File No. 812.404/76.

Vice Consul Davis to the Secretary of State.

[Extract.]
No. 16.]

Sir: I have the honor to say that your January 14 was received at this Consulate on the 15th of January, and the next day I put an American lady, a Catholic well known here to be devoted to her Church, on the job of compiling accurate data on the subject. She returned to me yesterday, with a few meagre notes, saying—

I do not think you will use these notes, for I found it impossible to have facts substantiated as you require. I can not get the people most interested to state facts, for they seem terrified even at the echo of their own voices. That Fathers Galvan, Navarro, Araiza, Ramirez and another priest were executed by the military here, there can be no doubt whatever; but as to the acceptable facts in each case you will have to wait until these people may feel they can talk about such things without being taken out and executed, themselves the day after.

I must therefore beg further time as to reporting the execution of priests, except as to the case of Father Galvan, who was brutally murdered by Constitucionalista (Dieguez) soldiers on the 31st of January, 1915, while in the act of administering extreme unction to fatally wounded soldiers of either faction, in the street next the municipal hospital, this city, and after the fighting was over.

Before reaching Guadalajara last August, I heard many terrible rumors of outrages of the persons of Catholic nuns and sisters by the Constitutionalist officers and soldiers on their entrance into Guadalajara. I was so horrified at the accounts that I made a personal investigation of the matter as soon as I could, and found that there was absolutely no truth in one word of those rumors All nuns, sisters, and foreign priests were banished, and that was all.

[Page 1019]

[Verification of the above statement by Mr. Kenneth Cunningham, an Englishman of Guanajuato, in regard to that city.]

* * * Both factions have systematically used the Archbishopric and all Catholic school buildings, convents and Catholic society homes for barracks, or any other purpose that might suit them while in military control of Guadalajara; and I was told that even the cathedral had been so used. * * *

I have [etc.]

Will P. Davis.