File No. 812.00/14095, 14104, 14106.
Vice Consul Silliman to the Secretary of State.
It appears to have been generally believed that a rupture would occur between’ Provisional President Gutiérrez on one hand and Villa and Zapata on the other. This rupture seems now to have begun. Arrests continue, and fourteen prominent native-born citizens of [Page 635] Pachuca were reported executed recently by the Zapatista commander there. And I am informed that there was a stormy meeting yesterday between Villa and President Gutiérrez in which Villa accused the President of getting ready to abandon the capital; the President partly admitted this and asked why he should stay when there was plainly a combination to refuse to obey his orders. Villa told him he must remain; that they could not afford to be without a President and that he would send a detachment of his own men to be the Presidential Guard instead of the men the Provisional President is now using. If my information is correct, it makes the Provisional President practically a prisoner.
On December 24 the Provisional President issued a circular letter to the generals, in part as follows:
When I accepted the honorable and, so far as I am concerned, unmerited, office of Provisional President of the Republic, I thought all my comrades in arms and fellow partisans would cooperate with me to establish a strong, honest and just government which, while using no complaisance toward the enemy, would base all its acts on morality and law, without crookedness or subterfuges of any kind. But it has come to my knowledge that various classes of society in this city are panic-stricken by the continual disappearance of individuals seized by night, either to be held for ransom or assassinated in solitary spots.
If there is no form of trial, however summary, if persons are despoiled or slain without any procedure, to-morrow when we are reproached as brigands, kidnappers and assassins we shall be unable to repel the charge by pointing to written processes in each case. The right to punish belongs only to authority through the tribunals and subject strictly to public procedure prescribed by law, and never to private persons nor to chiefs of armed groups however numerous.
In view of the above I exhort you generals to whom this is addressed to join your patriotism and honesty to that of the Government and prevent your subordinates from continuing the acts referred to in this note; and I admonish you that the Executive is resolved to afford guaranties to all inhabitants of the Republic without distinction of classes, including enemies of the Revolution, who shall have all guaranties granted by law to culprits and delinquents. I will proceed with all energy against those, whatever be their military, pecuniary or social position, who continue perturbing public tranquillity by seizing, kidnapping or assassinating defenseless persons.
Some members of the Convention, said to be more than twenty, including Convention officers who feared for their safety here on account of Zapatistas’ unfriendliness, have left for San Luis Potosi, where, it is said, they will convoke the Convention. The Villista and Zapatista elements will stand together and hold a convention here; they agreed on temporary officers yesterday.