Los Angeles herald., 1908-04-26
STORY TELLS OF MExICAN'S
DIRE PLIGHT
WILL SURELY DIE IN PRISON.
SAYS WRITER
Kept In a Cell Five Feet Wide, Where
No Light Ever Penetrates.
Mother Cannot See
Him

De known. 1t is especially timely III
Los Angeles, as Manuel Sarabia, broth
er of Juan Sarabia, who is the subject
of the story, has just been taken back
to Arizona for trial on similar charges
to those for which Juan Sarabia is
now in "The Purgatory," and his
friends of the junta fear he will be
kidnapped, as was Juan, and taken into
Mexico, where short shrift will be made
of his case. Ricardo Flores Magon,
president of the junta, still is in the
Los Angeles county Jail and his case
Is pending in the federal courts, where
1t has been pending for many months
with little prospect of coming to any
future
Like a rallying cry to the scattered
and driven disciples of the st. Louis
junta of the Liberal party of Mexico
has come the news, Juan Sarabia is
dying in the military prison at San
Juan de Ulua. He lies hopeless in
The Purgatory.' More than two or
three months he cannot live, possibly
not more than a few weeks. He is
facing a slow death in the most terri
BILE dungeon on the American conti-
nent."
Juan Sarabia was first vice presi-
dent of the junta of the Liberal party
of Mexico before the junta was driven
from this city by the st. Louis police
in combination with Mexican secret
service men and the employees of a
private detective agency of this city
retained by the Mexican government.
For more than three years the junta
members have successfully fought the
constant efforts of the Diaz govern
ment to have them returned to Mexico.
Juan Sarabia was inveigled into that
country by false reports and sent to
prison and this is the story of his
present plight.
i r6n
know it's somber Significance the name
is suggestive of horrors that mere
words cannot describe. To you in 1.-The
Land of the Free" the name may mean
little, either because of its history or
its menace.
But all over the republic of Mexico
and here and there throughout the
Latin-American world are men to
whom tits sufficient that its mere men
ton seems to bring a cloud across the
skies on the sunniest of days. These
know what San Juan de Ulua means.
Some of them have been there-miracle
of miracles, the man who has lived
through sentence to the San Juan
de Ulua!-and others of them have
loved ones there now or have known
them to go there never to return.
Better Siberia for the Russian, Devils
island for the Frenchman, Yucatan for
the Yaqui than San Juan de Ulua for
the Mexican OF inc lOTeiSHeT III hSAlCO
who is sentenced to a term in this
military prison." Even the memory of
the "black hole of Calcutta" could
scarcely be fraught with more terrors
than is the thought of San Juan de
Ulua to those who know.
And who belong to the clan of those
who know? All, my friend. do not
think that they be all ''greasers" or
"dagos," as you sometimes and
a
men of the south. Not by any means.
Blue eyes and fair compilations have
gone down into the depths of thatt
prison, many of them never to return.
Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen.
but not Americans" you say, with
your native vanity and belief that none
have dared touch a person of your
great republic. But yes Americans!
There be many. At present three are
there now. probably more.
Sounds little different, doesn't it, to
hear that your own countrymen have
languished in this hell at Vera Cruz?
And some of them have been innocent
men, innocent Americans. Some of
them have gone there without trial,
without knowing why they were taken
into custody, without any more oppor-
tunity to communicate with their
friends than have the men and women
of Russia over whom you weep croco-
die tears when you read of them being
dragged from their homes never again
to be heard of.
You have laughed at my countrymen
with their Latin ways and their broken,
halting English, but will you now
laugh when one of them speaks to you
in your own tongue and tells you of
San Juan de Ulua, where your country
men have rotted in the dank darkness;
where some of them are rotting now;
and TO way to tell their story? Some
of those Americans may have been
criminals; not all of them were; but
even then your sympathy goes out for
them, does IL not, and you say that the
worst criminal deserves not such a
death in this twentieth century.
What, then, must be the feeling of
the hundreds of thousands of MeXi-
cans to whom Juan Sarabia is hero
and liberator when they hear of his
extremity of his slow, inquisitorial
death in that chamber of horrors of San
Juan de Ulua, 1.-THE Purgatory"? Can
you imagine it?
Here is a man whose only crime is
that he has used his pen and brain to
forward the cause of liberty in Mexico
and who is accused-only accused, mind
you-of melting his people to armed
revolt. He was given semblance of
a trial, to be sure, which is more than
thousands of his fellows have had, but
that was because the American press
had aroused public attention just at
that moment. Otherwise he would have
been shot; as 1t was, his trial was a
farce, his conviction assured before he
went to the bar-even before he was
treacherously lured from what he had
thought haven on American soil.
Here is the news direct from Vera
Cruz-from a man who, If his name
were known, would not live the round ]
of the clock
"Juan Sarabia is in very great dam
ger He is in The Purgatory' and has
been held incommunicado there for
three months. He is dying of consump-
ton. AS you and / know, the strongest
men who have been sent to The Pur-
gatory' have never lived more than six
months and Juan Sarabia is not strong
and has suffered many exposures in the
other prisons of Mexico before fleeing
to the United States and many priva-
tions after going there.
scan you not arouse the civilized
world to this crime against civiliza-
tion? You are powerful with your pen
and you have powerful friends. VIII
you not come to our aid? Juan Sara
bia, The Scorpion would ask no mans |
all in an appeal to the Mexican people |
were he at liberty and you prosecuted |
as he is--for no man knows better than
he how to send that appeal home to
the heart"
1.-THE Purgatory' is where Juan Sara |
bia is confined, the man from Vera !