Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/314

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BARBAROUS MEXICO

harbors a personage who enjoys the title of Mexican consul. Consuls are found in villages hundreds of miles from the Mexican border. Consuls are supposed to be for the purpose of looking after the interests of trade between countries, but towns in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas which do not do a hundred dollars worth of trade a year with Mexico have consuls who are maintained by Diaz at the expense of tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Such consuls are not consuls at all. They are spies, persecutors, bribers. They are furnished with plenty of money and they spend it freely in hiring thugs and detectives and bribing American officeholders. By the power thus gained they have repeatedly suppressed newspapers and put their editors in jail, as well as broken up political clubs of Mexicans.

During the trial of Jose Maria Ramires and four other Liberals in El Paso in October, 1908, a city policeman naively swore that his chief had told him to obey the orders of the Mexican consul and the chief of police of Juarez, a Mexican town.

When, after threats by the Mexican consul of Tucson, Arizona, thugs destroyed the printing plant of Manuel Sarabia in that city in December, 1908, Sarabia was unable to persuade the City Marshal to make an investigation of the affair or to attempt to bring the perpetrators to account.

City detectives of Los Angeles, California, have repeatedly taken orders from the Mexican consul there and have unlawfully placed in his hands property of persons whom they have arrested.

Antonio Lozano, the Mexican consul at Los Angeles, at one time had two fake employment offices running at the same time for the single purpose of hiring mem-