Don't Say, Son, ¡don’t Say . . .! Anecdotes of the Cristero War in Mexico (1926-1929).

 

Dear readers, thank you very much for taking the trouble to read my articles that add up to more than 3,000, thank God, recently translated into four languages. How much I would like to speak these languages!

Unfortunately, I am not registered on any platform to reach more readers due to lack of financial resources, since from the beginning it was conceived as something free, waiting only for divine reward. But you can spread them among your acquaintances, just mention the source, knowing that the union makes the diffusion of divine truths greater.

It has been 100 years since the beginning of the fight for religious freedom in Mexico, although, to be more exact, 1923 was only a prologue to what in 1926-29 was already the war itself. These articles that will appear sporadically on the blog are intended to remind Mexican Catholics that Mexico is Catholic and Guadalupano and that new challenges currently await us in the face of a government that wants not only to de-Christianize our nation but also to sink it under the boot. communist as they previously wanted to do. Today, like yesterday, the few or many Catholics that remain, only God knows, let's say no, don't say, Son, ¡don’t say! As if Our Lady of Guadalupe were telling us: Son, don’t allow it, ¡don’t allow it!

 

That fresh and cheerful morning of January 29, 1927, at Through the dusty alleys of a suburb of Guadalajara, a humble boy from the town, in a well-worn shirt and pants, walked quickly, with his bare feet, towards school, as indicated by a kind of satchel, which he carried slung over his shoulder, on the that you could guess a bunch of books or notebooks.

I do not know his name, but God knows: and the facts that I am going to refer to have been guaranteed to me by a letter from a notable missionary priest of the Heart of Mary, who was then walking in those directions.

From time to time, upon running into a passerby, who was also rushing to work, the boy would stop and offer him a loose page, a little combat newspaper called from my basement. . . widespread everywhere in propaganda, which the enemies of Christ called the "ridiculous boycott", the weapon chosen at the time, by the "Religious Liberty Defender League", 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 boycott is something very serious".

Passers-by looked at the little page that that vivacious and nice boy gave them, and when they saw it, quickly, without rejecting it, but with all caution, they kept it in their bag to read it later.

But God wanted that one of those passers-by whom the child met, and to whom he bravely handed the propaganda sheet, was one of those henchmen of tyranny, a kind of disguised spy, bad Mexicans, who, for a few cents, they sold their consciences to the persecutor.

Seeing what it was about and seizing the boy by the arm, opening his bag and taking out of it, instead of books, a package of said sheets, everything was one.

"Who gave you this?"

But the boy, by way of answer, stared at him, defiant and serene.

"You won't tell me?" Well, you'll see how you say it at the police station. Come on.

And without letting go of his little arm, he took 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 at the Police Station, contemplating the wisps of smoke from his fragrant cigarette.

"What are you bringing me there?" —She asked the henchman who brought the child.

"To this kid, who is handing out this rubbish in the streets, and he doesn't want to say who gave it to him," he replied, throwing the package of propaganda on the table.

—But you are going to tell me, right? I am the Commissioner.

The boy crossed his little arms behind his back; he glared 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 his attitude more firm, and more silent.

"Eh? Don't you tell me? Well, you'll see." And getting up, she took his whip, which she had on one of the nearby chairs, and gave the innocent a tremendous lash with it, who only uttered a groan of pain.

 Faced with such an attitude, the Commissioner redoubled his blows two or three times, and since he did not defeat the boy, between him and the henchman, they ripped off his poor shirt and shorts and redoubled the blows raw until his back was purple.

"Don't be mean, sir!" Don't be mean! Don't hit me like that! —the boy cried.

"Then tell me who gave you that advertisement, and I won't hit you anymore."

The boy pursed his lips and even stopped lamenting, so that a compromising word would not come out.

Admired, but not sorry, the Commissioner, for the boy's integrity, stopped whipping him, ordered him to get dressed, and told the henchman:

"Lock him in that neighboring room." His mother will come looking for him and then we will see if he speaks or not.

Indeed, the child's mother, who from early on had been prey to a painful and inexplicable foreboding, when noon had come and not seeing her son return, as she always did, satisfied and happy to have helped as much as possible to the good cause, he went out looking for him.

There was no lack of an acquaintance or neighbor, to whom the poor woman asked if she had not seen the child by chance, who would tell her that earlier she had seen the boy with the address given by the mother, being led by the arm by a man in the direction of the Police station.

His heart sank, for he guessed that he had been caught in his gallant commission, and hastening home he prepared some food to take to the boy, considering that they might have him arrested for a few hours or a day at most, and the child would be hungry by now.

He ran anxiously towards the Police Station with his poor package, and introduced himself to the Commissioner, asking him if he had his boy there, since they had told him that they had arrested him for a prank.

The smiling policeman, because he had not been mistaken in his anticipation that the boy's mother would come looking for him, said:

"It's not just any mischief, ma'am." It's that she was handing out subversive papers for the bloody "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 abuse of the innocent.

"That's not true, ma'am. You could not have those papers without another person or persons having given them to you, and you or the boy are going to tell us now, who are the ones who give it to distribute.

And giving the order to the henchman, who had appeared again in the office, to bring the boy, he released him from his confinement.

The child appeared all tearful and suffering before the eyes of his poor mother, who immediately understood that he had been tormented, and already blessed him inside for his noble attitude.

"Let's see," exclaimed the Commissioner, "tell your son to tell us right here who these people are, or I'm going to give you an example, which you will always remember."

The child looked at the mother and the mother looked at the child. Each other strengthened with that look of unmatched firmness. . . and both were silent!

"They don't say it, huh?" Well now you will see.

And he undressed the boy again. Her mother began to cry bitterly when she saw the boy's bruised backs, and even more so when she saw the barbaric policeman raise his whip to resume the blows. Blind, brave, like a wounded lioness, she flung herself between the savage policeman's whip and his child; but the other henchman was ready, and he grabbed the woman tightly, who was struggling uselessly to get rid of the barbarian's clutches.

"Just say who gave you the papers, and everything is finished," the Commissioner shouted, furiously beating the poor thing.

"Don't hit him!" The woman shouted, "hit me, if he's a man, and not a child!"

—Well, what do you say? . .

And then something incredible happened, something that must have resounded in Heaven as the voices of the mother of the Maccabees resounded in another time, encouraging her children to martyrdom. . . "Don't say, son. . . do not tell. . .! cried the mother through a torrent of tears. . .

The Commissioner, furious at having been beaten by a woman and a child, dropped the whip, and seizing the child by the little arms, twisted them furiously until they broke... The child fainted.

Then the Commissioner, scared, told the mother:

— Old infamous . . . Take her son... just like that. . .

The mother immediately launched herself to lift the boy's body and hugging him with difficulty, loaded him on her shoulders, and ran out of the police station like crazy, to go and treat him in his poor home. She covered him  with her shawl, since he was naked and bloody. . . And he ran, he ran. . . repeating like a refrain

sublime. . . Don't say, son. . . do not tell! At one point, the little body of the martyr trembled noticeably, and the grieving mother, putting into her accent all the tenderness of her heroic heart. . . she repeated to him anguished: Don’t say, ¡son. . . do not tell! When, upon arriving at his house, he deposited the wounded body of his son on the poor little bed. . . ¡He was dead!