All is quiet again at Tampico, though the dead are yet lying about unburied. The rebels got far into the town, but did very little damage to property. They wanted, people think, to get hold of a lot of the rolling stock of the railway. Tampico is a horrible, flat, mosquito-infested, malarial place, but it can give to the navies of the world the motive power that they want. It is the focus of the guerre des pétroles. Is it really true that oil is at the back of all these tragedies?
At the dinner at the British Legation on Saturday there was an Englishman, a Mr. Graham, who has a place near Durango. He told, as an eye-witness, the story I had heard before, of one of the rebel chiefs seizing the aged and saintly archbishop Mendoza while at the altar, forcing him to walk two miles over stubble fields, in the heat of the day, then putting him in a damp and filthy cell, two feet by six. Mr. Graham gave a bond for $15,000, and he was got out. This is but one of a thousand stories to the shame of the rebels.
December 17th.
Villa has finished the confiscation of the huge Terrazas estates in Chihuahua. We hear that the wife of the American consul, Mrs. Letcher, is among the refugees at El Paso. The Terrazas estates include palatial residences in the city of Chihuahua, banks, mines, lands, cattle, etc. Luis Terrazas is now a refugee in the United States. His sister, known as the “Angel of Chihuahua,” by reason of her endless charities, married Mr. Creel, former Ambassador to Washington. It is Mr. Terrazas’s eldest son who is held against a 500,000 pesos’ ransom, having been taken forcibly from the British Vice-Consulate.
Yesterday the run on the Banco Nacional and the Banco de Londres y Mexico for the exchange of certain bank-notes, no longer good, was enormous. Many shops are hanging out signs that notes of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Querétaro, Guanajuato, etc., will not be accepted from customers. The richer refugees coming in from Chihuahua had hundreds of thousands of such. Oh, for a few wicked cientificos!
A lot of trouble about the Constitutionalist fiat money is beginning in the north. Merchants who fight shy of it are put into jail, regardless of nationality. Its appearance, to a careful, thrifty man, must be appalling. Bills have only one signature, and any one holding them forges the missing signatures, or the nearest and most interested jefe politico affixes the stamp of his jefatura. The drawback is that it is difficult to get merchandise or food in exchange. When is money not money? That way lies economic ruin.
Huerta talks a good deal about Napoleon these days—“gran hombre, gran hombre!” (“a great man! a great man!”). In a recent speech he said: “We have a right to our independence, and we will keep it. If any attack is made against the country, all will witness something great and extraordinary.” Villa, Carranza, Huerta (Zapata, too, the chance offered), delight in ignoring the United States. On that point, all are united. The recovery of Torreon has had immense, though, of course, only temporary, economic importance. The huge cotton crop which Villa picked when he took the town, pressing into service every man, woman, and child, and thinking to sell it to the United States, has been shipped by the Federals to various cotton-mills, and means work for thousands.
There are sometimes really bright things in the Mexican Herald. To-day, about the United States protection of citizens, it says: “Mr. Bryan’s idea of protection seems to be built on the cafetería plan—come and get it. We don’t carry it to you.”
Cambiaggio, the new Italian minister, will be detained indefinitely in Havana, Italian affairs in the mean while being in the hands of the British. I wonder how long the foreign Powers will be willing to wait and watch. What they say about our policy when N. and I are not present is probably not according to the protocol!