THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK SEVEN: THE SECOND of the BOOKS of CHANGE

CHAPTER THREE

It was the wife of an American diplomat... a superior of Barlow, but under the thumb of Henry Lane Wilson, also... who found, in Diaz, an heroic model and allowed Huerta the craft of "an Italian of the Borgia era", gently chastising the scholarly Woodrow Wilson when he questioned the character of the Huichol General. "Huerta has very little natural regard for human life," conceded Edith O'Shaughnessy, in her memoirs. "This isn't a specialty of successful dictators anyway. Only by the hand of iron can this passionate, tenacious, mysterious, gifted, undisciplined race be kept in order. In the States... this isn't quite understood."

February, 1913, had been among the queerest months of the still youthful century. It had commenced, in the United States, with the sensational exposure of an anti-suffrage plot to release hordes of rats and mice at the inaugural parade with Taft and Woodrow Wilson as the guests of honor. Police subsequently explained that, until the rodents were set free, they could not arrest the plotters - students offended by agitators such as Pankhurst, the British bombthrower, or Dr. Mary Walker of Chicago, who responded to arrests for wearing men's clothing by saying: "If I choose to wear these garments, it is none of your business." Another American woman, the blind author Helen Keller, lectured for socialism in the eastern states; in Montclair, New Jersey, she stated: "the rich are willing to give the poor everything except their rights".

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the brain of a dog was reported transplanted into the skull of W. A. Smith of Kalamazoo, victim of a brain abscess. He was said to be "resting comfortably".

Over the Atlantic, Sir William Ramsey announced a successful transmutation of the elements in London while suffragettes vandalized an orchid nursery. The Seine continued to rise dangerously, but France was distracted by the forthcoming trial of three anarchist bank robbers, one of whom was mathematician Raymond Callemin, aka Raymond la Science.

The journal of Robert Falcon Scott who had reached the South Pole, but died there March 29th, 1912, had been discovered by a relief expedition and published... the explorer praised England and declared: "These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale."

It had been the mountains of the dead... Madero's friends asserted... the starved, shelled and shot rotting in the streets of the capital that led the bewildered little President to weigh resigning in favor of de la Barra. Victoriano Huerta, however, joined his mediums in steeling the dwarf to die fighting, rather than surrender to Diaz. "The Felicistas have released all nature of men from Belem Jail; they are looting churches!" After Blanquet made a speech before the Palacio... "the time has come when the caprice of one man must no longer be allowed to occasion a useless slaughter"... he dispatched twenty men, under Colonel Riverol, to arrest Madero. The Presidential Guard resisted, Riverol and two others were killed, but Madero was taken into custody; the outgoing William Taft cabling Huerta his "relief". Henry Lane Wilson, playing his role, added that Taft would "resent" Madero's execution. Also reported "satisfied" was Emiliano Zapata, though he further demanded Huerta remove Governor Patricio Leyva of Morelos as the price of his allegiance.

Porfirio Diaz, sailing the Nile from Luxor to the Temple of Denderak, announced only that he would soon return to Cairo, where he would remain another fortnight. But Joachim Peón of the renowned Merida family reported, from Mobile, that he had met with Diaz for seven days in Paris and the old lion would soon be returning; he also reported Diaz to be "upset at some old friends whom he had made rich, but would not support him".

Even before the deaths of Madero and Pino Suarez, rumors arose that Huerta and Felix Diaz were quarrelling... calling each other by their first names disrespectfully; pushing, drawing pistols... Huerta argued his interim rule would be "a business administration, promising nothing more than good government."

And then, early on the morning of the 23rd, the many foreign correspondents in the capital were summoned to the Palace where Huerta, himself, informed him that the deposed politicians had been killed at 11:30 the previous evening while being transferred from the palace to the penitentiary. Some of these subsequently noted that the "ley fuga" excuses the killing of prisoners who attempt to escape, others alleged Madero and Suarez to have been trapped in a crossfire between Federals and Maderistas attempting to take them from their guards.

"In this," the New York Times reported, "General Zapata was believed to have a hand, as he had received a large sum of money from Madero a few days before the President was overthrown."

Subsequent opinions continued to differ on whether the episode which was to bring the so called "decena tragica", Mexico's ten tragic days, to its bloody end was accidental or intentional. Huerta's apologists, including Henry Wilson, asserted that the executions of Madero and Pino Suarez were a tragic error; the result of a failed escape attempt, or the work of ambitious young men seeking Huerta's favor by conducting that deed which the General could not direct himself without losing status as a leader of men. The New York Sun, however, predicted Madero would "join the pantheon of heroes like Hidalgo and Morelos", comparing Mexico to "Morocco or old Turkey". Perhaps the contradictory sentiments were best expressed by the capitaleño journal 'American', which noted: "If there had been a Washington or Cleveland" assassinated "instead of the softest, most hesitant Executive this country ever had...", there would have been peace instead of anarchy.

All agree only in that the President and Vice President were removed from their cells and bundled into a motorcar for transfer to the Penitentiary and, while this was taking place, a second car appeared, began firing, and the unfortunates were caught in a crossfire. The "Maderistas" sped away; the presence of a tall man in a tan overcoat, seen at the reception and on the sidewalk across the street from the incident, was deemed of little importance.

If the circumstances of the killings were cloudy, Huerta's campaign of consolidation was unambiguous. Within hours, there were reports of revolt in Sonora and Yucatan; Huerta announced his intent to smother these and the older insurgencies by "Napoleonic tactics".

Taft had ordered 10,000 troops to Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas, but President-elect Woodrow Wilson professed "disinterest" in the coup. Refusing the requests of the Widows Pino Suarez and Madero to have the bodies of their husbands returned to their native Yucatan and Coahuila, Huerta decried the danger of public funerals; the Vice President was buried in the Spanish Cemetery, Madero in the French Cemetery. The families were permitted to leave Mexico; once away, Señora Madero alleged that the President's body had been returned swathed in bandages to hide evidence that he had been killed in bed.

"Three years ago, Huerta had never been heard of in Mexico," the Señora charged, reaffirming the sentiment that the Territory stood outside of the Mexican pale. "Three years ago he was a saloon habitue; penniless, and begged, actually begged for drinks in the cafes. He entered the army, won some little promotion and was in the campaign in the north and my husband promoted him, again and again rapidly. He, Diaz, Mondragon and Blanquet know who gave the order for the assassinations of Señor Madero and Señor Suarez."

Some other Mexicans escaped the Napoleonic night, as did certain foreigners distasteful to Huerta. One of these was John Kenneth Turner, author of the anti-Diaz tract "Barbarous Mexico", whom Huerta desired to hang but, on the advice of his counselors, settled for expulsion. Of the Maderist ministers Serapio Rendon, Guerra and V. Moya Zorrilla reached Havana; the last escaping the rurales by posing as an American and threatening, in bad Spanish, to report them to Henry Lane Wilson. José Maria Vega resigned rather than serve under his old nemesis, resuming his medical career. Governor Camara Vales of Yucatan, the father-in-law of Pino Suarez, resigned and went to New Orleans. And Garibaldi turned up in New York, telling the journalists "Madero had too much faith in human nature and forgave his enemies instead of treating them in military fashion." He said the only man capable of deposing Huerta was his brother and, when told that Gustavo was also dead, threw his hands into the air and soon after returned to Europe.

A few obstreperous Maderistas were paid off to prevent their combining against Huerta; a Colonel Covarrubias was made military attaché to the French legation and the Villista General Felipe Angeles was given that post in Belgium. Villa, himself, was seen buying arms and equipment in El Paso, then was seen no more and rumored to have crossed over the Rio Grande into Sonora.

To replace the Maderistas came a mixture of new faces and old. Most were military men, associates of Victoriano Huerta, or relatives like his nephew General Joaquin Maas, named Governor of Veracruz. Blanquet became Governor of Mexico State, then Morelos, but the appointments were little more than honorary... his occupation remained the prosecution of the campaign against Zapata, whose inclination to reconcile with Huerta expired quickly in the last week of February. General Caos was named Jefe of the Rurales, General Treviño was appointed Governor of Coahuila over Venustiano Carranza, who whimpered that his earlier opposition to Huerta had been the fault of his legislature. Unlike Abraham Gonzalez of Chihuahua, Carranza was permitted to retain his life... a grace that Victoriano Huerta would have cause to regret.

To Felix Diaz, Huerta granted a particularly diabolical task - investigation of the Pino Suarez and Madero killings. While de la Barra fluttered about the capital, propitiating foreign diplomats with promises elections would be held "as soon as peace is restored", the nephew of Porfirio Diaz... although touted by de la Barra as one of three likely candidates with Rodolfo, son of Bernardo Reyes and the ex-Maderista Dr. Francisco Vasquez-Gomez... was crushed between the Army and such of the public as concurred with that criticism of Henry Lane Wilson, made by the London Daily News... "powerful interests in the United States welcomed the fall of Madero and the succession in office of the Diaz-Huerta gang.

"Nobody will be simple enough to believe that American concessionaires are not thinking of their own profits. The name of Diaz, for them, represents an age of unlimited concessions of the whole country, for sale to the highest bidder."

Uncle Porfirio Diaz proceeded from Cairo to France, not Mexico City, and Felix soon accepted a diplomatic mission on the Continent; General Mondragon was posted to Havana and the sorting out of conspirators was done. Huerta now raised his copita only to trustworthy friends... Aureliano Blanquet, whose sons, along with those of Huerta, had been made managers of Mexico City's gambling palaces; the sinister Jesuit Urrutia, Huerta's Minister of the Interior and director of a sanatorium to which opposition politicians (including one Senator Dominguez and Serapio Rendon, foolishly returning from exile) were sent to have their veins opened in the course of one of Urrutia's "experiments". The President's barber was a man whose brother he had ordered shot; to his razor Huerta, face swathed in hot towels, daily exposed his throat. Finally there was the tall man, seen less frequently as spring came to Mexico, who spoke only to the President and then only into his ear... a man who seldom smiled save at times when seeming to be contemplating a great, amusing cruelty. A man whose features were always hidden within the collar of a long, tan overcoat and beneath a slouch hat; answering to no name but whom the President, in rare moments of extreme, exuberant intoxication, referred to as "mi Chacol".

In his suite at the National Palace, Huerta kept his top hat dusted, the tails in his closet pressed for the day when he would give his regards and a warm abrazo to the American President Wilson in Washington. But Wilson would not forgive him for Madero's demise, and compounded this offense by calling home Henry Lane Wilson, replacing him with the taciturn and shrewish John Lind. The Yankee papers continued to lampoon Huerta as a skeleton raising a cognac glass and, as spring slowly melted into summer, the enemies of Huerta gathered in strength. The formal clothes remained in his closet, gathering dust.

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