Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/188

158 If the jefe politico sought to defy the law by dictating an election, he is guilty or more guilty than the rioters and ought to be made to appear with them before the authorities to answer for his acts."

This is about as violent an outburst as is ever permitted to appear in a Mexican publication, and there are few papers that would dare go this far. Had El Pais wished to charge the guilt to General Diaz as the founder and perpetuator of the little czardom of the jefes politicos, it would not have dared to do so, for in Mexico the king can do no wrong; there is no publication in the country so strong that it would not be suppressed at once did it directly criticize the head of the government. The comment of El Tiempo, another leading conservative daily of the capital, on the Velardena massacre, which appeared also in April, was:

"These irregular executions are a cause of profound dissatisfaction and ought to be put a stop to at once for the sake of the prestige of the authorities; and in order to attain that end it is necessary that the authors of such outrages should be severely chastised, as we hope that those who are responsible for the sanguinary scenes that have been witnessed at Velardena, and which have occasioned so much horror and indignation throughout the republic, will be.

"Let it not be said that Velardena is an isolated case without precedents. Only to mention a few of the cases that are fresh in the public memory, theer is the Papantla affair, the affair at Acayucan, the shootings at Orizaba at the time of the strike, the shootings at Colima, of which the press has been talking just of late, and the frequent application of the ley fuga, of which the most recent instance occurred at Calimaya, Tenango, State of Mexico."

In closing this chapter perhaps I can do no better than to quote an item which appeared in The Mexican Herald, the leading daily published in English, February 15, 1910. Though the facts were perfectly well