Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/212

180 Some students of the national schools of jurisprudence, mines, medicine and the preparatory school of Mexico City, were encouraged in forming a club to further the candidacy of Corral. But when the students of the Jalisco state schools of law and medicine formed a club to further the candidacy of Reyes the government ordered them either to abandon their political activity or to leave school. They sent a committee to Diaz to appeal for fair play. But he gave them no satisfaction, the threat of expulsion was renewed with the result that so many students were expelled from the Jalisco schools that the schools actually closed for lack of pupils.

In July, a committee of re-electionists from Mexico City held a public meeting in favor of Corral in the Delgado theatre, Guadalajara, capital of Jalisco. The audience, composed largely of democratic students, hissed one of the speakers. Whereupon companies of police, which had been held in readiness, were ordered to clear the building and square.

This the police did after the manner of Mexico—with sabre, club and pistol. The figures on the killed, wounded and imprisoned were suppressed by the authorities, but all newspaper reports at the time agree that there were persons killed and wounded, as well as imprisoned. The highest estimate that I have seen placed the killed at twelve, the seriously wounded at thirty-five and the arrested at one thousand. Following the occurrence, Guadalajara was filled with state and national troops. General Ignacio Bravo, notorious as the most ruthless officer in the Mexican army, was hurried from Quintana Roo temporarily to replace the existing head of the military zone; and, finally, all political