BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

THE CRUSHING OF OPPOSITION PARTIES 165
announcement of Diaz that he had decided to continue
in power for still another term, a fourth one. An
attempt was made to organize a movement in opposition,
but it was beaten down by clubs and guns. Ricardo
Flores Magon, the political refugee, took a student's
part in this movement and was one of the many who
suffered imprisonment for it. The choice of the opposition
for presidency was Dr. Ignacio Martinez. Dr.
Martinez was compelled to flee the country, and after
a period spent in Europe he settled in Laredo, Texas,
where he edited a newspaper in opposition to President
Diaz. One evening Dr. Martinez was waylaid and shot
down by a horseman who immediately afterwards
crossed into Mexico and was seen to enter army barracks
on the other side. It is a pretty well authenticated
fact that on the night of the assassination the governor
of the state of Nuevo Leon, who was at that time recognized
as Diaz's right-hand man in the border states,
received a telegram saying: Your order obeyed."
The only movement which Diaz ever permitted to
gain much headway in the matter of organization was
the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party sprang into birth
in the fall of 1900, after all danger of effective opposition
against the dictator's entering upon a sixth term
had been obviated. A speech delivered in Paris by the
Bishop of San Luis Potosi, in which the priest declared
that, in spite of the constitution and the laws of Mexico,
the church in that country was in a most flourishing and
satisfactory condition, was the immediate cause of the
organization. Mexicans of all classes saw greater danger
to the national welfare in the renascence of a church heirarchy
than they did even in a dictatorship by a single
individual, for death must some da y end the rule of
the man, while the life of the church is endless. They