That cool and joyous morning of January
29, 1927, at
In the dusty streets of a suburb of
Guadalajara, a humble little boy from the town, wearing a worn shirt and
trousers, hurriedly walked, with his bare feet, towards school, as indicated by
a kind of satchel, which he carried over his shoulder, in the that you could
guess a bunch of books or notebooks.
I do not know his name, but God knows
it: and the facts that I am about to refer have been guaranteed by a letter
from a notable missionary priest of the Heart of Mary, who was then walking in
those directions.
From time to time, when he ran into a
passerby, who was also in a hurry to his work, the boy would stop, and offer
him a loose leaf, a combat newspaper called From my Basement... widely
spread everywhere in propaganda, what the enemies of Christ called the
"ridiculous boycot", a weapon then chosen by the "League for the
Defense of Religious Freedom" to force the rulers to cease their senseless
persecution of Catholics , and that with all its "ridiculousness", it
put the persecutors in a bind, to the point that the deputy Gonzalo Santos,
declared in the same Chamber, that what "we call ridiculous boycot is
something very serious".
Passersby looked at the little leaf
that that vivacious and friendly little boy gave them, and when they saw it,
quickly, without rejecting it, but with all prudence, they kept it in their bag
to read it later.
But God willed that one of those
passers-by whom the boy met, and to whom he bravely held out the little
propaganda sheet, was one of those henchmen of tyranny, a kind of disguised
spies, bad Mexicans, who for a few cents, they sold their consciences to the
persecutor.
Seeing what it was all about and
grabbing the boy by the arm, opening his satchel and taking out of it, instead
of books, a package of the said sheets, it was all one.
"Who gave you this?"
But the boy, in response, stared at
him, defiant and serene.
"Won't you tell
me?" Well, you'll see how you say it at the police station. Go.
And without letting go of his arm, he
led him to the office of the Police Commissioner.
The boy was pale, but serene.
The Commissioner had just had his
abundant breakfast and was satisfied, sitting in his chair at the table in the
police station, contemplating the wisps of smoke from his smelly cigarette.
"What are you bringing me there?" He
asked the henchman who was carrying the boy.
"To this kid, who is handing out
this rubbish in the streets, and it doesn't mean who gave it to him," he
replied, throwing the propaganda package on the table.
"But you're going to tell me,
right?" I am the Commissioner.
The boy crossed his arms behind his
back; He looked undaunted at the policeman and sealed his lips.
"If you don't tell me, I'm going
to spank you a bit, you'll see!" If the boy had turned into a stone
statue, he would not have kept more firmness in his attitude, and greater
silence.
"Eh? Won't you tell me? Well,
you'll see." And getting up, he picked up his whip, which he had on
one of the nearby chairs, and gave it a tremendous whip to the innocent, who
only gave a groan of pain.
Faced with such an attitude, the
Commissioner redoubled his blows two or three times, and as he did not defeat
the boy, between him and the henchman, they tore off his poor shirt and shorts
and redoubled the blows in raw flesh until his back was blue.
"Don't be bad,
sir!" Don't be bad! Don't hit me like that! —The child cried.
"Well, tell me who gave you that
propaganda, and I won't hit you anymore."
The boy pressed his lips together and
even stopped lamenting, so that a compromising word would not come out.
Admired, but not regretful, the
Commissioner, for the boy's fortitude, stopped whipping him, ordered him to get
dressed, and said to the henchman:
"Lock him in that neighboring
room." His mother will come to look for him and then we will see if
he speaks or not.
Indeed, the child's mother, who from
early on was prey to a painful and inexplicable foreboding, arrived at noon and
did not see her son return, as she always did, satisfied and happy to have
helped the mother as much as possible. good cause, she went looking for him.
There was an acquaintance or neighbor,
whom the poor woman asked if she had not seen the child by chance, to tell her
that early on she had seen the little boy of the mother's signs, being led by
the arm by a man in the direction of the Police station.
His heart skipped a beat, for he
guessed that he had been caught up in his brave commission, and hurriedly
returning home he prepared some food to take to the boy, considering that
perhaps they would have him arrested for a few hours or a day at the most, and
the child would already be hungry.
He ran eagerly towards the Police
Station with his poor packaging, and presented himself to the Commissioner,
asking him if he had his boy there, since he had been told that he had been
arrested for a prank.
The smiling policeman, because he had
not been mistaken in his prediction that the boy's mother would come looking
for him, said:
"It's not just any prank,
ma'am." It is that he was distributing subversive papers of the
accursed "League" of Catholics; and we need to know who gave him
to distribute that propaganda; and the boy doesn't want to say it.
"I gave it to him, sir," said
the mother, stunned by this revelation of the main cause of the hit on the
innocent.
"That is not true,
ma'am." You couldn't have those papers without someone else or people
having given them to you, and you or the boy are going to tell us now who are
the ones who give it out.
And giving order to the henchman, who
had returned to the office, to bring the boy, he was released from his
confinement.
The child, all weeping and suffering,
appeared before the eyes of his poor mother, who immediately understood that he
had been tormented, and was already blessing him in her interior for his noble
attitude.
"Let's see," exclaimed the
Commissioner, "tell your son to report to us right here who these people
are, or I'm going to teach you an example, which they will always
remember."
The child looked at the mother and the
mother looked at the child. Each other was strengthened with that look of
unparalleled steadfastness... and they both shut up!
"They don't say, ¿eh?" Well
now you will see.
And he undressed the boy
again. The mother began to cry bitterly when she saw the boy's bruised
back, and even more so when she saw the barbarian policeman raise his whip to
resume the blows. Blind, brave, like a wounded lioness, she launched
herself to interpose herself between the whip of the savage policeman and his
little son; but the other henchman was ready, and held tightly to the
woman, who was struggling uselessly to free herself from the claws of that
barbarian.
"Just say who the ones who gave
you the papers are, and it's all over," the Commissioner shouted, beating
the poor man furiously.
"Don't hit him!" Cried
the woman, "hit me, if you're a man, and not a child!"
"Well, let me say.” …
And then something incredible happened,
something that must have resounded in Heaven as the voices of the mother of the
Maccabees once resounded, encouraging her children to martyrdom... "Don't
say it, son!” … do not tell...! The mother cried through a torrent of
tears...
The Commissioner, furious at having
been defeated by a woman and a child, dropped the whip, and taking the child by
the arms he twisted them furiously, until they broke ... The child fell
unconscious.
Then the Commissioner, scared, said to
the mother:
"Infamous old woman.” … take your
child ... as for as...
The mother immediately threw herself to
lift the boy's body and, hugging him with work, carried him on her shoulders,
and left the police station like crazy, to go and heal him in his poor
home. She covered him with her shawl, for he was naked and bloody... And
ran, ran... repeating like a chorus sublime... Don't say, son... do
not tell! At one point, the little body of the martyr trembled sensibly,
and the grieving mother, putting in her accent all the tenderness of her heroic
heart... she repeated anguished: Don’t say, ¡son!... do not tell!
When, when he got home, he placed the
wounded body of his son on the poor little bed... was dead!
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