Bisbee daily review., 1912-12-01
SUNDAY MORNING. DECEMBER I, 1912.
Intimate Reflections on Mexican Situation

, three places. TOTreon. has nearly 30.- | 0Ov inhabitants several railroads, i'm portant manufactuTies of cotton cloth. soap, glycerine. packing house pro | duets. a large smeltery and several crude rubber factories The town has been in existence but a years. and
 has become one or the important in- dustrial centers of northern Mexico only in the last IS. and. as a result. it is busy. booming. ugly and non deseript place. both in it's heterogen- eoHs architecture. ranging from the
 old convential adobe to modern office buildings and American style cot ! tages, and in the cosmopolitan char acteT of it's people. By way of con trast, the third town of the trio. called Lerdo is a sleepy old Mexican pueblo with shaded streets and parks and a history of something less than hundred years of placid inaction. Our town is intermediate between Torreon and LeTdo, both in charac-
 ter and location. and it adds greatly 10 the interest of life there to go to one place or the other as We need the facilities of modern shops, or the restful atmosphere of a village.
 Roundabout. stretching to the hor- izOn. or on one side 10 the nearby mountains. are vast fields of cotton some hundred thousand acres, yield ing bountifully under irrigation. The elevation above sea level is 4,3O0 feet: the climate is dry. always sunny: and tvo-thirds Of the year delightful as to temperature. Freezing point con
 titutes a cold snap" and it never snows. Summer heat is of the dry, easily borne variety. and nights are cool
 Previous to the revolution the com munity had a foreign population. mostly American and German. of about l.000, including many railroad engineers and conductors, who have since left the country in a body. Our social contacts were largely with per sons of these two nationalities. it be- ing unusu7l for Americans to enter
 O the Mexican social life to any extent, though when we did go 10 some banquet or ball or visit a home we always enjoyed the punctilious courtesy go characteristic Of the coun- try. There are many conventional. ties different from ours, to which we- Americans do not cGapt ourselves, in
 
 indeed find many things to which they have been accustomed in their own countries. on whose customs, both social ..nd legal tthough not po- liticaD those Of Mexico are patterned.
 The American colony in such a place is not a cohesive group. nor has 1t any community feeling to speak of, due to the constant changes nd sh ,F al Still, it has it's clubs. business mems mothers and whist: its Protestant churches oi two or three denomina- tions (struggling against odds, 1t must be saidi, and groups Of congenial in- diyiduals there enjoy a probably clos CT communion of fellowship than sim liar groups in American towns, where there are so many more distractions.
 We have been particularly forum ate in our associations, forming friend ships that have enriched our lives and will fe ours always.
 have tried 10 give a general idea of our situation and interests up 10 the time the Madero revolution broke out in the fall of 1910. The presiden- tial elections were on, and Francisco l. Aadero, a young cotton raiser and capitalist living not far from our town, had intrepidly started a cam paign of opposition to the farcieal system of elections by means of which President Diaz had perpetuatel his power for nearly % years past. At the beginning he did not oppose Diaz directly. but insisted that a real effective and free election must be held His methods of propaganGiz- ing were frank, honest and fearless, and he pursued the American custom Of speech-making to a degree and with a courage unprecedented in Mexico. The then government ut- terly underestimated his powers and was inclined to smile al his yocifer ous efforts, as indeed were most of