Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/242

210 "The oppression of the government," said Vera, in his last few words to me, "is terrible—terrible! There is no chance for bettering the condition of labor in Mexico until there is a change in the administration. Every free laborer in Mexico knows that!"

Vera organized the Grand League of Railway Workers of Mexico in 1904, and since that time he has passed many months in prison for no other reason than his union activities. Not until early in 1909 did he engage in anything that smacked of political agitation. The hardships imposed by the government upon union organization, however, inevitably drove him into opposition to it. He became a newspaper correspondent, and it was because he dared to criticize the despot that he again found his way into that awful pit, Belem.

August 3, 1909, Vera was arrested at Guadalajara and carried to Mexico City. He was not taken before a judge. Nor was any formal charge lodged against him. He was merely told that the federal government had decided that he must spend the next two years in prison, serving out a sentence which had four years previously been meted out to him for his union activities, but under which he had been pardoned after serving one year and seven months.

Though a permanent cripple, Vera is a brave and honest man and a fervent organizer. Mexican liberty will lose much by his imprisonment.

Strikes in Mexico so far have usually been more the result of a spontaneous unwillingness on the part of the workers to go on with their miserable lives than of an organization of labor behind them or an appeal by agitators. Such a strike was that of Tizapan.

I mention the strike of Tizapan because I happened to visit the spot while the strikers were starving. For