the army are many. Here, in Ulua, all would be glad to see a way out of this hell—but will it ever come?”
I answered as I believed, in all sincerity, “It will come,” and with a look of encouragement the young soldier went on:
Six months ago I came to Ulua from Sonora, and never once have I seen the political prisoners. But this I saw with my own eyes:
Late on a Sunday afternoon, a boat with two occupants came rowing towards the guardhouse of the west side landing. I saw it before the others, being far-sighted, and this my first day of guard duty on the island. As the boat touched the pier, a white-haired lady wrapped in a black shawl, and trembling with age, was just able to mount from the rocking gunnel to the first stone step, where she sank down, panting and exhausted. The oarsman was a small, black Indian from the mountain tribes near Orizaba. Martin Jose Pico, our hook-nosed, thief-of-a-sergeant—ration-robbing is his trade-roughly demanded her pass, but she had none.
This was such a strange occurrence—a white-haired woman of over eighty years trying to gain entrance to the prison without credentials—that the officer of the day was summoned.
Captain Garcia likes not old women, and to the black figure seated at his feet on the stone step, his words were short and sharp:
“Speak! What do you want?”
“To see a boy who is imprisoned here,” replied the trembling, low-toned voice of the old lady.
“A boy? We have no boys. Who is he?” testily demanded the officer.
“Juan Sarabia,” replied the white-haired woman.
At this name the captain took a sudden step back, for of all the prisoners most strictly kept “incommunicado” is this famous revolutionist, Juan Sarabia. Even to mention his name is forbidden the soldiers of Ulua.
White-faced, the officer gripped the old lady by her arm and stuttered a rasping question:
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 4, 1909
John Murray on the Horrors of the Private Prisons of Diaz, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of April 1909:
—–
[Part I]
S soon as we were alone at the end of the pier breasting the Vera Cruz harbor, the little, pock-marked secretary of the revolutionary group pulled from his pockets a piece of grey stone and held up before my eyes.
“Look at that!”
I took the fragment from his slim, brown fingers and turned it over curiously. It was a piece of coarse, grey coral.
“See! It’s porous. Now do you understand? The whole prison’s built of it.”
With an upward jerk of his hand he leveled an accusing finger at the white-washed walls of the fortress-prison shining in the sun across the waters of the blue bay.
“There it stands! On that island, yonder! San Juan de Ulua! The foulest spot in all Mexico—Diaz’ private prison for his political enemies!”
The corners of the man’s mouth drew down into a snarl and his eyes narrowed to burning slits of hate as he gazed in the direction of the fortress.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 22, 1909
Antonio de Pio Araujo, An Innocent Man Imprisoned in a Strange Country
From the Appeal to Reason of March 20, 1909:
Araujo’s Address from His Prison Cell.
—–
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:
Evansville Press, Indiana March 20, 1909
It is hard to be sentenced as an innocent man to a long term of imprisonment in a strange country. It is in this unfortunate position that I find myself. But I have no regret and I address you in no spirit of despair. I have felt from the first that if the American people knew the truth about my case I would not now be in a convict’s cell. But the American people do not know the truth. In fact but few of them know anything at all about my conviction. The silence of the press was a part of the conspiracy to destroy my activity by sending me to prison.
Through the medium of the Appeal I have been given the opportunity of addressing myself to the American people, and I gladly avail myself of this privilege. Readers of the Appeal know that for some time there has been trouble in Mexico growing out of the awful condition of the people. For this the administration of Diaz, backed by American capitalists, is responsible. Myself and comrades of the liberal party were opposed to the administration. We were persecuted, spied upon and hunted down until we had to leave the country. When we landed on this side of the Rio Grande we felt ourselves secure under the stars and stripes of the American republic. But alas, we soon realized that the same power which had driven us from our native land also ruled the American states. Our papers were suppressed and we were tracked from place to place by the spies of the Mexican government, reinforced by American detectives, also in its employ. In due time we were arrested upon baseless charges. Some of my comrades have been in jail almost two years. This seems very strange in a land of freedom. Why is trial denied them? I do not know and no one can tell me.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 8, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1909, Part II:
-Found in Denver, Colorado; Scheduled to Speak at Protest Meeting
At the end of February, Mother Jones arrived in Denver, Colorado, where she was scheduled to speak at a “Gompers Protest Meeting” on March 1st. According to the Rocky Mountain News of February 28th, Mother made the following statements:
There is an industrial panic in the United States today, and it is not confined to any particular locality. The steel trust is now engaged in stamping out the independent steel concerns, and God have pity on the iron and steel workers when this happens and the rest of the people, too. In Illinois the coal miners are having their trouble, some working only one day a week, and some three days a week. The shoemakers all over the country are struggling against similiar conditions, and everywhere you turn you find this industrial stagnation…..
How can you expect labor to make very much headway with 10,000 judges ruled by the capitalists? Where can they get justice? Where can justice be had with Wall Street dictating the policies of the president, congress and the governors of the states?
Even religion is mixed up in the conditions. I saw in an Eastern city a $2,000,000 church built with the subscriptions of men whose daughters work in factories and stores for $3 and $4 per week. Oh, the farce of it all! Dare you tell me that a girl can work for $3 a week and be respectable? The idea of building a great church upon the sold bodies of girls!…..
I tell you that there is a limit to all things-and the limit will come in the present economic conditions of this country, and people will arise and take the industries into their own hands and right the wrongs that are making of this nation the most grasping in the world today.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 7, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1909, Part I:
-Found Praising the “Appeal to Reason”
From the Appeal to Reason of February 13, 1909:
“WALL STREET KNOWS AND FEARS.”
The Appeal feels a pardonable pride in the compliment paid to it by that grand old agitator, Mother Jones. She has been with the Appeal from the day of its first issue and she knows its record as few others do. She knows its trials and its struggles, its privations and reverses, it’s mistakes and defeats, and she also knows what its motive and purpose has been through all its career. She knows that while the Appeal, like every other paper, has its shortcomings and has committed its follies its one unflinching purpose has been to serve and strengthen the Socialist movement in the struggle for industrial emancipation.
It is gratifying therefore to have one who so well knows the Appeal and who is so well known for her own spotless integrity and courage to write us that the Appeal
is the one Socialist paper that Wall street knows and fears!
The Appeal values this appreciative expression from Mother Jones sufficiently to move it to exert all its effort to increase the fear of Wall Street and the confidence and good will of all who are helping to overthrow capitalism and usher in the reign of the people.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 1, 1909
From Juarez to Mexico City – John Murray Talks with an American Cane-Grower
John Murray recently returned from Mexico and has written an article about that experience for this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review. Below we offer part one of that article in which Mr. Murray travels from Ciudad Juarez to Mexico City and speaks with an American cane-grower along the way.
Mexico’s Peon-Slaves Preparing for Revolution
BY JOHN MURRAY
[Part I]
—–
The third uprising of the Liberal Party failed but another is preparing in Mexico that will not be so easily snuffed out by President Diaz and his “partners,” so asserts the writer of this article, John Murray, who saw Mexico a few months ago in the fever-heat of revolt. With credentials from the revolutionary leaders he traveled from one Liberal Party group to another and was shown by them the underside of Mexico-the Mexico that President Diaz hides from view and guards with guns in hourly fear that it may rise and end his dictatorship.—Editor.
HE warm clasp of Tom’s hand tempted me to talk—in a moment, and my loose tongue let slip enough to give hint of my errand to Mexico. Now Tom Hart was the last man that I should have supposed would show the white feather—a bear hunter, mind you, and grizzlies at that.
“Look here, Bud,” he spoke with a down-drop of his eyes that was new to me, “don’t be so foolish as to rub the President’s hair the wrong way. You don’t know Mexico—it’s prison or death down here. You’re fooled if you think for a moment that this is the United States. Why, I have seen a bunch of rurales ride into a village before sun-up, where things were not going to suit the Diaz government, and call out the whole population, line ’em up and shoot down every tenth man. No trials. Nothing. That’s Mexico. And don’t you go for to stand on your dignity as an American citizen, thinking that you’re safer than a native to speak your mind free. I’ve seen Americans—yes, and there’s three of ’em right now in the prison of San Juan de Ulua—who might just as well be Esquimaux for all the protection that their nationality gives ’em. For God’s sake, old man”—Tom’s pleading startled me, for if he were possessed of such a crushing fear of Diaz what chance had I to escape contagion?—”don’t do anything to offend the Mexican government.”
“It’s too late, Tom, I’m into it now—up to my neck. You never held back when we were after the big-footed grizzly that killed our cattle in the pines back of the Loma Pelon ranch. The game I am after now is news—the true story of Mexico’s sandaled-footed burden-bearers and their nearness to revolt.”
———-
———-
———-[Part II]
———-S soon as we were alone at the end of the pier breasting the Vera Cruz harbor, the little, pock-marked secretary of the revolutionary group pulled from his pockets a piece of grey stone and held up before my eyes.
———-
———-
———-
HE warm clasp of Tom’s hand tempted me to talk—in a moment, and my loose tongue let slip enough to give hint of my errand to Mexico. Now Tom Hart was the last man that I should have supposed would show the white feather—a bear hunter, mind you, and grizzlies at that.
