Please, Sir, Save My Brother!

Rómulo Farrera to Porfirio Díaz, August 10, 1899, Colección Porfirio Díaz, Legajo XXIV Documento 11518

Firstly, I love the Farrera brothers. They all seem to have had type writers, which, if you haven't noticed, was not a common thing. Rómulo, Agustín, Luis, Círo... those are those for whom I have records, but it is likely that there were more. Part of one of the few surviving Mexican commercial families in the late 1890s - few could hold out against the connections of Germans and Americans - they were affluent enough and connected enough to stand in for the governor if occasion called for it.

Which, of course, caused problems. Círo was accused, by Governor León, of leading a plot against the standing government.  Suddenly, the family found its business interests and social standing under threat.  León sequestered Círo, dismissed his lawyers, and prevented family from seeing him.  Agustín, then a Senator in the National Congress, rushed home to defend his brother, while Luis decided to abandon the family and stick by León, so proving his loyalty that when the president finally became involved, León suggested Luis as his replacement.

 Francisco León to Porfirio Díaz, August 24, 1899, Colección Porfirio Díaz, Legajo 24, Documento 13506.


'I will freely leave in my place the brother of my enemy, as a gesture of my honor and gentlemanly qualities'

Of course the president became involved.  The typed letter above, from Rómulo, is only one of a huge number from the family and from León, pleading for his intervention.  Rómulo, though, seems to have best perfected the obsequious pleading.

"Given your vast experience, your deep knowledge of the human heart, matched by few in any country, I do not doubt that you have already decided on the exact judgment of what in this case is true and the motivations that have driven those involved in these events."


Díaz, of course, had made his judgment. Already not terribly fond of León's independence in decision making and project proposing, this accusation against Círo and a large group of other important Chiapanecos was the last straw.  León was out, slowly of course, and with remuneration in the form of lands in Oaxaca, but definitively out.


The Farrera family is still involved in politics in Chiapas.


I think it was the typewriters.

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