The intendente of Valparaiso to Señor Matta.
Valparaiso, October 28, 1891.
F.
In my communication No. 3094, dated yesterday, I transcribed to you the one which had been sent to me by the judge “of the criminal court, promising to communicate to you through this intendencia, as soon as the examination had been terminated, everything relating to the unfortunate conflict of the 16th instant between seamen belonging to the cruiser Baltimore, seamen from the national navy, and a portion of the common people of the city.
I promised you in that communication to send you to-day the new report which I had asked of the chief of police, Lieut Col. Ezequiel Lazo, in view of the charges made by the minister of the United States of North America in the communication which he addressed to the department under your charge, and several paragraphs of which you were pleased to communicate to me.
I now have the honor to send you, in the original, both the report which the chief of police sent to this intendencia, on the 17th instant, and that which he sent to me yesterday at half past 6 o’clock p.m. on the same subject. You will thereby see how incorrect were the charges made by the minister of the United States against the police of this city. It would be, of course, physically impossible for the police to have committed all the acts of brutality and cruelty with which they are charged. The riot began at about 6 p.m. in Clave, San Martin, San Francisco streets, and others, which are inhabited by low characters and in which liquor shops and sailors’ boarding houses are numerous. It is a very easy matter to collect a mob in that quarter in a few minutes.
(Here follows the rest of the report as given in detail in inclosure C.)
The foregoing agrees with the document on file at this legation.