Page:Difficulties Between Mexico and Guatemala.djvu/61

 lies and calumnies intended to promote a rupture between Mexico and Guatemala. Mr. Romero's contributions to that paper were few, and were signed by his name.

In January, 1875, Mr. Romero learned that ten Guatemalan Indians, who had been working on his coffee plantation, had been carried off prisoners by the authorities of the neighboring Guatemalan village of Toquian, for the crime of having dared to work there against their orders. Mr. Romero at once started for the plantation, and on the following day Colonel Ponce de Leon, hearing of the case, set out for that plantation with eighty men of the federal troops. Mr. Romero met him on his return two days later, and persuaded him to turn back without having reached the frontier. Nevertheless, this incident was represented by order of General Barrios as a new outrage committed upon Guatemalan territory.

In April, 1875, Mr. Romero left Tapachula for Mexico, to take his seat in Congress as deputy for Soconusco. Soon after his arrival he learned that the Guatemalan Minister, Don Ramon Uriarte, had addressed to the Foreign Office three communications, by order of President Barrios, accusing him of being an incendiary, a plunderer, a filibuster, etc. As the facts upon which these charges are based have all been presented in the preceding narrative of Mr. Romero's residence in Soconusco, it is unnecessary to consider these charges in detail, as Mr. Romero does in the Second Part of his Refutation.

In the Third Part of that document, Mr. Romero, turning the tables upon his accuser, produces formidable evidence to show the despotic and unprincipled character of the ruler of Guatemala, his cruelty toward