BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

28 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.