The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-06-30
MODERN TORTURES
Balmaceda Subjects His Prisoners
to an InquisitiOn.
MADE TO WALK ON RED-HO1 IRON
Mission OF the Gillian Insurgent Agents to
Washington a Failure-lt is improbable
They Will be Received Officially or at All.


New YORK, June ia correspondent
at Santiago, Chilli, thus writes: The tor
lures 10 which prisoners are subjected by
Balmaceda's agents almost pass belief. A
man without thinking gives vent to his
opinions of the dictator, and he is next day
missing from his accustomed haunts. Close
scrutiny of one of the cells in the prison
will without doubt reveal the missing man,
if he is a person who possesses the secret.
The usual course pursued embraces fog
ging with rawhide whips, pummeling of
the hands with mallets, striking the body
with thin sticks and depriving him Of food
and water.
Several instances have come to my
knowledge. A man named Julius Toro
lives with his wife and daughter in this
city. One night sergeant and dozen
soldiers went to his house and asked Toro
to follow them. He did So was taken to
Jail and locked up. Early next morning he
was taken before the warden, who Ques-
toned him as TO the hiding place OF Juan
Boazo, one of the insurgent chiefs. Toro
told him he did not know, whereupon he
was taken into the yard, tied to post and
horsewhlpped for more than an hour. He
was delirious for two days. Upon his
recovery the same questions were asked
him, and he was again whipped, when
he gave the same answer. This time the
whip iashes had small pieces of lead on
them and Toro's body was one mass of
bruises. His daughter and wife, half
crazed with grief, called on the warden for
information as 10 their husband and father
and were brutally struck and kicked out OF
the Warden's office by half drunken soldiers
on guard. A passer- by, said to be an Eng
lish naval officer, it seems, took sides with
the women and fight ensued in which two
OF the guards were very badly hurt. The
officer was about to be shot by the frenzied
soldiers when the officer in command ap-
peared. The Englishman .old him who he
was and explained the circumstances. The
Gillian officer remarked that that was the
fate they deserved, to which the English
man replied, both finally getting into a
heated argument As he left the English
man shook his fist in the Chilian's face !:
when we get at you ours, we will not
leave one of your carcasses to tell the
story" The poor women were arrested
and thrown into prison. Nothing was
given them to wear, and report says they
have been brutally assaulted by the SOL
clers. Toro, | understand. will be shot.
His body is so lacerated that he cannot
move in bed, and has to remain in one posi-
ton.
Other prisoners have been made to walk
on rei-hot irons; heated pins and needles
have been stuck into their flesh, aud the
rawhide has been used in every case.
Prisoners have been kept for days without
food or water. In many instances the
woman prisoners have been made 10 take
part in the drunken orgies of their captors
Members of many Of the best families in
this country have been treated in this
manner. No attention is paid to age, sex
or physical ailments. One old crippled
woman who was arrested was whipped and
tortured for q week in order to lind out
where her son. an insurgent was. At the
end of the week she died and thirty six
wounds were found on her aged body.
The soldiers bitterly hate the English and
American sailors and officers because these
men cannot bear seeing a lot of drunken
treating a woman or man who has his
hands tied and cannot defend himself They
remark something and a fight results in
which, in spite Of their arms, the soldiers
get whipped.
Balmaceda is much incensed at the press
Every journalist whom he can order to be
shot is promptly killed. All negotiations
for peace have ended, and the insureent
commissioners have gone back to Iquique
on the French cruiser Volta Balmaceda,
as soon as the negotiations had en- led, tried
to take them, claiming tie passports were
not in force from the moment the negotia-
lions ceased. The French minister at once
put the commissioners on board the Volta,
cleared her decks for action and sent word
to Balmaceda that if he wanted the insur-
gent commissioners he could come and take
them, but that he would have to fight for
them