DIFFICULT PIECE OF DETECTIVE WORK PERFORMED FOR THE MEXICAN
GOVERNMENT--SENSATIONAL SCENES ATTENDING THE ARREST OF THE LEADERS.
Early in the Twentieth Century a movement, which had for its object the
overthrow of the Diaz government in Mexico, crystalized. The
revolutionists went about this work very quietly at the beginning, but
later became more bold, and finally the majority of the leaders in the
movement were driven from that country. Headquarters were first
established at Laredo, across the border, but afterwards at El Paso and
at Tombstone, Arizona.
As this was a violation of the neutrality laws, at the instance of the
Mexican government the El Paso and Tombstone junta were broken up, and
its officers disappeared. Within a few months the Mexican government
learned that the revolutionists had again gotten together, and were once
more flooding that country with inflammable literature. I was employed
in 1907 by Enrique C. Creel, at that time Governor of Chihuahua, to
locate the new headquarters of the junta, and find out what was going
on. I soon went to work on the case, and found that the new headquarters
of the revolutionists had been established in St. Louis, in the 900
block on North Channing avenue. Ricardo Flores Magon was the president,
Antonio I. Villerreal, Vice-President, and Labardo Rivera, Secretary, of
the junta. I also learned that Ricardo Flores Magon was editing and
publishing a scurrilous and inflammatory paper in St. Louis under a
fictitious name. The paper was supposed to be published monthly, and was
called the Mexican Regeneracion. Magon's staff consisted of his brother,
Enrique Flores Magon, Antonio I. Villerreal, Labrado Rivera, and a
number of lesser lights, among them Munwell Lo Pez, Manuel Sarabia,
Tomaso Sarabia, and a number of women, two of whom were sisters of
Villerreal.
Villerreal's father, who was a very old man, sold newspapers on the
streets of St. Louis for a living. Villerreal's sisters were named
Andrea, the elder, and Teresa, the younger.
Antonio de P. Araujo used the following aliases, German Riesco, Alberto
M. Ricaurte, Joaquin P. Calvo, Luis F. Carlo, and A. G. Hermandez.
Tomaso S. Labrado was a protege, a sort of a "man Friday" for Antonio de
P. Araujo. Araujo made his headquarters at Austin, Texas, for quite a
while, but finally established his permanent abode at McAlester,
Oklahoma, and was a live wire.
Villerreal's sisters lived in a basement with their old father for a
while. Their place of residence was East Convent street, St. Louis. It
was the basement of a rickety old tenement house, and besides themselves
and their father, there was a woman who represented herself to be the
aunt of Ricardo Flores Magon, and gave her name as LoPaz. I never heard
of her claiming any relationship with Enrique Flores Magon, who was
Ricardo Flores Magon's brother. The old mother of Juan Sarabia, and the
wife and two children of Labrado Rivera, also lived in the same place.
Juan Sarabia was the cousin of Manuel and Tomaso Sarabia, who were
brothers. The entire furnishings of this hovel could have been moved in
two good wheel barrow loads. The whole outfit was very poor and lived in
what appeared to be abject poverty and filth. None of the members of the
junta were in any way connected with the first families of Mexico.
To write up the characteristics, ideas, habits and the practices of the
members of the St. Louis junta, I have material enough to cover reams of
foolscap, much of which would be uninteresting to the American people. I
will, therefore, confine myself to the final locating of Magon,
Villerreal and Labrado Rivera, the originators and the ringleaders of
the conspiracy, their arrest in Los Angeles and their extradition to
Tombstone, Arizona, after they had been in jail for nearly two years,
during which time they exhausted all legal resources in attempting to
avoid extradition to Arizona, where they stood charged with having
violated the United States neutrality laws. A large sum of money was
raised and contributed by sympathizing Mexicans who resided in and
about Los Angeles, as well as by the different labor organizations, to
assist them in their defense. The laboring classes in California and
throughout the United States sympathized with these so-called
revolutionists, Magon and his party, as much as though they had been
respectable, honest working people. If the Magons, or any of his
followers, mentioned heretofore, ever did a noble or patriotic act in
their lives, either in the United States or Mexico, I have never
succeeded in learning of the fact, and from the information I obtained I
am satisfied that none of them ever attempted to earn a living by honest
labor.
I succeeded in locating Magon, Villerreal and Rivera in a cabin in the
western part of Los Angeles, where they were entire strangers and their
real identity was known to but two people in the city. Magon had made it
a rule to never trust his fellow countrymen, or any one else. Many
Mexicans in Los Angeles knew Magon was in or near the city, and knew him
as the leader of the Mexican rebellion, but did not know him personally,
nor would he permit them to know him.
There was a man there by the name of Modeska Diaz, who knew Magon and
his party was in the city and visited him in his sanctum, always between
midnight and daylight. Magon used this man's name, Modeska Diaz, as the
editor of his paper in Los Angeles. There was also a married woman, a
Mexican, fairly good looking, thirty-eight or forty years of age, light
complexioned and an admirer of Ricardo Flores Magon, and this admiration
was reciprocated. She visited him occasionally, always at late hours.
She and the man Diaz were the only persons in Los Angeles who were aware
of Magon's place of abode. They were also the only people in Los Angeles
who knew him personally.
After I had succeeded in locating the cabin where these men were living,
I was fortunate in securing rooms just across the street and from my
window was able to watch everything that went on in the retreat of the
Magon party. I kept them under surveillance, day and night, for a month
before making the arrests. They left in the day time and did all their
work at night, beginning as soon as it got dark and keeping up their
work until daylight.
I soon discovered that Villerreal was absent. He had been arrested by
the United States authorities the year before at El Paso, Texas, and
placed in jail, where he remained for months, and was finally put in
charge of a deputy United States marshal, who started to escort him
across the line, as an undesirable citizen, but en route he obtained
permission from his guard to enter a telegraph office at El Paso,
claiming that he wished to notify his sisters, by telegraph, that he was
being deported. He left the officer standing at the front door of the
telegraph office and passed through the place and escaped by the rear
door, and thereby established a great reputation for himself among the
lower classes of his fellow countrymen. The newspapers made a great
sensation of the affair, and referred to it as a hair-breadth and
miraculous escape from the United States authorities. The facts are,
that his escape was from one deputy United States marshal, a half-breed
Mexican, who was almost immediately after Villerreal's escape dismissed
from the service. It was afterwards rumored around El Paso that the
deputy had been bribed. For this reason I decided not to arrest the
others until Villerreal appeared on the scene. I felt sure that it would
be only a question of time when he would join his master, Magon, in Los
Angeles, as it would be necessary for him to make his report to Magon on
the progress in the mission that had been assigned to him in Arizona.
Finally, on the night of August 22nd, about midnight, Villerreal was
seen to enter the cabin. Satisfying myself as to his identity, I
decided to arrest them the following day, August 23rd.
We had discovered that the inmates of the cabin used large coal-oil
lamps, and, as I expected Magon and his companions would resist arrest,
there was a chance that the lamps might be upset and explode. This would
set fire to the place, and thereby destroy papers and documentary
proofs, and for this reason I decided to make the arrests in daylight.
At five o'clock on the evening of the 23rd, we surrounded the cabin. I
had with me two Los Angeles police officers and two of my own men. We
found Villerreal and Magon asleep, and Rivera sitting in a chair, also
in slumberland, although he was supposed to be on guard at the back
door. Our appearance had been so quietly arranged that the parties were
completely taken by surprise and did not have time to reach their arms.
They fought hard, however, and continued to struggle all the way from
the cabin to the jail, a distance of at least three miles. A wagon
happened to pass the place at the time and I pressed it into service,
and it kept us busy to keep the prisoners in the wagon, as they
struggled and fought the entire distance, and kept up a continual
squawking, which reminded one of a flock of wild geese. None of them
spoke English, and the only things they could say were that they were
being kidnapped and the words "help" and "Liberales."
It was just the time in the evening when people were leaving their
places of work and going home, and the streets were thronged with
people. We had to go north on Spring street, the principal street of the
city. By reason of the continual uproar created by the prisoners it
proved to be the most sensational arrest that had ever been made in Los
Angeles up to that time.
We landed them safely in the city prison, and without any one sustaining
serious injury, except a few teeth knocked out, bruised faces and black
eyes. To my great surprise Villerreal, who had been so much lauded for
his undaunted courage, was the easiest one of the party to subdue, and
seemed to possess the least courage of anyone in the party.
A remarkable feature of this affair was that this party of agitators
appealed to the sympathy of the working element. The laboring classes,
nearly to a man, were in sympathy with them. I know that none of them
had ever been connected with the working man's interests, nor were they
laboring men themselves. They were simply agitators and people who were
always trying to obtain something for nothing.
Guiterrez de Lara posed as a Mexican novel writer, and claimed to have
been admitted to the bar as a lawyer in Mexico, and fled from there,
going to Los Angeles, California, where he sought refuge. He obtained a
meal ticket by marrying the proprietress of a lodging house, who was an
American old enough to be his mother. He was not known to be connected
with the revolutionary movement in Mexico, and was entirely unknown to
the Magon faction until he broke into the limelight after Magon and his
party had been arrested. De Lara was tall, inclined to be slender, had
long, black, wavy hair, which he kept carefully parted in the middle,
had some education, spoke no English, and was a typical agitator, and
opposed to all law, order or government. However, he was not suspected
by the people of Los Angeles as having either moral or physical courage.
Manuel Sarabia, one of their number, was a printer by trade. He had gone
to Chicago during the printers' strike and took a position with M. A.
Donahue, Hammond, Ind. He was a "scab" printer for one whole winter. I
had him under surveillance all the time. Magon and the others all knew
he was a strike breaker, as he had been in communication with them from
time to time.
Rivera, after leaving his wife and children, started west to join
Magon. He worked his way from Kansas City by stealing rides on freight
trains, and in the same way from there to Denver, Colorado. Here he
stayed around the Union depot, playing porter until the regular porters
drove him away. He next made his way to Leadville and worked there, also
as a "scab" porter. He was continuously on the lookout for detectives,
and imagined that every person who looked at him was one, when, as a
matter of fact, we knew his whereabouts continuously from the time he
left St. Louis until he joined Magon in Los Angeles. In fact, it was by
following him that we finally located Magon's place of abode.
Munwell LoPaz was commissioned by Magon as general organizer for the
so-called revolutionary army. He went from St. Louis to San Antonio,
Texas, where he commenced organizing volunteers for the "army," and had
considerable success, until he received orders to go to Monterey,
Mexico, for the same purpose. On receiving these orders he secured the
services of Tomaso Labrada, and left him in charge of his affairs in San
Antonio, while he went to Monterey.
One of our operatives, who was shadowing him, informed me of LoPaz's
movements. I was in San Antonio at the time. I arrived in Monterey
twelve hours after LoPaz reached there, and the following day I
succeeded in capturing him at the postoffice in Monterey. I turned him
over to the authorities, and some credentials and other papers found on
him caused the authorities to send him immediately to the City of
Mexico.
During the four years that I was employed by the Mexican Government to
look after the Magon faction, I came in contact with a number of the
leading officers of that government, among them President Diaz,
Vice-President Corral, and Ambassador to the United States, Enrique C.
Creel, and his successor, Senor De La Barra. I found them all
gentlemen, good business men, honest, high-minded, and, I believe,
thoroughly loyal to the people of Mexico. I found that the people of
Mexico seemed to have great confidence in and respect for President
Diaz. All the officials were very popular with the exception of
Vice-President Corral. He was the most unpopular officer connected with
the Mexican government, and I have no doubt that the dislike the people
of Mexico bore for him was a great factor in creating the disfavor that
finally caused the overthrow of Diaz's administration.
Ricardo Flores Magon was a man of brain, well mannered, inclined to be
courteous, and educated and undoubtedly intended for a leader of men,
but he was unscrupulous and irresponsible, and was an anarchist at
heart.
Enrique Flores Magon, his younger brother, was educated, with a
disposition and manners similar to those of his brother, inclined to be
timid, verging on cowardice.
Lebrada Rivera was forty years of age, small of stature, light weight,
and from his appearance might have been mistaken for a Japanese. He was
well educated in Spanish and was at one time connected with the
university or school at San Luis Potosi. It was claimed by some of his
friends that he had been a professor of this school, but, by his
appearance and subsequent actions he was more like a janitor or
assistant janitor.
Villerreal was about the medium height, well built and rather good
looking, about thirty-odd years of age, had some education, and took
great care of a luxurious head of black, kinky hair, and a pretentious
mustache, which were, in my opinion, his most valuable assets.
Juan Sarabia was between thirty and thirty-five years of age, and fairly
well educated, was quite an orator, thoroughly disloyal to his country
and a violent agitator, although he possessed more courage than any of
his associates.
Munwell LoPaz, Manuel Sarabia and Tomaso Sarabia, represented
themselves as important factors in the revolutionary movement. They
pretended to hold official positions of great importance in the junta,
when, as a matter of fact, the importance of their positions in the
junta would compare favorably with that of a bellboy in a first-class
hotel to that of the manager, who was Magon.
Magon, Villerreal and Rivera were finally extradited to Tombstone,
Arizona, where they were tried in the United States court, convicted and
sentenced to the Arizona state prison at Yuma for a term of eighteen
months each for having violated the United States neutrality laws, by
having organized an armed body of revolutionists at Douglas, Ariz., from
where this expedition was sent to the Cannanea copper mines, in Mexico,
about thirty miles from the south border of Arizona, with the intention
of exterminating all Americans and other foreigners who were employed in
and about the Cannanea mines.
Fortunately for the foreigners around these mines, the Arizona rangers,
who were then an active body, pursued this mob of revolutionists, but
did not overtake them, until they had reached there and began what might
have been a massacre, but for the timely appearance of the Arizona
rangers. They put the so-called revolutionists, but who should have been
called bandits, to flight, capturing a few of the participants. It
should be remembered that the Magons, Villerreal and Rivera, while not
taking an active part in this raid, guided their adherents from a long,
and what they considered a safe, distance.
In my judgment the penalty for the violation of the neutrality laws of
the United States are not as severe as they should be.
Just as soon as these men had served their time out and were released
(within two months) they had reorganized and started the rebellion in
Mexico, that finally resulted in the overthrow of President Diaz's
administration. However, this was not accomplished by Magon or his
followers. It was accomplished by parties who were enemies of the Magon
faction. They quietly organized and stepped in at the opportune time to
reap the benefit of the turmoil, disruption and dissension that had been
created by the Magon faction. This faction was headed by Madero, who had
financial means and a somewhat better class of followers than Magon.
Madero's victory over the federal army was a comparatively easy one, as
the government army had become completely honey-combed with disloyalty.
When President Diaz became aware of existing conditions there was
nothing left for him to do but leave his country to save his life.
It is to be hoped that the newly formed administration of Madero will
bring peace and prosperity to the people of Mexico. However, at the
present time, the writer has some doubts as to the fulfillment of this
hope.
While the arrest and capture of Ricardo Flores Magon and his associates
at Los Angeles, California, on the 23rd of August, 1907, may not
interest the American reader very much, I want to say that by reason of
the shrewdness of Ricardo Magon and the secrecy that he engendered into
his followers, the fact that none of them spoke English, and each and
every one of them had many aliases, and did all of their important
corresponding in various systems of cipher, and the further fact that
the Magon brothers continually kept their Mexican followers from getting
to know them personally, and from the secret methods employed by them on
all occasions, I consider the final location and capture of these
parties, under all of the foregoing circumstances, the most difficult,
as well as one of the most important, cases I have ever handled.
As a matter of course, after these people had been arrested and had had
various hearings in the courts of Los Angeles while they were fighting
extradition to Arizona, the officers of this country, as well as of
Mexico, had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with their faces and
their methods, and, therefore, before they were extradited from Los
Angeles, many of the police officers and others in that city and all
along the Mexican border would tell people all about Magon and his
followers, and have been known to say that they knew all about them and
their methods; that their capture had been a very easy proposition, and
that had I not succeeded in capturing them just when I did that they
were about to have made the capture themselves, when as a matter of fact
these officers did not have the slightest idea as to the whereabouts of
this party, nor were any of these people known to any of the officers on
either side of the line, nor their methods, until after the capture and
the subsequent development in the courts.