Shall the United States continue to scourge these patriots to please Diaz?

Nº 184

AHSRE L-E-933 F. 112

The Angeles Record, Los Angeles, California

1º de marzo de 1910.

Nº 12

Shall the United States continue to scourge these patriots to please Diaz?

Government Keeps Three Political Exiles from Mexico in Loathsome Cells in Arizona Penitentiary Treats Them Like Criminals, Feeds Them Like Dogs Amazing Legal Outrages Traced Back to American Capital.

“Oh, liberty, can man resign thee, or? thy noble spirit tame?” Rouget?

Florence, Ariz., march 1, Languishing in loathsome cells, with food that dogs refuse to eat on rations, Librado Rivera, R. Flores Magón and Antonio Villarreal, Mexican refugees, whose only crime is opposing the tyranny of Pres. Diaz of Mexico, look forward without wavering to re arrest and further imprisonment when they emerge from the United States prison here at the end of their present term, July 31. By that time they will have served three years in prison.

While quietly pusblishing a liberal paper in Los Angeles, Cal., in 1907, private detectives, bearing arms instead of a legal warrant, arrested them and threw them into jail. After lying in jail 11 months, a trumped up charge of “violating the neutrality laws of a friendly nations” was pre? They were sentenced to 18 months in the United States prision.

Other persecutions planned

“Porfirio Diaz has been able to learn that threats do not terrify our souls, that misfortunes have not the power to break our courage, that misfortunes drive us not to repudiate the sacred cause to which we have devoted our lives,” said one of the refugees.

Magon and Villareal are under indictment at Del Rio, Tex., on an old charge. Their friends fear that a new indictment will be made, broken up into several parts, so that bail may be raised to an amount they will be unable to furnish. Their friends are trying to raise a defense fund of? ,000. If the Del Rio indictment is beaten, Magon could be taken to St. Louis to answer an old criminal libel charge made in connection with their efforts against the tyrant. Other neutral ity indictments could be framed up in San Antonio and other border towns in Texas.

Taft administration winks at outrage

All this in the United Statges, where you and yours have free speech and freedom of the press!

And the claws that are torturing these men will not be relaxed togive them a single moment to breathe freely, as long as the administration of Pres. Taft continues to approve or wink at these prosecutions. It is an attempt to stifle criticism for the system which is grinding out profits for American capital from the oppressed Mexican people.

The defenders of the Mexican liberals ask liberty loving Americans to hold meetings and parades of protest. They hope that congress wil investigate the federal court's disregard for law and Mexico's abuse of the extradition treaty and United States immigration laws. This abuse is in causing the arrest of scores of Mexican exiles on charges of imaginary crimes, keeping them in American jails until the charges are disproved.

Aid Mexico to NAB enemies of tyranny

The immigration laws have become a treacherous cobweb which is used by Mexican tyranny to nab its opponents. The liberals, Editor La Zaro Puente and his son, Gabriel Rubio, Carlos Humbert, Bruno Trevino and Abraham Salcido were summarily tried, declared “undesirable aliens” and sent back to Mexico, where they are now suffering the revenge of the dictator. All because, one day, Puente criticised Diaz in Arizona newspapers.

The United States government allows to pass unpunished the violation of the neutrality laws, if they are violated in the interest of capital. Supt. Rynning of the very prison in which the Mexicans are confined, who publicly testified that he led an armed body of 300 men from Arizona across the border int Mexico to aid the Greene Copper Co. in putting down a miners' strike, received his fat job as a reward.

Barbarous treatment

Though they are accused only of political offenses, Magon, Villareal and Rivera are treated like the lowest criminals. They are forced to wear stripes. They are allowed to write 10 lines a week to their friends, and that is all. Their mail is severely censored. Theis food is unspeakable. They sleep four men in a single small cell. The jail is filthy and unsanitary. Nothing in the east or north compares with it.

Rivera was forced to spend four days in a dark dungeon on bread and water because he refused to stuff mattresses whith moss on which consumptives had slept.

A doctor who proposed to the prison authorities that better food and clothes be given to sick prisoners met with the answer: “That's all right; doc, a dog is beter than a convit!”

However, two or three thieving bankers in the same prison wear no stripes, and eat three squeres at special tables.