No. 327.
Mr. Thomas to Mr. Fish.
Lima, Fern, December 27, 1872. (Rec’d Jan. 29, 1873.)
Sir: I regret exceedingly that I am called upon to communicate to your excellency the present state of public affairs in Peru, involving, as they do, the peace of the country.
A conspiracy, having for its object the overthrow of the existing government of Peru, was recently discovered, and has been checked by the arrest of several of the principal conspirators. Hcrencia Zeballos, who was first vice-president under the late President Balta, and who became President after the assassination of Balta, and passed the government into the hands of President Pardo, has been recently arrested at Are-quipa, a large city in the interior, south of Lima, in company with a Mr. Gamio, brought to Callao as prisoners, and have been kept in confinement a few days, were on the 26th instant sentenced to complete a survey of the boundary-line dividing Brazil from Peru. Having been furnished [Page 759] with commissions and ample means by the government, they were sent in a national vessel to their place of destination in the valley of the Amazon.
Other parties concerned in the conspiracy, Colonel La Cotera, Captains La Cotera, Calvera, and Raygada, were arrested at Payta, about five hundred miles north of this city, and are now in confinement at Callao, awaiting further proceedings in their cases.
General Seguio, the most efficient and most dangerous of the parties concerned in this movement, is yet at large. It is supposed he has gone to Cuzco, the old capital of the Indian empire, which is, as you are aware, east of the Andes. As this general is a Cholo, a mixture of Indian and Spanish, it is supposed he is charged to organize the Indian population, who chiefly inhabit the valley east of the Andes, against the government, and on that account his escape so far is to be very much regretted.
It is not known with certainty that these parties named have ever consented to or countenanced another diabolical conspiracy which came to light yesterday, and had for its object the merciless assassination of the President of Peru.
President Pardo has for some time been in the habit of going daily by railroad to Chorillos, about eight miles from Lima, for the benefit of a sea-bath. The cars in which the President travels are daily crowded with passengers. It has been well ascertained that five persons had so constructed a torpedo that by placing it on the track over which the President would pass on his way to Chorillos, yesterday, it could be exploded by electricity so as to blow the whole train of cars to atoms. Fortunately the plot was discovered, one of the conspirators arrested, who made confessions, whereupon four others were arrested, and are in prison awaiting their trial. It is understood that these movements for the overthrow of the constitutional government of Peru have for their object the placing by force in the presidential chair a Mr. Pierola, who was secretary of treasury under the late President Balta, and who is awaiting events out of the reach of all danger in the neighboring republic of Chili. It would seem almost incredible, nevertheless it is true, that the principal, if not the sole, cause publicly avowed, of these movements for the overthrow of the existing government of Peru have their origin in the patriotic, well-known determination of President Pardo and his principal advisers to reduce the army and curtail expenditures in other branches of the public service. These measures, so far as I can judge, are popular with the great body of the people, and obnoxious only to those who were profiting by large expenditures under previous administrations. That these measures and the authors and advisers of them are intensely popular in Lima, Callao, and the surrounding sections of Peru, may be inferred from the fact that when ex-Vice-President Zeballos arrived at Callao, but for the decided interposition of the authorities the populace of Callao would have burned him savagely in the bonfire which they had ready for the occasion.
Having had opportunities to judge of the men now at the head of the government of Peru, I still believe they will hold in check all the revolutionary elements of this unfortunate country to the close of President Pardo’s term of office, in August, 1876.
Of the future of Peru beyond that no prudent man would venture a prediction.
I am, &c.,