BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

218 BARBAROUS MEXICO
Torres, who hurried all the way from the Yaqui river
to serve the purposes of Greene. There were some two
hundred rurales. There were the Greene private detectives.
There was a company of the acordada.
And all of them took part in the killing. Miners were
taken from the jail and hanged. Miners were taken to
the cemetery, made to dig their own graves and were
shot. Several hundred of them were marched away to
Hermosillo, where they were impressed into the Mexican
arms-. Others were sent away to the penal colony on
the islands of Tres Marias. Finally, others were sentenced
to long terms in prison. When Torres' army
arrived, the strikers who had barricaded themselves in
the hills surrendered without any attempt at resistance.
First, however, there was a parley, in which the leaders
were assured that they would not be shot. But in spite
of the fact that they persuaded the strikers not to resist
the authorities, Manuel M. Dieguez, Esteban E. Calderon
and Manuel Ibarre, the members of the executive board
of the union, were sentenced to four years in prison,
where they remain to this day—unless they are dead.
Among those who were jailed and ordered shot was
L. Gutierrez Dc Lara, who had committed no crime except
to address a meeting of the miners. The order for
the shooting of De Lara, as well as for the others, came
direct from Mexico City on representations from Governor
Yzabal. Dc Lara had influential friends in Mexico,
and these, getting word through the friendship of
the telegraph operator and the postmaster of Cananea,
succeeded in securing De Lara's reprieve.
The end of the whole affair was that the strikers,
literally hacked to pieces by the murderous violence of
the government, were unable to rally their forces. The
strike was broken; and in time the surviving miners