Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/227

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EIGHTH UNANIMOUS ELECTION OF DIAZ
195

Club Anti-Re-electionista de Obreros (workers), three of whom were forcibly enlisted in the army.

"At Puebla, Atlixco and Tlaxcala, where untold outrages have been committed against my followers, reigns intense excitement. The last news received shows the conditions of the working classes to be desperate; that they may at any moment resort to violent means to have their rights respected."

In June, the month of election, matters became very much worse. Estrada and Madero themselves were arrested. On the night of June 6 they were secretly taken and secretly held in the penitentiary at Monterey until the truth became noised about, when charges were formally preferred against them. Estrada was charged with "sedition." Madero was first accused of protecting Estrada from arrest, but soon afterwards this charge was dropped and he was accused of "insulting the nation." He was removed from the penitentiary of Nuevo Leon to the penitentiary of San Luis Potosi, and here he remained incommunicado until after "election."

The presidential campaign ended amid many reports of government persecutions. A reputable dispatch dated June 9th said that in breaking up a gathering at Saltillo, following the news of the arrest of Madero, the police rode down the crowds, injuring more than two hundred people. Another, dated June 14th, said that in the cities of Torreon, Saltillo and Monterey more than one hundred persons were arrested on the charge of "insulting" the government; that at Ciudad Porfirio Diaz "forty-seven prominent citizens were arrested in one day. and that a big exodus of citizens of the border towns, fearing arrest, was taking place to the United States. Still another dispatch, dated June 21st. said that more than four hundred arrests had been made in northern Mexico the previous day and that 1,000 political prisoners were