Читать книгу Ringside Seat to a Revolution - David Dorado Romo - Страница 24

19

Mexican men of that era when they came from the pen

of a woman.⁶ The anarchist Práxedis Guerrero—who

coined the phrase that is often attributed to Emiliano

Zapata, “It is better to die on your feet, than to live on

your knees,”—published Punto Rojo out of El Paso in

1909. Silvestre Terrazas, the black sheep of the

Chihuahuan oligarchic family who at one time helped

smuggle weapons for Pancho Villa from El Paso, pub-

lished La Patria between 1919 and 1925. It was one of

the more successful Spanish language papers in the

border city. Silvestre Terrazas had been sued 150 times,

imprisoned 12 and had received a death sentence under

the government of Porfirio Díaz for his writings.⁷ In

México, Díaz imprisoned Ricardo Flores Magón various

times as well. Each time Magón and his fellow radicals

got out of Mexican prison, they would stubbornly

republish their old newspaper under a different name—first as El Ahuizote, then El Hijo

del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote’s Son), El Nieto del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote’s Grandson), El

Bisnieto del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote’s Great-Grandson) and El Tataranieto del Ahuizote

(The Ahuizote’s Great-Great Grandson.)

Things were somewhat better for journalists in El Paso. But that’s not to say that the

U.S. was a paradise for free speech either, as Leon Metz would have us believe. Spanish-

language editors were frequently harassed, censored and imprisoned by the American

authorities for what they wrote. Flores Magón was sued and arrested several times in the

U.S. for his articles. Ultimately, censorship ended up being more severe for him north of

the border than south of it. He died in an American prison in the 1920s while serving a

20-year sentence for questioning, in one of his publications, the needless loss of life of

American soldiers during World War I.⁸

Spanish-language newspapers were suppressed on numerous occasions in El Paso

during the revolution. In March 1916, Mayor Tom Lea, Sr. ordered the suspension of four

“Mexican dailies” published in the city: El Rio Bravo, La Justicia, Mexico Nuevo and El Paso

del Norte.⁹ Their crime was to report on and give their own version of Pancho Villa’s raid

of Columbus a few days before. The editor of El Paso del Norte, Fernando Gamiochipi, a

resident of the American border city for 14 years, was thrown in jail for having written

“something of a political nature.”¹⁰

That same month, the El Paso City Council passed an emergency ordinance which stated:

It shall be unlawful for any persons within the city of El Paso to transmit for the

purpose of publication any report about the conditions existing in the city of El

Mexican American beauty

queen crowned by El Paso

Spanish-language newspaper,

El Continental, ca. 1930.

(Cleofas Calleros Papers

[MS231], Special Collections

Department, UT El Paso.)

6

The contributing writers included Isidra T. de Cardenas and the sisters of Partido Liberal Mexicano leader Antonio

Villarea, Teresa and Andrea Villareal. Historian Ward S. Albro, however, believes that Aguirre himself did most of

the writing for the publication behind the scenes. See To Die on Your Feet, pg. 82.

7

El Paso Herald-Post, June 9, 1944. After his death sentence he served incommunicado a three-month imprisonment

in Mexico City and was then pardoned by Díaz.

8

The offending sentence was this: “the boy…will be but by force torn from his family to face, gun in hand, another

youngster who like himself was the enchantment of his home, and whom he does not hate, and cannot hate, for

he does not even know him.” Ward Albro, Always A Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magón and the Mexican Revolution,

p. 145.

9

El Paso Herald, March 11, 1916.

10

El Paso Herald, March 15, 1916.