The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-07-17
The Murder of Jose Diaz
BY MANUEL GOMEZ.

Villa, Villareal, Soto Cana, Obre-
gon, etc.
You must think rather of logged,
lOng-suffering human mass that
presses firmly forward notwithstand-
ing that at every step some of its
precious life-blood is spilled and mutt
lated pieces are hacked from its COM
positie body. Old leaders betray or
are cut off in the struggle. Yet the
mass struggles on, recreating a lead
ership from its own tissue. Here is
the essential vitality of the Mexican
revolution, fighting now under the
banner of the government, now
against it, and accomplishing marvels
in the teeth of the unrelenting opposi-
ton of the United States, the great
est imperialist power the world has
ever known. Surely this is a mighty,
an epochal movement
The Mexican revolution is being con-
stantly beheaded. When l visited
Mexico recently the comrades were
still talking of the assassination of
Moreno, the Communist member of
the legislature of Vera Cruz, who was
shot down in cold blood at the very
door of the legislative chamber. Dur
ing the first week of my visit one of
the delegates to the approaching con-
vention of the Communist Party of
Mexico arrived in Mexico City with
the news that Primo Tapia, recognized
leader of the organized peasants of
the state of Michoacan, had just been
brutally slain by the police. My read
ers will no doubt remember having
seen the story of Primo Tapia in The
DAILY WORKER. A couple of weeks
later came the murder of Jose Diaz.
TT is said that right now-during the
present peaceful" phase of Mexi-
can progressive hundred local lead
ers are being murdered every day in
the towns and fields of Mexico. Some
are shot in the back by police officers
nourished in the traditions of the old
--leys de. fuga;" some are killed by
professional white guards" in the pay
of reactionary landowners; some are
done to death by agents of powerful
American corporations.
Jose Diaz was one of the latter.
Jose was not a prominent revolu-
tionary figure, altho he had been an
anarchist. He was one of the multi
tude of poverty-stricken Mexican work
ers, and would never have been MUIR
dered at all if he had not induced his
fellow-workers in the mines of the
"Cinco Minas" corporation to strike
for more pay. "Cinco Minas" is a
Mexican name, but an American COM
pany, controlled by the same Mr.. Ger
ard who was United States ambassa-
dor to Germany when the World War
broke out and whose flashy book emit
titled my Four Years in Germany"
was one of those used by professional
patriots to lay "all the crimes against
civilization" at the door of the Ger
man kaiser. Jose should have thought
twice before exercising the constitu-
tionally guaranteed right to strike
against the great Mr. Gerard.
1t is true there were mitigating cir
cumstances in Jose's favor. Condi-
tions at Cinco Minas were frightful,
even as compared with the other
American-owned mines in the neigh
borhood. The pay was only 40 cents
a day GU. S. currency, whereas the
other mines paid so. Accidents oc-
Cured frequently, for the company
had bribed the government mine In
spectors not to look for safety appli-
ances. When a man was injured he
was simply struck from the payroll
and left to puzzle out his own future
by himself before he was out of the
hospital.
MOREOVER, it is just as ridiculous
A'1 to blame the strike on Jose as
to blame the World War on the kali
ser. The other men were willing
enough. They went out to man on
the first day.
The Cinco Minas strike, which had