Turbulent Mexico

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 209, 4 March 1914, Page 5

Turbulent Mexico

AMERICA'S ATTITUDE. GRAVITY OF SITUATION. THE BENTON CASE. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright Received 3, 11.20 p.m. Washington, March 2. President Wilson, when receiving prominent callers, gave the impression that he fully realised the gravity of tho Mexican situation. He pointedlv referred to certain eventualities which might mean that a drastic course was necessary.

It is understood that if Britain allows Benton's case to await adjudication until a stable Government is established in Mexico, the United States will agree to that course.

President Wilson emphasised the contention. that foreign nations had no right to demand that the United States should look after their national interests, neither should they demand it. If General Carranza insists on the right not to deal with any Government in the interests of any other Government, a very grave situation will be produced, whereat the United States will be compelled to take action.

NEW COMPLICATIONS. Washington, March 2. There has been no examination of Bent«n's body by the commission, consisting of the British Consul and several medical officers, pending the outcome of the notes between General Carranza and the United States, following Carranza's statement that Great Britain and not the United States should deal with him concerning Benton. General Carranza's letters gave a broad intimation that all communications on international affairs should b« addressed to him and not to Geieral Villa, a view which has injected new complications into the rituation and thus caused the postponement.

MEXICANS TURN CANNIBALS. THE HORRORS OF CIVIL. WAR. Stories of cannibalism to escape starvation on the part of the natives of the State of Sinoloa, Mexico, were brought to Los Angelos on January 3rd by Otto Hallmer. Hallraer, a young civil engineer, says American Consul ITostetter of Hermosillo, Sonora, asked him to appeal to the American people to aid the Yaquis and peons in Sinaloa. The engineer says he escaped from the district after a fight with native bandits in which three of the Indians were killed. The American party then travelled for hundreds of miles over the desert, living for twenty-three days on mule meat, rattlesnake, wolf meat and dogs. 'Starvation has driven the Yaqui Indians and Mexican peons of the upper Sinaloa district to cannibalism,"' Hallmer said. "Human flesh is being roasted over mountain and desert camp fires to stave off the death that is facing 10,000 men, women and children. Motli° era are butchering their own children or sacrificing themselves by suicide to feed their dying offspring. Strong men are slaughtering the weak, and the cripples, battle wounded and deformed are bein® slain by their own brothers and sisters! Hunger had driven practically the whole mountain and desert population insane, and white men cornered there are eating rattle-snakes and wolves. .Except in the town, which are controlled by the constitutionalists, and where food prices are exhorbitant, tile whole of the upper Sinaloa is within the starvation belt. Skeletons litter the trails through the deserts and over the mountains, and the scattered, picked bones, charred and blackened, tell of cannibalism. The peons of the interior are practically ape men, and the results of the war have driven them to the depths of degradation. One day investigators will come upon a hut with a dozen children ani hunger-mad parents; the next day the children are gone, the parents are insane but fed, and tiny skeletons cover the sands. Go a hundred miles from any Sinaloa town and the evidences of the terrible conditions arc seen on every trail, at every deserted ranch, by every cainpfire, and near every abode shack.' Existence has become a matter of hours. Causalties in Mexican battles are small in comparison to the deaths by starvation murder, and suicide—but suicide is the last resort. Mexican mothers are prone to believe that self-preservation is the lirst law of nature, and they kiil their young nine times out of ten before turning the knives upon themselves.'"