Yaqui People – WE NEVER FORGET

Quote Mother Jones Save Our Mexican Comrades, AtR p3, Feb 20, 1909 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 12, 1909
Manuel Sarabia Tells Story of Illegal Arrest and Deportation, Part II

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 offered Part I of his telling of that event in Tuesday’s Hellraisers, and complete the story of his ordeal below.

From the International Socialist Review of May 1909:

[Manuel Sarabia Turned Over to Mexican Rurales]

It was a short, quick ride—not more than five minutes in time—when the brakes of the machine brought us to a stop. I was lifted from my seat and helped out upon the ground. A familiar jingle struck my ear. Yes, there they were—bridles and spurs—the rurales!

They pulled the handkerchief from my eyes, and my fate was before me. Armed with carbines whose barrels glinted in the moonlight, ten big-hatted rurales sat upon their ponies, in a half circle, facing me. Two of them were busy with a riderless mule. I quickly guessed what was to be his burden—my poor, unwilling body.

Quick orders passed to the men from their officer, and I was lifted to the mule’s saddle. With a piece of rawhide they bound my feet together under the mule’s belly, jerked it tight until the thongs cut into my flesh, and then mounting their horses waited the command to commence the night’s ride.

THE MAN IN THE CARRIAGE.

I had been delivered to the rurales at a small border town of a hundred adobe houses called Agua Prieta, governed by one Laguna, the jefe de policia. Standing a short distance down the street, close to the custom house, I noticed a carriage. As soon as the officer saw me securely tied on the mule, he loped his horse to the side of this vehicle and, after saluting those in the interior, received instructions which set our cavalcade in motion, the carriage leading the way.

My mule was a stubborn beast and could only be jerked into a racking trot with the aid of a stout riata which the rurale in front had bound to the pommel of the saddle. Tied as I was, not able to sit easily to the gait of the galling brute, I was soon worn to the point of agony. My pleadings with the rurales to either go at a lope or slow down to a walk, brought no response but curses, and I closed my mouth and gritted my teeth to deaden the pain.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “How I Was Kidnaped” by Manuel Sarabia, Part II” →

Quote Freedom Ricardo Flores Magon, Speech re Prisoners of Texas, May 31, 1914 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 3, 1909
Mexico City -John Murray Meets with Mexican Revolutionaries

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 the conclusion of that article in which Mr. Murray meets with a group of Mexican Revolutionaries.

Mexico’s Peon-Slaves Preparing for Revolution

BY JOHN MURRAY
[Part IIII]
—–

We turned into the mouth of a narrow street, cobbled from wall to wall. Herbierto knocked at a door. A window swung open above our heads and a voice called out, “Is that the doctor?”

“It is,” answered Senora Moreno. “Is the child still sick?”

“Yes, come in quickly,” replied the watcher, closing the window.

“A sick child?” I questioned, as the door opened and we stumbled through the dark passageway.

“No,” meaningly answered Herbierto. “A sick country, with the revolution as the only medicine.”

And the woman added: “That was the pass word.”

Around an oblong table in the room we entered sat two dozen men, as dissimilar in their appearance as their native land is varied, Mexico is half desert and half tropics and breeds its people small, light-skinned and still-tongued, or swarthy, heavy-boned and voluble, as unlike each other as sand and sage brush are to mountain torrents and black jungle-land.

“A friend from Los Angeles,” explained Herbierto to the group watching me in surprised silence, but as he read my credentials from Magon their faces changed and when the signature was reached, a slim, black-eyed boy warmly grasped my hand, asking the question which seems to echo through Mexico:

“How is Ricardo?”

I gave them greetings from their imprisoned leader. He was their hero, their master-mind, whose years of unflinching struggle against the crushing powers of the Dictator had kept hope in Mexico alive; and in return I heard the news of the revolutionary movement.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Mexico’s Peon-Slaves Preparing for Revolution” by John Murray, Part III: the Mexican Revolutionaries” →