194
BARBAROUS MEXICO
accorded the party's candidates as they traveled through the country.
So severe was this persecution that, May 21st, Attorney Roque Estrada, one of the most prominent of the Anti-Re-electionist speakers, addressed an open letter to Diaz, begging him to interfere in behalf of constitutional rights. This was followed by a letter from Madero himself, couched in a similar vein. In recounting some of the outrages which had been heaped upon his friends, Estrada said in part:
"When the delegate of Cananea, Sonora, returned to his home, he was imprisoned, just as were some presidents of clubs; in Alamos, Sonora, independent citizens were arrested, and a journalist and his family were martyred; in Torreon, Coahuila, in Monterey, and in Orizaba the rights of association and reunion have been impudently violated; finally in the tormented City of Puebla, immediately after the visit which the candidates of the people made on the 14th and 15th of the current month, an epoch of terror was begun, capable of destroying the reputation of the most sane and solid administration. In the City of Zaragoza many independent citizens were confined in prison, others were consigned to the army, as in the case of Senor Diaz Duran, president of an Anti-Re-electionist club; and others have felt the necessity of abandoning their homes in order to escape the fury of authority."
Some of the outrages recounted in Madero's letter follow:
"At Coahuila the public officials have arbitrarily forbidden demonstrations in our honor, preventing also the spread of our principles. The same has happened in the states of Nuevo Leon, Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosi. *** In the States of Sonora and Puebla the conditions are serious. In the former state an independent journalist, Mr. Caesar del Vando, was thrown into jail. *** At Cananea the prosecutions are extreme against the members of my party, and according to late news received therefrom more than thirty individuals have been imprisoned, among them the full board of directors of the
