Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/217

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EIGHTH UNANIMOUS ELECTION OF DIAZ
185

were reported as having killed several. Police placed in possession of the polls prevented many from voting, and finally the vote as actually cast was falsified in favor of Escandon, who became governor.

In July, 1909, many arrests occurred at Puerte, Sinaloa, and the town was filled with federal rurales. In January, 1910, sixteen men arrested some time before on suspicion of being in a plot against the government at Viesca, were sentenced to be shot, the supreme court sitting at the capital pronouncing the decree.

While such incidents were going on the press situation was being manipulated, also. The government bought or subsidized newspapers, on the one hand, and suppressed them on the other. Some thirty or forty daily and weekly publications espoused the Democratic cause. I do not know of one of them which the government did not compel to suspend operations. Despite the fact that they were careful of their utterances, they were put out of business, the majority of them by imprisonment of their editors, seizure of their printing plants, or both.

April 16, 1909, Antonio Duch, editor of Tierra, of Merida, was escorted aboard a steamer at Veracruz by the Mexican secret police and compelled to leave the country under the charge of being a "pernicious foreigner." His paper was suppressed.

July 15, 1909, Francisco Navarro, editor of La Libertad, organ of the Club Democratico of Guadalajara, was jailed for criticizing the sabreing of Reyist students. His paper was stopped, his office closed, a gendarme was placed on guard and it was officially announced that were an attempt made to issue the paper from another shop, it, also, would be closed.

August 3, 1909, Feliz Vera, correspondent of demo-