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168 of men whom the government did not dare to execute openly and without excuse. In the prisons tortures such as would almost shame the Spanish Inquisition were resorted to.

Upon the organization of the Liberal Party some fifty newspapers sprang up to support it in different parts of the country. Every one of them was suppressed by the police. Ricardo Flores Magon once showed me a list of more than fifty newspapers that were suppressed and a list of more than a hundred editors that were jailed during the time he was struggling to publish a paper in Mexico. In his book Fornaro gives a list of thirty-nine newspapers that were persecuted or subjected to trial on trivial excuses in the year 1902 for the purpose of providing against any public agitation against a seventh term for President Diaz. During 1908 there were at least six outright suppressions, the newspapers to be put out of business being "El Piloto," a daily of Monterey; "La Humanidad" and "La Tierra," two weeklies of Yucatan; "El Tecolote," of Aguascalientes, and two of Guanajuato, "El Barretero" and "El Hijo del Pueblo." During the period while I was in Mexico at least two foreign newspaper men were deported for criticizing the government, two Spaniards, Ross y Planas and Antonio Duch, editors of the paper "La Tierra," in Merida. Finally, in 1909 and 1910 the story of the suppression of the Liberal Party and its press was repeated in the suppression of the Democratic Party and its press—but I must reserve that for another chapter.

During the Liberal agitation many of the best-known writers of Mexico fell by the assassin's hand. Among them were Jesus Valades of Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Having written articles against the despotism, while