Communism; Industrial Workers of the World; Socialism
"'Not more than 800 rebels were yet in arms when Zapata was
killed,' they said. These, they explained, had ousted Zapata from
leadership because he had refused to divide the loot with them.
They told me of Zapata's former army of 30,000, blood-letting
surianos and ayetes (unarmed men carrying ropes) who formed the
rear guard to carry away the loot....
"Alongside the old church, where the patriot Morelos had more than
a century ago made a successful stand against the Spaniards, a
train was disgorging families returning to their homes, now that
Zapata was gone.
"A little man stepped out--the bishop of Cuernavaca, coming back to
his diocese under the conciliatory program of Don Pablo after eight
years' exile.
"I rode into the country with Colonel Sanchez Neira and talked with
the workmen in the field. They crowded round to pose for pictures.
"They laughed and sang while they worked.
"We rode to the headquarters of one of the 2,000,000 acre
haciendas. The gigantic sugar mill, formerly worth more than
$1,000,000, was a shell filled with debris. We rode to another
mill. The same! Thirty-seven of them. All ruined, wrecked wantonly
under Zapata's rule.
"In the village of Youtopec I drank lemonade with Gen. Pilar
Sanchez, while Zapata's captured band serenaded us. We rode down
the Inter-Oceanic railway and viewed the right of way, strewn with
wrecked rolling stock. We saw utterly demolished villages, the work
of Zapata and communism.
"I saw a bridge where train after train was dynamited, where
Zapatistas had ruthlessly executed more than three thousand
peaceful men, women and children passengers."
From these articles published in "The Call," the great Socialist paper
of New York City, it seems that the poverty-stricken, perpetually
begging staff of Hillquit's paper does not relish the Chicago brand of
Socialism described so beautifully in the "International Socialist
Review." The more "talented" and "progressive" "evolutionists" near the
shore of Lake Michigan have many a year's hard work to perform before
they can sufficiently develop the brains of their backward chums and
brethren on the lower east side of New York City. It takes editors like
Kerr, Haywood, the Marcys and all the Bohns on the staff of the
"Review" to reveal the true glories of Socialism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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