Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/264

232 met sixteen-year-old Benito Juarez in the Alameda on Wednesday afternoon and induced him by brilliant promises of work and wages to accompany him to a house on la Calle de Violeta, he (Hernandez) made one of the serious mistakes of his life. By refusing to allow young Benito to go out of the house after he had once entered it, Hernandez violated one of the federal statutes and he is now being held in the fifth comisaria to answer a charge of illegal detention.

"Hernandez claims that he is the employe of one Leandro Lopez, who is securing laborers for the Oaxaquena Plantation Company, an American concern operating an extensive hacienda on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, on the state boundary of Veracruz, not far from Santa Lucrecia. Both men are Spaniards. The whereabouts of the boy, Benito Juarez, was not definitely ascertained until yesterday afternoon, when his release was secured upon the demand of Subcomisario Bustamante of the fifth comisaria, who subsequently arrested Hernandez after the lad's statement had been placed on record at the comisaria.

"On Wednesday afternoon, at about 2 o'clock, young Benito, who had been working with his mother, a bread vendor, was sitting on one of the benches in the Alameda when, according to his account, Hernandez happened along and in a benevolent way asked him if he wanted a job at $1.50 a day. The man explained that the work was at an alcohol factory near the city and that the position was something in the character of timekeeping or other clerical work. The lad agreed and was induced to accompany his new-found friend to Calle Violeta, where the details of his engagement were to be arranged.

"On the way they stopped at a cheap clothing store, where Hernandez purchased a twenty-cent straw hat, a fifty-cent blouse, a pair of sandals and a pair of trousers. Arrived at the house on Calle Violeta young Juarez received orders to put on the peon clothing and to relinquish his own suit of good apparel. In the house where he found himself he encountered three or four other men in the same situation with himself who apprized him of the fact that he was now a contract laborer destined for a plantation in the hot country.

"Until a short time ago Benito had been employed as a mozo