RIOT AT SAN MIGUEL.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 392, 14 September 1875, Page 3

RIOT AT SAN MIGUEL.

(From the Panama Herald and Star, July Bth.') La Union, June 27.

On the 20th instant an outbreak of the populace took place at San Miguel, a town of forty thousand inhabitants, forty-two miles distant from the port of La Union and the second city in San Salvador. There has been considerable discontent at San Miguel for some time past, owing to some regulations requiring dealers to use a new market which had been built. On the 20th (Sunday), a priest named Palicios preached a violent sermon, which was forbidden to be published, and that evening the mob rose, attacked the Commandancia, where they met with little or no resistance, murdered the general in command (Espinoza), liberated the prisoners, and set fire to both the Cabildo and Coramandancia, which, with eight other of the principal houses in the town, were burnt and entirely destroyed. Eight other houses were pillaged of all their contents, except one, where a few things were left. It is estimated that 1,000,000 dollars worth of property has been destroyed, and grave commercial failures are dreaded inconsequence. The house of Senor Quiroz, one of the richest citizens, was entered during the day by masked persons, who loaded 40,000 dollars on mules, and took it away quietly into the country. After the row the Government soldiers were found to be with their colors.

In another communication from a Spanish correspondent at La Union under the same date, we have additional details connected with the outrages that have occurred in San Miguel, and which are as follows The Very Rev Bishop of Salvador, it seems, ordered the curates of the parish churches to read, on three consecutive feast-days, a pastoral which his lordship had issued, in which, amid many expressions of humility and charity, he encouraged the faithful to rebel

against the civil Government. The supreme authority, considering this an offence against the laws, decreed that the publication of the pastoral should be opposed by its department agents, and requiring them to warn the parish priests for the first and second time, and defining what the punishment should be if they disobeyed the third warning. Don Jose Manuel Palacios, the curate of San Miguel, fearing that the Governor would carry the order referred to into effect on the day assigned (the 24th), had made preparations to frustrate it by the most diabolical of plans. The sa d curate got together a band of the worst characters in the population, and offered them spiritual blessings for the next world, and the pleasure of pillaging the rich storehouses of the merchants of San Miguel beside, it they would attack the Cabildo and set free the 200 prisoners there, who were his friends. This was done, after killing the sentinel on guard. They then burnt up the archives of the municipality, and rushed in a crowd to attack the barracks, winch were defended by the Governor and General in Command, Don Felipe Espinoza, and his second in command, Juan Castro. The soldiers under their command fired their muskets at the rioters, charged with powder only, On General Espinoza finding, as soon as it was daylight, that his soldiers were favoring the intentions of the mob, and obeying the dictates of the priest, he tried to persuade them to return to their duty, but without the least effect. General Espinoza was killed, his body cut in pieces and thrown at each other with a sort of satanic glee. General Castro had his skull eleven, and his body thrown over a wall, where it was found by his mother still living. After taking him home he lived three days longer. The best houses in the place were set fire to by the aid of kerosene. The people of the town of Ban Miguel, as can readily be imagined, were in the greatest consternation at seeing their city the prey to fire and deluged with blood. They had to endure this agony from the 20th at 11 p.m, until the same hour of the 23rd, when the forces of Honduras made their appearance under the bravo Captain of the Port of Amapala, Colonel Domingo Vasquez, by whose assistance the place was taken out of the hands of the mob.

The communication, which we translate, further states that a priest called Santiago Palacios has been put in irons, along with some hundred others of his followers, and that President Gonzalez has ai rived at San Miguel with troops, and no one doubted but he would see justice done and the law respected.