BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

AMERICAN PERSECUTION OF E:EM1Ls uI DIAZ 297
prosecutors bccn interested in upholding the law, rather
than in persecuting the political enemies of Diaz, they
would have discharged the defendants and prosecuted
Vasquez for perjury.
The general persecution of Mexican political refugees
continued unabated up to June, 1910, when the scandal
became so great that the matter was presented to Congress,
and the facts which I have set down here, but in
more complete form, were testified to before the House
Rules Committee. Resolutions providing for a general
investigation of the persecutions are now pending in both
houses.
Up to the initiation of congressional proceedings the
government planned to continue the persecutions. Repeatedly
it was announced that, when the terms of Magon,
Villarreal and Rivera, at the Florence penitentiary,
ended, they would be prosecuted on further charges. But
on August 3 they were released and were not re-arrested.
Since that date there have been no prosecutions, to my
knowledge. It is to be hoped that the laws of this country,
and the great American principle of protection for
political refugees, will not again be abused, for I fear
that the conspirators are only waiting for the public to
forget their past crimes.
There may be further persecutiont and there may not.
Even if there are not, Justice will not be satisfied; the
friends of decency and of liberty cannot be content. For
some of the victims are still enduring unjust punishment
which it is in the power of the American people to end.
There is Lazaro Puente, for example, the peaceful editor,
thirteen years a resident of the United States, who was
unjustly and unlawfully deported as an "undesirable immigrant"
by our immigration officials. Lazaro Puente is